
Traveling preacher Luke Beets returned to Troy University’s campus last week. Some students are classifying his fire-and-brimstone approach as hate speech.
In a video obtained by the Tropolitan, Beets can be seen yelling in the main quad and listing groups of people who are “going to hell,” including “fornicators,” “Muslims,” “homosexuals,” “Catholics,” “rapists,” “pedophiles” and people who cuss.
“The only way that you can give a defense of homosexuality, the only way you can get a rational defense of transgenderism . . . is if you also give a defense of child molesters and rapists,” Beets said in the video. “You cannot say that is ok for the homosexual man to have sex with a homosexual man . . . without also saying that it is ok for an adult man – 40, 50, 60 odd years old, maybe, adult man – to have sex with a 9-year-old girl.
“Wait a minute, that’s what Islam says.”
Last Monday, campus police removed Beets from campus for trespassing. However, after purchasing a parking pass and getting permission from student services, he was able to return later in the week.
Jack Sturdivant is a freshman multimedia journalism major from Spanish Fort, Alabama.
Sturdivant, who practices Islam, said he interacted with Beets on Friday when he was walking across the main quad wearing a kufi and carrying a prayer rug. He had just returned from a mosque in Montgomery, Alabama. He said Beets was making derogatory and false statements about Muslims before telling him that he ‘would burn in hell.’
“It made me feel unsafe on campus,” Sturdivant said. “It not only felt like a slap in the face to me, but also a slap in the face to all of those students that come here for education and now have to walk through the quad just trying to get to class and listen to this man spew racist, horrible garbage.”
Sturdivant said the encounter left him disturbed.
“Right after, just having to write a five-line script for TrojanVision, I was still kind of shaken up and couldn't really focus,” Sturdivant said. “If you're going to class and you hear someone spouting that about you or about people you love, it's really going to shake you up, and you're not really going to be able to focus and do the best you can do that day.”
Beets was a youth pastor in Texas for 13 years and is an ordained minister with the Bible Holiness Fellowship located in Russellville, Arkansas. He said that four years ago, God called him and his family to resign from their jobs and travel the country to preach to college students.
Beets told the Tropolitan that his message is not one of hate – but of love.
“The Bible says that all sinners will end up in hell . . . most people do not accuse me of hate speech when I preach about the murderers, rapists and pedophiles going to hell,” Beets said. “However, for some reason, they get angry when I mention their personal sin.
“It is not hate speech because I am pointing them to hope for forgiveness and a changed life through faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. My goal is to warn them of the danger they are in. If I hated LGBTQ+ individuals or people of other religions, then I would not warn them – I would simply say, ‘Let them go to hell.’”
Beets wears a body camera while preaching.
“I wear the camera, so I don't get accused of saying things or doing things I did not say or do,” Beets said. “I have never posted any video of me preaching on a college campus.”
Troy University student Matilda Ziegler, a senior history major from Shelby, North Carolina, is a both a Christian and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. She said last semester, Beets yelled at her across the quad, but she didn’t engage. However, last week, she did.
“I felt like I should say something to him Christian to Christian,” Ziegler said. “I told him that the ideology he was preaching drove many people who were LGBTQ+ and Christians away from the church, and I told him this very calmly and in what I felt was the most respectful way that I could.”
Ziegler’s statement led to a back-and-forth conversation in which she said Beets told her she could not be Christian and queer.
“It definitely made me upset that he thinks those things,” Ziegler said. “It makes me sad that he himself is so ignorant and willing to spew these kinds of hate speeches in a public forum.
“It also, more than for myself, makes me sad for other members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially those who are Christian or who are closeted, because it is very difficult here to be an LGBTQ+ person, so for him to come and kind of add to that is very disheartening.”
In 2023, students in the University of Montevallo’s LGBTQ+ alliance organized a protest when Beets spoke about queer students on their campus. As her own form of protest, Troy University nursing major Katelyn Jackson, who is a sophomore from Deatsville, Alabama, intentionally wore a mini skirt to debate with Beets after Jackson heard that he had told her friend she was risking hell for immodesty.
“ We felt that it was unsafe for our students, especially for those who may be part of minority groups or LGBTQ+ . . . and specifically women as well,” Jackson said. “It's not an environment we should have on this campus.”
In a video clip, Beets can be heard telling Jackson that the bible states that God hates sinners, and that Christians stop sinning once they convert.
“The bible never says God is the father of all of us, never once, only Christians he says that,” Beets said in the video, explaining that everyone else has the devil as a father.
Jackson later told the Tropolitan that she believes Christianity should be preached as a religion of love.
“ We even told the man, ‘you are not going to confer anyone to Christianity by shaming them,’” Jackson said. “Condemning someone does nothing but turn them away from whatever you were wanting to tell them. There is absolutely no way that spewing hatred will show that your God is of love.
“There's got to be some form of protest for any sort of reform. There can be no change when the change is not called out.”
Chief of the Troy University Police Department (TUPD) George Beaudry Sr. said that Troy University’s freedom of speech policy was not violated.
“The short summary is that the speech must incite people to break the law or be intended to create imminent disorder, otherwise it is protected,” Beaudry said. “In a nutshell, there is nothing the TUPD can do to stop individuals from expressing their opinions as long as they comply with the University Policy and state and federal laws.
“At the end of the day, the students have two choices: if they don’t like what is being said, they can avoid the speaker and go on about their day, or they can choose to engage the speaker in conversation. The student has the same rights covered under the first amendment and can let the subject know what they feel about the statements that are being made.”
Sturdivant and Ziegler both shared messages for students who may have heard Beets preaching and felt hurt by it.
“It's so important to know that if you're thinking about this, that God controls who goes to heaven and hell and not some guy with a sign,” Sturdivant said. “Don't let it get to you.
“Talk to someone. Know that not everyone at the university is against you.”
“Please do not let people like this deter you from whatever religious beliefs you may have or deter you from finding yourself and being authentic to who you are,” Ziegler said. “I think it's good for us to not let those people define our own opinions of ourselves.”
The University’s freedom of speech policy can be found here: https://www.troy.edu/epolicy/400-students.html.
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