INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An Indianapolis church is calling for members of the LGBTQ+ community to be put to death or to kill themselves.

Local faith leaders are condemning the message.

The call was made during a recent sermon titled “Pray the Gay Away” inside Sure Foundation Baptist Church on the northwest side of the city.

“There’s nothing good to be proud about being a f*****. You ought to blow yourself in the head, in the back of the head. You’re so disgusting,” Stephen Falco said from the pulpit. He was speaking during the church’s “Men’s Preaching Night.” The event was streamed live on their Facebook page.

“A bunch of f****** that want to come around, walk on our streets, and demand our children, and we should walk in the eye and say, ‘No, you’re not going to have our children,’” he said.

Falco continued to call for the death of the queer community.

Following the sermon, I-Team 8 reached out to the church about Falco’s message.

“He’s only calling for the death penalty and suicide for the actual sodomites (homosexuals),” the church said in an emailed statement. “The Bible teaches that those people are worthy of death. They are supposed to be executed by the government. We are not to take the law into our own hands.”

I-Team 8 then reached out to members of the LGBTQ+ community to ask how this rhetoric impacts them.

Ali Klausing is a mom to four kids and an advocate in the queer community. She says words like this deeply impact children who are listening.

“Children are targeted silently and violently,” Klausing said. “These children don’t know social constructs until we teach them that, and so when we’re teaching them through hate and disguising it through Scripture, what we’re doing is abusing them invisibly.”

The Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis says the message is theologically irresponsible and pastorally dangerous. (See their full statement at the bottom of this article.)

“You’re just seeing it get worse and worse and worse,” Eric Skwarczynski said. “I don’t know which one’s scarier, the people that say it, or the people who internalize it and feel that way, but you wouldn’t know it … because they don’t say it publicly.”

Skwarczynski grew up in a fundamental church and now investigates abuse and extremist behavior in similar churches with his podcast, called the Preacher Boys.

He says during his childhood, it was common to hear church members say they would rather their child be dead than gay. But, it’s only in recent years that the language has become so literal.

“Christian nationalism in general is on the rise,” Skwarczynski said. “You’re seeing rhetoric that in the last couple of years was unspoken, or at least only spoken in the four walls of a church, now make it into the mainstream.”

Skwarczynski says it’s because each iteration of the fundamentalist church is in competition with the last, working to be a more extreme version.

“The phrases of, you know, they ‘need to be shot in the back of the head’ was iterated twice,” Skwarczynski said. “Clearly, it’s something they were hearing from other people within the church that they’re now parroting.”

“When this stuff happens, I look at them and I think they’re sick and I think that they need mental health help,” Klausing said. “I think they’re so disconnected from themselves and from love.”

I-Team 8 reached out to the denomination’s leadership to ask if they agree with Falco’s message and have not heard back.

Statement from the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis

“The Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis stands firmly against the harmful rhetoric recently preached that condemned all LGBTQ individuals to hell and instructed people to stay away from them. Such messages are not only theologically irresponsible but pastorally dangerous. The pulpit must never be used as a weapon to dehumanize, isolate, or incite fear. Jesus said in John 12:47, “I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” The Gospel of Christ is good news for everyone, not a tool to pronounce damnation on any group. The Black Church, born in the crucible of oppression, must never mimic the very spirit of exclusion that once rejected us. We are called to be a sanctuary for the marginalized, not a platform for prejudice. We reject the notion that LGBTQ individuals are outside of God’s reach, grace, or redemption. True holiness is not about who we hate; it is about how we love. While we affirm that sin exists in all of us, we also affirm that God’s grace extends to all of us. Our mission is not to decide who is beyond salvation, but to embody the inclusive love of Christ. Let it be known: the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis will continue to stand for dignity, inclusion, and justice for all people, including our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.”

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