Ron Paul's alleged anti-gay stances
have riled MSNBC's Ed Schultz.
Schultz on Thursday devoted a segment
of his The Ed Show to criticize Paul, who has surged in many
Iowa polls to second place just days before voters head to caucus on
Tuesday.
Schultz chided Paul for boasting of the
endorsement of Rev. Phil Kayser on his campaign website, then quietly
scrubbing the page.
Kayser is the controversial pastor of
the Dominion Covenant Church in Omaha, Nebraska who believes gay sex
should be criminalized and unrepentant offenders should face the
death penalty.
“This would have a tendency of
driving homosexuals back into their closets,” he wrote in his 2009
book Is The Death Penalty Just? “I think I have
demonstrated how even capital punishment can be restorative.”
On
the show, Schultz and guest Mike Rogers, managing director of
RawStory.com, blasted Paul for the move.
Schultz said Kayser made “extremists
look tame by comparison.”
Rogers argued that the Texas
Representative wants “to free up states to be able to do things
like this reverend wants,” including “basically make being gay
illegal if [Texas] wanted to.”
“I think he's feeding the fire and
knows what he's doing with that,” Rogers added.
(Related: Ron
Paul's Iowa campaign director Mike Heath board member of anti-gay
group.)