So there’s this fella Kevin Swanson. He’s the one who organized that National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa where Ted Cruz said men have to start the day on their knees to qualify to be president. Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch tells us about him:

After yelling quite a bit about Leviticus, Swanson clarified on Saturday that he does not actually want the U.S. to implement the death penalty for gay people at the moment, but instead to wait and give them time to repent first.

Then, in the same speech, Swanson declared that anyone who believes in God must see that there “might be a connection” between wildfires and flooding in Colorado and the state’s government refusing to enforce biblical law, and specifically a picture that ran on the front page of the Denver Post showing Colorado’s House speaker kissing his husband after a vote on civil unions.

 

I watched a little of that and found it very disturbing. It’s disturbing that men who want to be elected president of the country perform at a National Religious Liberties Conference organized by him.

That, by the way, is genuine hate speech, the real thing. Blaming sets of people for natural disasters and accusing them of insulting Almighty God – that’s hate speech, the kind that can incite violence.

“You see, when this happens, it is the most egregious, the most abominable, the most arrogant insult to Almighty God,” Swanson said of the Denver Post photo. “And then, the very same year, we had the very worst fires, the most devastating fires we ever did in the state and the worst floods. In the very same year, we had the most devastating floods and the most devastating fires and the worst possible legislature in terms of well, any standard of God’s laws as conveyed in [the Bible].”

“You’ve got to believe that God is the judge of the earth and indeed there might be a connection between the worst flood, the worst fires, and the worst government in the history of the state of Colorado,” he said.

He then defended his statement that thanks to gay rights and pro-choice laws, Colorado might be becoming worse than North Korea, saying, “Well, they murder. We put homosexuals on the front page of newspapers.”

Right – not equivalent then. Not equivalent, not related, not connected, not comparable in any way. Murder is bad. Having a picture of two men kissing on the front page of a newspaper is not bad.

Kevin Swanson is one scary guy.