The Westside Unitarian Universalist Faith Community in Fort Worth has amplified a call to action encouraging LGBTQ North Texans and their allies to email letters urging the landlord of the Watauga building now housing Stedfast Baptist Church to evict the church because of “the bigoted speech and actions of the preachers and church attendees,” according to an email provided Wednesday, July 13, to Dallas Voice.

The email from Westside UU notes that a group called No Hate in Texas show up outside the church’s facilities at 6900 Denton Highway in Watauga at every Stedfast service to protest. That group, the email said, is “asking that the landlord of the rented building evict the church for the bigoted speech and actions of the preachers and church attendees.”

That group, originally called No Hate in Hurst, staged regular protests outside the church’s previous location in Hurst, and those protests were primarily responsible for convincing the landlord at that location to file suit last fall to evict Stedfast. The church was finally ordered by the court to leave the premises in February this year, but the landlord filed a second lawsuit against Stedfast on June 17 seeking compensation for damages to the facility.

The email from Westside UU encourages “concerned individuals to email a letter to the landlord, Cody Johnson, at info@crestcommercial.com, and ask him and Crest Commercial to evict the Stedfast Church from their rented location at 6900 Denton Highway, Suite 106, Watauga.”

They included the following as a sample letter:

“I am writing to you and Crest Commercial as a (LGBT+ community member, parent, ally, Christian — whatever, last resort, concerned citizen) urging you to evict Stedfast Baptist Church from your property located at 6900 Denton Highway, Suite 106, Watauga.

The preachers and congregation members of Stedfast are publicly inciting violence and making threats against members of the LGBT+ community. These actions are unacceptable and the behavior of the church violates standards of compassion and decency.

I am asking that Crest Commercial immediately cancel their lease with Stedfast, as the Hurst landlord did in February, in order to stop the spread of hate from your building. It is the right thing to do.’

Stedfast Baptist Church, founded in 2014 by Donnie Romero — who resigned in disgrace in January 2019 after being caught gambling, taking drugs and having sex with prostitutes — is part of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist movement founded by Steven Anderson in Arizona in 2005. Stedfast and other NIFB churches have long histories of bigotry and hate and inciting violence against LGBTQ people. The most recent example came in late May/early June with preacher Dillon Awes, in a Sunday sermon that was videotaped and posted online, that LGBTQ people “are worthy of death.”

He continued, “These people should be put to death. Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with a crime, the abomination of homosexuality that they have; they should be convicted in a lawful trial; they should be sentenced to death; they should be lined up against a wall and shot in the back of the head.”

Awes is an assistant to Stedfast’s pastor, Jonathan Shelley, who in 2021 also said in a sermon that LGBTQ people should be shot in the head.

Stedfast Baptist is also involved in another lawsuit over who actually controls the church. Leslye Romero, ex-wife of Donnie Romero and a founding board member of the church, says that she, Seth Bookout and Ryan Gallagher are the legal board members. After the landlord in Hurst filed suit against the church, Leslye Romero and the two men gained access to Stedfast’s numerous bank accounts last fall and, after finding inconsistencies in those accounts, notified Shelley they were firing him for misusing church funds.

Shelley then filed suit against the three, claiming that he, his wife Kari and church member Ryan Urbanek were the actual board members and demanding that they be given control of the church’s funds.

That lawsuit is ongoing.

— Tammye Nash