Republican lawmaker compares gays to ISIS
Gordon Klingenschmitt: Enforcing nondiscrimination ordinances is "metaphorically" throwing Christians off of roofs
A Republican lawmaker in Colorado says that not allowing Christian business owners to discriminate against LGBT customers is the cultural equivalent of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killing gay people.
State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (R-Colorado Springs), who hosts the “Pray in Jesus Name” TV program on the National Religious Broadcasters network, made the comparison while decrying a court ruling that an Illinois bed-and-breakfast that rents itself out to the public for private events cannot refuse to host a same-sex wedding under the state’s nondiscrimination law. During that program, Klingenschmitt also lamented the case of an Arizona stationery company who ran afoul of a local nondiscrimination ordinance when they refused to print invitations for a gay wedding. Klingenschmitt then reported on a story out of Syria in which ISIS fighters had killed a man accused of being gay by throwing him off of a building.
But the lawmaker then went on to compare the ISIS killing to the case of the Phoenix stationery company, alleging that LGBT activists in America are using “religious police” to persecute Christians for their beliefs in the same way that ISIS is using “religious police” to round up and execute homosexuals.
“The religious police in Phoenix are going around to the Christians who refused to print the wedding invitations and they’re saying, ‘Because you’re Christian, you’re going to go to jail for six months.’ Now how is that any different?” he said. “We have religious police here in America that are doing the same, on a lesser scale, to the Christians here in America that the Islamic State is doing to the homosexuals in Syria.”
He then called on the LGBT community to have compassion for Christians who oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
“Shouldn’t you rather treat others as you would want to be treated?” he asked rhetorically. “Shouldn’t you treat the Christian couple in Phoenix as if they ought to have religious freedom, instead of hiring religious police to metaphorically throw them off a roof? You don’t like it when it’s done to you, so why are you doing it to others?”
See a clip of Klingenschmitt’s statement below, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
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