【2017 Archives】

More than 78017 Archives000 people have signed a petition to strip a New Zealand church of tax-free status after its leader blamed LGBTQ people for earthquakes.

On Monday, Brian Tamaki of Destiny Church in Auckland posted a sermon on Facebook that blamed sinners and gay people for natural disasters and murders generally.

New Zealand was shaken by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake Monday, but Tamaki claimed on Radiolive Thursday he made the remarks Sunday morning before he knew about the most recent disaster that left two people dead.

Tamaki, a Donald Trump fan judging by his Twitter feed, quoted the Old Testament during his sermon. "Leviticus says that the Earth convulses under the weight of certain human sin," he said.

"It spews itself up after a while -- that's natural disasters. Because nature was never created to carry the bondage of our iniquity."

Referring to the devastating 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch that killed 185 people, Tamaki suggested "even the churches there were allowed all sorts of activities that you wouldn't even dare to imagine.

"There were churches there that weren't churches. They were actively involved in homosexual practice. Homosexual priests."

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Despite the resulting threats and furore, Tamaki told the radio station he would not change anything in his sermon.

"I believe it was proper and right for me to give a biblical perspective of the fact that some of these natural disasters, like when you see earthquakes, flooding, volcanic eruption ... that can be caused, according to the word of God, by the actual rise and the degradation of sexual sin on the Earth," he said.

Since Tamaki's video, tens of thousands of people have signed a Change.org petition that calls for New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to strip Destiny Church of its tax-free status.

"It's ridiculous to allow this charleton [sic] to rip off people by tithing then get tax free status as a charity by promoting hate and discrimination against fellow New Zealanders," one signatory wrote.

In an interview with Radiolive Wednesday, Key dismissed Tamaki's comments as "ridiculous."

"The facts of life are New Zealand is a seismically prone country, with a number of very well identified fault lines," he said. "It's nothing to do with people's sexuality. I mean, it's just madness."

Sitting on the Pacific Rim fault line known as the "Ring of Fire," New Zealand is prone to earthquakes and tremors.

Destiny Church has been approached by Mashablefor comment.

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