A Tennessee pastor—who made headlines for calling the Pulse nightclub shooting victims "scum"—has resigned from his church over allegations he had been cheating on his wife with a prostitute.
Donnie Romero announced his departure last week at a meeting at Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth—an institution that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labelled an anti-LGBTQ hate group since 2015. "I haven't been ruling my house well," the pastor told his congregation on January 2. "I'm the one at fault in this situation. I love Stedfast Baptist Church. I love my family. This is the best decision for my family and this church to make."
Although Romero, who has a wife and seven children, did not detail his indiscretions, Steven Anderson, another pastor present at his resignation sermon, revealed some of his friend's "grievous sins."
In a video posted to YouTube on January 3, Anderson, who has more than 100,000 followers on the video-sharing platform, said: "The major sin involved was being with prostitutes, and then there were also marijuana and gambling."
The Stedfast Baptist Church did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment, however, Jonathan Shelley, the pastor who will be replacing Romero, told NBC News that his predecessor resigned because he frequented prostitutes.
While Shelley did not reveal the gender of the prostitutes, he continued on to condemn homosexuals in the YouTube clip that has gathered nearly 50,000 views. "The bible makes it clear that homosexuals should be put to death according to God's law, and at the founding of America that once was the law," he said. "I personally believe that every homosexual is a pedophile … because of this they should be removed from society."
Romero was widely criticized in 2016 after he publicly supported the Pulse shooter who massacred 49 people at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and labelled the victims "perverts and pedophiles" for their homosexual behavior.
"They're the scum of the earth, and the earth is a better place now, and I'll take it a step further," Romero said two years ago. "I'll pray to God like I did this morning, and I will again tonight, that God will finish the job that that man started."
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