An Arizona Baptist pastor has claimed that the solution to the AIDS pandemic is the execution of all homosexuals.

In an astonishing sermon preached the day before World Aids Day entitled AIDS: The Judgment of God, Rev Stephen Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, said that it was possible to achieve achieve an "AIDS-free Christmas".

In remarks that have caused widespread outrage, Anderson said: "Turn to Leviticus 20:13 because I actually discovered the cure for AIDS. This is the cure for AIDS. Everyone is talking about 'let's have an AIDS free world by 2020.' Look, we can have an AIDS free world by Christmas. OK, it wouldn't be totally AIDS-free, but we'd be 90-something per cent AIDS-free by Christmas if we follow this."

Reading the Leviticus passage, he said: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS," he said. "It was right there in the Bible all along — and they're out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It's curable — right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant."

He also describes President Obama in the sermon as a "bastard", explaining that the expression was "not a cuss-word" but referred to the child of an unwed mother (in fact Obama's parents were married when he was born).

He reportedly received a visit from the Secret Service after openly praying in 2009 and again this year for the death of President Barack Obama. He has also preached on "the lying, evil ways of Jewish people".