A Gainesville, Florida church is urging voters to reject openly gay mayoral candidate Craig Lowe with a sign that says “No Homo Mayor” posted on its property.

City Commissioner Lowe, who captured just over 40% of the vote in a field of 5 candidates in the city's mayoral election last month, will face rival Don Marsh in an April 13 runoff election. Marsh trailed Lowe with 29% of the vote.

A sign posted on the property of the Dove World Outreach Center says “No Homo Mayor” – a slogan repeated in a video created by one of its pastors, Wayne Sapp.

“No homo mayor,” Sapp says in the video. “Here is Gainesville, they're getting ready to have a runoff election between two candidates and one of them is openly a homo, gay, fag – whatever you want to call him, I don't care. Bottom line is we cannot afford a homo mayor.”

“We got one running for mayor of Gainesville, trying to convert Gainesville into Homoville,” Sapp adds. “We can't have it.”

In a second video, posted on the church's website Saturday, Sapp goes on to defend his position.

“On the last video, I said we can't afford to have someone like a homo as mayor,” Sapp says, then adds that's because he believes gay men and lesbians are out to force themselves upon society.

“Speak out against homosexuality. Speak out against the ones trying to force themselves and their lifestyle on you, on your children.”

“The world is going to hell,” he adds.

Before the March 16 election, Lowe was attacked for supporting a city ordinance that bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (transgender protections) in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations.

After city leaders in 2008 approved adding gender identity to an anti-discrimination measure that already included sexual orientation, opponents campaigned to place an initiative to repeal the law on the ballot. Voters in the college town, however, disagreed and the law remained in place.

One flier alleged that Lowe is “'responsible' for legally allowing men into women's restrooms!”

For his part, Lowe has pretty much ignored the controversy.

Marsh, however, has accused Lowe supporters of falsely labeling him anti-gay for not denouncing the attacks.

“This week it was brought to my attention that Craig Lowe supporters were going through the Stephen Foster neighborhood removing my signs and defaming me as a gay-basher,” Marsh says in an April 1st blog post. “I hold Craig Lowe personally responsible for this because he and his willing accomplices keep raising the specter of gay bashing without making any effort to hear from me, his only opponent!”

Marsh says he called Dove Ministries personally and asked for the sign to be removed.