Pastor Brad Brandon has accused gay
marriage supporters in Minnesota of using Adolf Hitler techniques to
suppress the religious freedom of opponents.
Brandon, the pastoral outreach director
for Minnesota for Marriage, the group working to approve a
constitutional amendment which seeks to exclude gay and lesbian
couples from marriage, made the analogy at a forum last week.
Hitler “removed their voices in the
public square and removed their control of their own businesses. So,
he stopped Jewish people from speaking out in public and he silenced
them,” Brandon said.
According to Fox's local affiliate,
several people attending Brandon's presentation confronted the
pastor.
“... That you not belittle the death
of 6 million Jews by putting Adolf Hitler's picture and saying he
took people's civil rights,” said a woman whose grandparents
survived the Holocaust. “No – he was an insane murderer.”
A spokeswoman for Minnesota for
Marriage said Brandon had apologized for the reference but went on to
support his point.
“He's apologized and he's apologized
on behalf of the campaign,” Autumn Leva said. “His point was
absolutely correct; he was just using a poor analogy and an incorrect
choice of words to make his religious liberties point. He's been
instructed to no longer compare the loss of religious freedoms to
Hitler and Nazi Germany.” (A video report is embedded on this
page. Visit
our library for more videos.)
Brandon has previously been quoted as
saying that gay men and lesbians teach children to masturbate.