Anti-LGBTQ televangelist and right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack said on Monday that gay people should wear warning labels on their foreheads to communicate that their sexuality could be “hazardous” to their health.
Wommack made the comments while talking about the high suicide rates among LGBTQ people, as the guest on his podcast deadnamed Caitlyn Jenner.
Related: More anti-LGBTQ laws have been passed in the last year than any other time in American history
Wommack, known for his anti-LGBTQ rants, is the founder of Andrew Wommack Ministries and Charis Bible College. He also hosts daily Gospel Truth television and radio shows.
Wommack made his most recent comments on his “Truth & Liberty Livecast.”
The conversation began when his guest, anti-LGBTQ religious-right activist Janet Porter, brought up Caitlyn Jenner, Right Wing Watch reported.
Porter, bringing up and deadnaming Caitlyn Jenner, said that she was “praying against the suicide that happens with people that engage in this kind of thing. It’s very, very sad.”
“Homosexuals have like 3 times as much suicide as heterosexuals,” Wommack responded, “and then you go into transgender and it just continues to go up, it’s a very destructive lifestyle…20 years less that the homosexual lives than a heterosexual.”
Wommack then compared homosexuality to smoking, saying cigarettes only take an average of seven years off of someone’s life.
“So homosexuality is 3 times worse than smoking,” he said. “We oughta put a label across their forehead: This could be hazardous to your health.”
Suicide rates are indeed higher in the LGBTQ community, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Wommack’s nonsensical ramblings and is actually related to the level of support in people’s lives.
A recent study from the Trevor Project on LGBTQ youth found that youth who have access to affirming spaces are less likely to attempt suicide. Those who experience discrimination are more likely. The study also found that transgender and nonconforming youth who live with affirming families are less likely to attempt suicide.
In the past, Wommack has also voiced support for the death penalty for homosexuality, as well as conversion therapy. He has also called conversion therapy bans “the spirit of Antichrist.”
Wommack also supported Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, which he said was being repressed by “the strong arm tactics of the pro-homosexual western influence.”
“Would to God American leaders had enough integrity to not be bribed or badgered into compliance,” he wrote at the time, implying that he wants similar legislation in the U.S.
Earlier this year, he also said transgender rights activists are “controlled by the devil.”
