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Following the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, a Baptist preacher stood at his pulpit Sunday night in Northern California and delivered an impassioned sermon praising the brutal massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento told his congregation that Christians “shouldn’t be mourning the death of 50 sodomites.”

“People say, like: Well, aren’t you sad that 50 sodomites died?” Jimenez said, referencing the initial death toll in Orlando, which authorities later clarified included 49 victims plus the gunman. “Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me — what if you asked me: ?Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?’

“Um, no, I think that’s great. I think that helps society. You know, I think Orlando, Fla., is a little safer tonight.”

He added: “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”

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Members of the LGBT community are not allowed to join Verity Baptist or attend its services, according to the church’s “What We Believe” page. It states the church believes “sodomy” — referring to homosexuality — is “a sin and an abomination before God? which God punishes with the death penalty.”

“I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out,” Jimenez said during his Sunday sermon, which Verity Baptist posted on its website under the title “the Christian response to the Orlando murders.”

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Video of the sermon, uploaded to the church’s YouTube channel, was removed late Monday or early Tuesday “for violating YouTube’s policy on hate speech.” A copy of the video was later uploaded by a different YouTube user.

The sermon runs for 45 minutes and focuses on the Bible, homosexuality and the deadly rampage at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Hours after a lone gunman went into the club and shot and killed 49 people, Jimenez suggested that their deaths were well-deserved.

“As Christians, we should not be taking a sympathetic approach to these types of news and saying: This was a tragedy, this is something that we’re sad about, we should be mourning these people,” he said. “The Bible teaches that they’re all predators. That’s all the Bible says about them: They’re wicked, they’re vile, they’re predators. ?And God says that they deserve the death penalty for what they do —

“I’m not saying that we should be doing that. But in God’s government, where God set up the laws and God set up the rules and God set up the people in charge, God said: When you find a sodomite, put them to death.”

He continued:

Let me say this: As Christians, we shouldn’t be advocating the killing of sodomites. I’m not standing up here tonight and saying: Let’s go get some guns, and let’s go get ’em. That’s not what I’m saying at all. People will sometimes hear people like me preach, or other pastors, and say: You guys are advocating violence. We’re not advocating violence. We’re not saying we should go do this.

But we’re just saying this: ?If we lived in a righteous nation, with a righteous government, then the government should be taking them. There’s no tragedy. I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.

If we lived in a righteous government that loved God and loved children and wanted to protect them, that’s what we’d do. I’m not saying we should do it. I’m not saying we should go, you know, blow up Planned Parenthood. I’m not saying that at all. All I’m saying is this: If God has his way, that’s what he’d do. And by the way, in the millennium, that’s what will be done. God’s laws will be reestablished.

If he had to do it again, Robert Weiler Jr. wouldn’t have told his friend about his plan to blow up the Maryland abortion clinic. That was how he got caught 10 years ago. His friend told Weiler’s parents. His parents told the police. And Weiler, then 25, wound up spending almost five years in federal prison and three more on supervised release.

His regret, he says, is not that he was caught. It is that he didn’t achieve what he set out to do.

“I don’t object to the use of force to stop abortion at all,” Weiler says. “I believe it’s completely justified. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d probably go back to prison, I’d do it myself.”

Now the fervent activist is at the center of a different abortion battle — one that is playing out in the District just as the U.S. Supreme Court considers its most important abortion case in decades.

Weiler and four other abortion opponents are the targets of a closely watched lawsuit filed in December by Two Rivers Public Charter School. The high-performing school in Northeast Washington is seeking to restrict protests by anti-abortion activists of a Planned Parenthood clinic that is being built next door. The lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court charges that beginning last summer, Weiler and the other defendants have harassed students, some as young as 3, and their parents in an effort to halt construction of the clinic, which is scheduled to open its doors this spring.

The suit alleges that the defendants displayed gruesome images of aborted fetuses, held up signs declaring that a “murder facility” was being built next door and yelled at children such things as, “They are going to murder kids right next door if your parents don’t do something about it.”

Tony Goodman, an ANC commissioner and a parent of a 5-year-old kindergartner at the school, says that there was chaos when the protesters began targeting students last fall.

“It was disruptive and terrifying at times,” he said, “to have people yelling at kids right in front of us.” Although his own child was too young to fully understand why the protesters were there, Goodman said that many parents had to have difficult conversations with their children about the abortion issue.

Several of the defendants, including Weiler, have filed motions to have the suit dismissed, arguing that the school is trying to prevent them from exercising their First Amendment right to speak out on a matter of public concern.

An initial hearing has been pushed back until April 29, but the case is already being monitored by abortion providers, pro-life activists, civil libertarians and constitutional lawyers because it raises questions about what restrictions, if any, can be placed on protesters based on the nature of their message and intended audience.

Can activists be told they must limit the content of their protests? Is the nature of the protests causing the children emotional distress and irreparable harm? Can the school keep protesters a certain distance from school grounds? Can a school sue on behalf of its students?

All of these questions are before D.C. Superior Court Judge Jeanette J. Clark. In the meantime, the protesters are allowed to continue their activities at the school and the clinic that is under construction.

For his part, Weiler says that his appearances outside the clinic have been few. In November, he held up a large banner that read “They kill babies nearby! Tell your parents to stop them.” But when he was served with the lawsuit, he took it personally. He returned to the school to protest holding another sign that said “Two Rivers attacks free speech.”

Planned Parenthood protestors are seen outside the Two Rivers Public Charter School. (Two Rivers Public Charter School)
On the issue of abortion, Robert Weiler does not want to be told to be quiet.