Homosexuality should never be legalised because God frowns at such vices, Celebration Ministries International founder Pastor Tom Deuschle said recently. The founder of one of the largest Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe was addressing about 15,000 congregants during annual conference.

Pastor Deuschle said there was no way the country could legalise something that God has condemned. “Today we hear of the discussion on lesbians and gays that we are supposed to legalise this [in the constitution]. It is an insult to the respect that we are supposed to show God. We can’t respect what is dishonorable. We don’t condemn gays and lesbians, we love them but what they are doing is a sin, it is an abomination.”

This year’s conference marked Celebration Church’s 30th anniversary in Zimbabwe and was graced by international speakers among them founding pastor for The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship, Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin and gospel books writer Lisa Bevere. 

Zimbabwe’s long-time president Robert Mugabe is one of the nation’s  best known critics of homosexuality. Head of the Anglican Church of the Province of Zimbabwe, a breakaway fraction of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga and his supporters instrumentalized to the extreme the issue of homosexuality during last-year’s visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to Zimbabwe.