YouTube Closes TB Joshua’s Channel Due to LGBTIQ Rights and claiming to Cure Demon of homo$3xuality (SEE DETAILS)

Controversial Nigerian televangelist, Temitope Joshua, hits Mary Okoye’s head and she falls to the floor. When she gets up, he hits her again and tells her to call her “second”, another woman he refers to as Ms Okoye’s “wife”.

Mr Joshua, popularly called TB Joshua, slaps and pushes Ms Okoye and the unnamed woman at least 16 times and tells her: “There is a spirit disturbing you. She has transplanted herself into you. It is the spirit of woman.”

This scene, which appears in a video uploaded to YouTube in April 2018, then changes to events a week later. Ms Okoye, accompanied by her mother and two sisters, testifies before Mr Joshua and his congregation that “the spirit of woman” had been destroying her life. But now, thanks to Mr Joshua’s intervention, she has “no affection whatsoever” for her “second” and “now I have affections for men”.

The video has been watched more than 1.5 million times on TB Joshua Ministries’ YouTube channel. It appeared first on Emmanuel TV, a television station owned by Mr Joshua’s megachurch in Lagos, The Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN).

Between 2016 and January 2020, the channel posted at least seven similar clips showing the charismatic Christian televangelist engaging in viol3nt exorcism to ‘cure’ gay and lesbian congregants of their $3xual orientation by casting out “the demon of homo$3xuality”.

YouTube closed the channel, which had more than 1.8 million subscribers, on April 12 after openDemocracy contacted it to ask whether this content violated the platform’s community guidelines.

“YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit hate speech and we remove flagged videos and comments that violate these policies. In this case we have terminated the channel,” a YouTube spokesperson told openDemocracy.

YouTube says it “prohibits content which alleges that someone is mentally ill, diseased, or inferior because of their membership in a protected group including $3xual orientation.”

“It is great to see social media platforms take a greater role in tackling these harmful practices by banning accounts spouting hate speech and promoting conversion practices,” said Daina Rudusa, spokesperson for Out Right Action International, the global LGBTIQ human rights organisation.