Mat Staver, chairman of the Christian
conservative Liberty Counsel, has accused Ohio Senator Rob Portman,
RNC Chair Reince Priebus and Republican adviser Karl Rove of dividing
the GOP over gay marriage.
Portman is the first GOP senator to
publicly announce support for marriage equality, Priebus urged
tolerance for it, and Rove
said he could see a GOP candidate for president in 2016 supporting
it.
(Related: Gay
marriage foes organize to oust Rob Portman.)
Staver said in a radio appearance that
legalizing such unions would “be the same as promoting the death
sentence on America.”
“You know it's like going into a
building at night and you flip on the lights and all of the sudden
the cockroaches start running, and I think this same-sex marriage
issue has shown the cockroaches within the Republican Party, the
RINOs: Republican In Name Only.”
“So now you have Karl Rove and you
have [Reince] Priebus and some others, [Rob] Portman, they're going
down a way that ultimately will split the Republican Party. I can
tell you what, if the Republican Party were to adopt same-sex
marriage, if they were to do that, evangelicals will leave en masse
and that will create a third party. No one wants to create a third
party, they want to work within the system, they want to make sure
that it advances freedom and liberty and the sanctity of life and
marriage. But if the Republican Party goes down that road, you can
bet that there will be a mass exodus from that party and it will not
win elections again for many, many years in the future.” (The
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