Rick Scarborough, RWNJ Party
Ahead of the US Supreme Court ruling on Obergefell versus Hodges, preacher Rick Scarborough called on religious leaders to sacrifice themselves to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying. In an interview with
Right Wing Watch, as reported in
Pink News, the pastor declared:
We are simply being pre-emptive and saying, no matter what the cost, we are not going to bow, we are not going to bend, and we will burn.
However, as Huffington Post reported:
While it's tempting to imagine a man so fanatically committed to bigotry that he would take a match to himself, it's more likely that Scarborough meant he'd burn figuratively.
The Huffington Post contacted Scarborough's organization, Vision America, to ask about any potential plans for self-immolation in light of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage. His publicist told us that Scarborough's statement has been misinterpreted, and he meant it as a reference to a "spiritual song."
As it turns out, the media rush to set Scarborough's words in the batshit-crazy font was just premature. In his next podcast, the former Southern Baptist pastor shows he is indeed a founding member of the RWNJ Party.
The preachers need to get out front, the leaders need to get out front, out front of these ordinary citizens and say, ‘Shoot me first’.
That's plain enough — I don’t think anyone is going to misinterpret that statement — but it's probably a tad more extreme than most Republicans had in mind. However, as wasatch remarked in
this comment:
who is he expecting to shoot him?
That's a good question!
Is there some roving gang of armed gay people looking for targets that I haven't heard about?
The mind boggles!
Scarborough is very specific about one group though: the US Supreme Court justices whom he regards as sinners inviting God's wrath. He considers the current bench of nine Christians and Jews to be threatening God with menaces, and thereby wasted no time issuing a warning to the nation:
If the court does rule this they will have to step over natural law. They’re after God. This country had better be aware, we’ve suffered a lot of injustices, but I’m not sure God is going to tolerate this one very long.
Oh yes, Scarborough is definitely a fully paid-up, card-carrying member of the ‘God will smite us all if you don’t believe as I do’ club. In a recent sermon held in Florida, Scarborough declared:
This thing could all come crashing down, either economically or with a series of dirty bombs going off in our major cities, or one major nuclear bomb that could destroy half the country and contaminate the rest, and if that happens, God is perfectly just and vindicated because we have squandered our grace in this country.
Watch the video for the full in-and-out-of-shot rambling rant.
In another Right Wing Watch podcast Scarborough laments,“The end game is the complete destruction of the church of the Lord Jesus.” Apparently “it goes back to the Garden of Eden when Satan wanted to be God.” No I don’t know what that means either. It's all RWNJ to me.
A little light research turned up that the former Southern Baptist pastor from Pearland, Texas, heads Vision America, Vision America Action and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. All this appears to have kept him too busy to contemplate self-destruction, or even destruction of part or all of the country, since the positive ruling for marriage equality was announced on Friday.
“We will accept any sanction from the government for resisting today’s Supreme Court decision,” he said, via a publicist from one of his organisations. I'm not sure what resistance he's expecting from the government. “We do not support any violence or physical harm,” he added. Well, so much for being first in line to be shot. Sounds to me like #LoveWins and you lost.