Rachel Maddow on Monday called out
three Republican presidential candidates for their participation in a
“kill-the-gays” rally over the weekend.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Louisiana
Governor Bobby Jindal and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took
part in the National Religious Liberties Conference, which was
organized by pastor Kevin Swanson, a Colorado-based Christian
conservative who has previously called for the death penalty for
homosexuality.
Swanson told attendees that he would
protest a gay couple's wedding by smearing cow dung over his body and
reiterated his call for the government to execute unrepentant gays in
the future.
(Related: Kevin
Swanson: Gays need time to repent before being put to death.)
Maddow pointed out that Swanson's
extremist views on homosexuality were well known before this
weekend's event.
“A pretty major theme of the event,
both in terms of the literature that was available at the event and
the way the host of the conference spoke from the stage, a
significant theme was the practical challenges and the timing of how
exactly and when exactly the United States of America should start
rounding up gay people in this country in order to execute them,”
Maddow
told her MSNBC viewers.
“It really was a 'kill-the-gays' call
to arms. This was a conference about the necessity of the death
penalty as a punishment for homosexuality.”
Maddow wondered whether moderators at
Tuesday's Fox Business GOP debate would ask the candidates about the
event.
“I don't know if that is considered
to be a scandal anymore in Republican politics,” she noted.
At the event, Huckabee and Jindal
reiterated their opposition to marriage equality, with Huckabee
saying that he would ignore the Supreme Court on the issue as
president.
(Related: Mike
Huckabee vows to ignore gay marriage ruling as president.)