Westboro Church preacher says Ireland will get ‘ass-whooping’

A representative of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church has promised that Ireland will get an "ass-whooping of monumental proportions" for voting in favour of marriage equality.

During a radio interview, Steve Drain, an elder at the gay-hating church based in Kansas, likened Ireland to the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which incurred God's wrath and were destroyed.

"Think of what you did by popular vote ratifying same sex marriage, the kind of thing that God Almighty pronounced as an abomination and you guys are going to promote it to acceptability," he told Today FM's Anton Savage.

“You cannot, Mr Savage, as a nation slip off God and expect not to incur his wrath. You are foolish and you ought to stop what you are doing, turn your face towards God and mourn for your sins and say, ‘we have made a grievous error. We should obey the Lord God’.”

In a frequently testy conversation on Today FM, Mr Drain accused the presenter of being a “bumper sticker theologian” and somebody who “literally makes your living pandering to sinners.”

Mr Drain was once an atheist television producer who went to make a film about Westboro in 2001 and was converted by them. The church is noted for protesting at funerals of American military personnel or public figures who it believes have incurred the wrath of God.

Last week, Westboro provoked further outrage by protesting at the funeral of 49-year-old Beau Biden, the son of US vice-president Joe Biden, who died of cancer.

Mr Drain justified the protest on Today FM. “Joe Biden’s son was cut down well before his time, stricken with cancer and you think that God’s on vacation when somebody gets cancer, you think those judgements aren’t caused by the same hand of God that made you and whose breath of life he holds in his hand.

“Joe Biden was among the first who tried to ram same-sex marriage down the throat of this nation and at the time Senator Joe Biden was in support of violence being perpetrated against our people specifically.”

Focusing on the church and its followers, Savage asked why the group does not support the Christian concept of forgiveness.

Mr Drain responded: “Forgiveness requires repentance... you can’t repent to something you are proud of, you only repent of those things you are ashamed of – we’re talking about gay pride. Definitions get in the way, Mr Savage. These people aren’t ashamed of their sin.

“The forgiveness of God, the love and the mercy of God is reserved for the penitent, and to be penitent you have to be ashamed of your sin and you have to recognise the sins you that you involve yourself in,” he said.