An anti-gay US Christian fundamentalist pastor who has been accused of Holocaust denial has become the first person to be barred from entering Ireland under a 20-year-old immigration law. Steven Anderson was due to travel to Dublin on 26 May to preach in the city, but the Irish justice minister, Charlie Flanagan, took the unusual step to ban him from coming into the country.

More than 14,000 people signed an online petition set up by the Christian gay rights campaign group Changing Attitude Ireland calling on the Irish government to block Anderson’s trip to the country. The organisation claimed that in the past he had “advocated exterminating LGBT+ people”.Confirming the barring order under the 1999 Immigration Act, Flanagan said: “I have signed the exclusion order under my executive powers in the interest of public policy.”

It is the first time the Irish government has used the legislation to bar anyone from the country. The US preacher has said he prays at night for Barack Obama to die. He also posted praise online for the gunman who murdered 49 people at an LGBT nightclub in Florida in 2016. In the same year Anderson was deported from Botswana after saying in an interview with a local radio station that gay people should be killed.(TheGuardian)…[+]