I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. Pastor Greg Locke, of Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee, is such a goldmine of anti-fundamentalist propaganda that it'll be a shame to lose him, but on the other hand, events have shown that there are people, especially in USA, who are gullible enough to let him think for them. Given his increasing advocacy of violence, repeated misinformation about Trump's defeat last November, which he still can't bring himself to accept, and his Trumpanzee/QAnon-inspired anti Covid vaccine lies, he constitutes the sort of danger to society that Twitter should be protecting its customers from.
In fact, the true value of preachers of hate like Locke is that they server to remind us what a violent and hate-filled religion Christianity would be if it hadn't been moderated and civilised by a hefty dose of Humanism following the European Enlightenment. They simply preach a pure version of primitive Medieval Christianity, based on Bronze Age, despotic Middle Eastern tribalism of which the Taliban and the Spanish Inquisition would be proud.
Never hesitant to bear false witness in the best hypocritical tradition of fundamentalist grifters, he is lying about being the first pastor to be banned by Twitter. Back in September 2020, preacher of hate, Pastor Steve Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church was banned by Twitter after I reported some of his violently homophobic tweets. He also had many of his hate-filled YouTube videos taken down following a campaign by Hemant Mehta. Anderson is still banned from entering several countries, including the UK, Ireland, all EU Schengen Group countries, Canada and South Africa, because of his record of relentless and violent extreme right-wing and homophobic preaching in which he praised the Orlando gay-bar killings, called for homosexuals to be executed by firing squad, denied the Holocaust, advocated misogyny and urged his followers to refuse any Covid-19 vaccine when it became available.
Now Loony Trumpanzee Talibangelical Pastor Greg Locke has followed suit. Regular readers of this blog might recall how, believing that the restrictions on gatherings in church to slow down the progress of the COVID-19 pandemic was part of a liberal conspiracy to ban Christianity and they would try to do the same again, he recently called for a 'violent church', posted armed thugs at the door of his church with instructions to shoot anyone who 'tries something' or even runs towards the church door, and threatened to have anyone wearing a face-mask in his church thrown out.
Also, a suspiciously enthusiastic homophobe, he recently caused great hilarity when he declared that all homosexuals were really evangelical Christians whom Satan has possessed to prevent them winning converts for Jesus - as though being an evangelical Christian is genetic or physiological!
Of course, the increasingly paranoid Locke is spitting blood, vowing vengeance and playing the hard-done-by martyr, no doubt seeing the ban as part of the same 'conspiracy' that 'stole the election' and which is 'banning people from church and forcing them to be vaccinated'. Locke appears to have a god who tells him exactly what he wants to hear and prophesies things that Locke would like to happen. Sadly for him though, his prophesies rarely come true, making him one of the worst false 'Prophets of God' along with Kenneth Copeland, Shane Vaughan and Kat Kerr.
…I'm the first pastor with any sort of a platform that's been banned. So guess what? We're fighting back right now. Within one hour of it happening, we've already had our wonderful lawyer for our ministry file and we have just entered into the class action lawsuit against Twitter and all of these censorship Nazis. We just entered in with Candace Owens and Donald Trump and others.As well as the lie about being the first pastor to be banned, which is probably part of his desperate search for martyrdom, note the usual confusion in fundamentalist circles, of global corporations like Twitter with the government of the USA. The first Amendment to the US Constitution has no relevance to the Terms of Service (TOS) of corporations. It is a constraint on government, not of non-governmental organizations and has no relevance outside the USA anyway - something parochial evangelicals find hard to comprehend. There is no First Amendment right to ignore the TOS you voluntarily agree to comply with when you open an account. Even the Trumpanzee, right-leaning SCOTUS would decline to hear a claim on that score.
Can you believe it? They banned a pastor! They banned a pastor! With a verified public blue checkmark platform on Twitter because I'm a "danger"…
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…So, yeah, we're gonna sue 'em! We're fighting back! We're jumping into the lawsuit. Because this is America, ladies and gentlemen ! When are you gonna wake up? When are you gonna get your head out of the sand and recognize that they're trying to take away every right that we have?…
…It's unbelievable what they are doing! The conservative Christian censorship is ridiculous! If you don't think persecution is here, you are not paying attention…
Like Anderson, Locke epitomises the saying:
He's totally unhinged, and has been long before this,and needs to be permanently put away in a hoo-hoo hotel where he can't influence the weakminded that he preys on.
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