A U.S. Senate candidate and former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice has repeatedly appeared on the radio show of a fiercely homophobic pastor who believes being gay is “worthy of death,” according to a new CNN report.
Roy Moore, the front-runner in Alabama’s upcoming Senate contest, has appeared at least five times on Generations Radio, run by Colorado-based pastor Kevin Swanson who preaches that the Bible says people should receive the death penalty for being gay.
In November 2015, Swanson hosted a conference attended by then-Republican presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, during which the pastor made the anti-gay remarks.
“Yes, Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals,” Swanson said during a speech at the event. He said he was “willing to go to jail for standing on the truth of the word of God.”
The pastor added that he didn’t think such a policy should be enacted immediately, but rather that gay individuals should have an opportunity to “repent.”
If one of his own children were to marry someone of the same sex, Swanson said he would “sit in cow manure” at the entrance of the church.
The pastor has also said that he believes Christians should be wary of letting their daughters attend college.
“The university for the most part doesn’t understand a biblical vision for womanhood,” Swanson said during a 2012 episode of his show. He added that women should focus on being “a keeper in the home” and a “help-meet” for her inevitable husband.
The pastor most recently made headlines by claiming that Hurricane Harvey was tied Houston having “a very, very aggressively pro-homosexual mayor.”
Moore did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his appearances with Swanson. But the judge’s spokesperson, Brett Doster, told CNN: “Appearing in any interview is never an endorsement of the interviewer. Responding to CNN is a great example.”
Moore has expressed his own anti-gay attitudes over the years. In a 2002 child custody case, he called being gay “an inherent evil” and “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across all 50 states in 2016, Moore was suspended as Alabama chief justice for telling judges to deny marriage licenses to gay couples. It was the second time in his tenure atop the Alabama Supreme Court that he was suspended for judicial ethics violations.
In his most recent appearance on Swanson’s show, which aired on Feb. 16, 2017, Moore didn’t address his beliefs about LGBTQ orientation or same-sex marriage. But he and Swanson discussed what they feel to be a lack of Bible-based leadership in the U.S.
“Our problem today is we’re denying that there is even a God or that he has sovereignty over our country,” Moore told Swanson.
The pastor later posed the question: “What does one do when God’s laws conflict with man’s laws?”
Moore, who has also called Islam a “false religion,” responded that “God’s laws are always superior to man’s laws.”
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