Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike
Huckabee and Carly Fiorina are among the Republican presidential
candidates scheduled to speak at a “religious freedom” event this
weekend co-hosted by a pastor who has repeatedly stated that AIDS is
God's punishment for gay people.
Saturday's Free to Believe Broadcast is
co-hosted by Tony Perkins, president of the Christian conservative
Family Research Council (FRC), and Rick Scarborough, a former
Southern Baptist pastor from Pearland, Texas who now heads Vision
America.
Last year, Scarborough declared that
the “end game” of the LGBT rights movement is “the complete
destruction of the church of the Lord Jesus.”
He's also declared AIDS a “homosexual
disease,” a result of God's “judgment as a result of an immoral
act.”
“God would probably give us the cure
for AIDS today” if the United Stated ended its support for LGBT
rights, he
said last year.
Also appearing at the event will be
Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver, who defended Kentucky clerk Kim Davis
in her legal fight to keep her office from issuing marriage licenses
to gay couples, and David and Jason Benham, the brothers who became
Christian celebrities when they lost their reality television show
after their anti-gay activism was widely reported.
(Related: David,
Jason Benham tell Glenn Beck that gays are being used by Satan.)