“Kill the Gays” advocates pander to GOP

by Rob Howard
Associate Editor

In late November, 2015, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow did a segment on the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines, Iowa. The host of the conference was Kevin Swanson, a right-wing extremist pastor and radio commentator. During the conference, Swanson made repeated calls for “the biblical punishment for homosexuals.” According to him, that punishment is death.

In a video of the conference, Swanson says, “Yes, Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals. Yes, Romans Chapter 1 verse 32 the Apostle Paul does say that homosexuals are worthy of death – his words, not mine – and I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Swanson wasn’t the only “Kill the Gays” advocate at the conference. Another pastor, named Phillip Kayser, was handing out a pamphlet he wrote, which advocated death for homosexuals. In fact, according to Maddow, “a significant theme of the event was the practical challenges, and the timing and the sequencing of how exactly and when exactly the United States of America should begin rounding up gay people to execute them because the appropriate punishment for the crime of being gay is that the government should have you killed.”

It’s troubling that 1700 attendees listened to these rants, even applauded them. But the most troubling thing was that three Republican presidential contenders spoke at the conference – Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee, who have no chance, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz falls into a different category. He is widely thought to be one of the most likely contenders to become the GOP’s nominee for President.

Cruz had to know Swanson’s history of condoning the execution of gays. In November 2012, Swanson talked about Uganda’s anti-gay bill, which called for the execution of homosexuals, saying, “They’re talking about bringing Biblical law to bear in the area of homosexuality….” So Cruz or his staff had to know about Swanson’s history.

Kansas transgender activist Stephanie Mott is founder of the Transgender Faith Tour, and has experience with ministers professing these views. “There was Curtis Knapp, in Seneca, Kansas,” she said. “He had something like an hour-long sermon. My response was to give a seminar in the Seneca library about transgender faith. I told those who came that they need to hear a different message than the one from Knapp.”

The important point, Mott said, is “We are talking about things that will cause teenagers to commit suicide.” In addition, “Statements like this cause LGBT people to leave their churches.”

It’s important to note that Swanson and Kayser are not the only extremists calling for the execution of gay people. Pastors around the country have made news doing it for years. In 2014, Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, said killing gays is the way to an AIDS-free world.

Pastor David Berzins of the Word of Truth Baptist Church in Prescott Valley, AZ, trained at Anderson’s church. Berzins and Anderson both argue that Christians should follow God’s command, as stated in Leviticus, that gays be put to death.

Both of these minister’s churches are small, each having a congregation of around 40 adults. But Anderson’s website boasts that his sermons have been downloaded 10 million times. His sermon calling for killing gays was posted on YouTube and had “tens of thousands” of views, according to USA Today.

So, you might dismiss these as rantings by small, rural, bigoted ministers. You would be wrong. A Tennessee minister named Robby Gallaty, Senior Pastor of a mega-church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, says, “Gays must be put to death because God commands it,” according to an article on Patheos.com.

Gallaty has since been called to an even larger church, Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, TN. Long Hollow has five campuses and a weekly attendance of 6,500. You can bet that the congregation and leaders of his new church knew of his views on homosexuality.

Toby Jenkins, the Executive Director of Oklahomans for Equality, is also an ordained minister. He says that ministers seeking to enforce what they see as biblical law are out of step with modern religious thought. “All sacred text must be interpreted within that historical dateline and societal understanding of science and social norms by an illiterate and uneducated culture,” said Jenkins. “The more we know of God, the more we know each of us is precious. Prophets and Apostles disagreed over who was in and who was out and came to the final conclusion all are loved."

Other powerful extremist organizations hold these views as well. An organization called The Fellowship, also known as The Family, includes several prominent politicians among its members. One of its members, the leader of the group in Uganda, is David Bahati, the Ugandan legislator who proposed that country’s “Kill the Gays” bill.

The Family, considered a cult by many, organizes the National Prayer Breakfast. Every President since Eisenhower has attended the National Prayer Breakfast, including President Obama. Well known members of The Family include Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. Mark Pryor, former governor of South Carolina, now US Rep. Mark Sanford, Watergate felon Chuck Colson, and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

The Gayly certainly isn’t saying all The Family’s members believe that gay people should be killed, but one of their prominent members, Bahati, certainly does. Sen. Inhofe has traveled to Uganda several times, but denies that he advocated there for the anti-homosexual law.

So the danger presented by these believers in biblical law is not that a few ministers are making news when they call for killing gays. It is that with people like Sen. Ted Cruz attending a conference which had a major theme of how and when to kill gays, this extremist belief is finding its way into the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Jenkins said, “"Saying God thinks LGBT people should be put to death is genocide and terrorism. Illegal and condemned in civilized society, equal to any fanatical and radical religious extremism. Only a corrupt evil heart picks religious texts to do harm in the name of the creator.”

Mott says, “I think it’s a sad commentary on the status of the Republican Party at this time. People who want to be the leader of the Free World, if they are participating with a group that wants to eliminate a whole group of people, that should disqualify them.”

“We shouldn’t be talking about what they are saying,” she said. “We should be talking about the consequences. The consequences are that young people die, and that’s very sad. The struggles that people go through believing that they can’t be who they are, or love who they love, are painful. It crushes everybody that they come in contact with. It keeps them from reaching their potential.”

The Gayly - 1/9/2016 @ 8:41 am CST