YouTube terminates channel promoting violent exorcism to 'cure' LGBTQ people from 'the demon …

YouTube shut down earlier this week the channel of a prominent African preacher who promotes violent forms of LGBTQ “conversion therapy.” The news comes after openDemocracy, a U.K.-based  human rights group, notified the platform about possible abuse of hate speech in a channel run by T.B. Joshua, the founder of The Synagogue, Church of All Nations, a megachurch in Lagos, Nigeria. The organization reviewed and analyzed seven videos in which Joshua sought to “cure” LGBTQ people. The clips, posted between 2016 and January 2020, show the the controversial preacher “engaging in violent exorcism” in an attempt to change the sexual orientation of people by casting out “the demon of homosexuality,” according to openDemocracy. One of the videos shows Joshua pushing a woman’s head making her fall to the floor. When she gets up, he hits her again and tells her to call another woman, whom he calls her “wife.” The preacher slaps and pushes the two women at least 16 times. The video then fast-forwards to events a week later, when the woman confirms that because of the preacher’s intervention, she has “no affection whatsoever” for her former partner. “Now I have affections for men,” she said. YouTube, which “prohibits…
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