Mike Huckabee thinks Christianity will soon be outlawed to make room for gay rights. Ted Cruz fears “liberal fascism; and a pro-gay “jihad” are destroying liberty. Bobby Jindal believes freedom will soon be extinguished as reality stars lose their apparent constitutional right to appear on television.
These GOP presidential hopefuls are not shying away from the gay marriage issue, which comes as no surprise since the GOP’s right-wing base has been whipped into a frenzy by conservative talk radio hosts and activists who have insisted that freedom will be no more if the Supreme Court strikes down bans on same-sex marriage.
Here are five of the far right’s wildest predictions about what would happen if gay marriage becomes legal nationwide:
1) War!
Several Religious Right pundits believe that a Supreme Court ruling striking down same-sex marriage bans would spark a full-blown rebellion, if not a civil war.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said that the country could witness a second civil war over the Supreme Court’s decision, while Mat Staver of the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel said the court “could cause another civil war” if it legalizes same-sex marriage.
The Texas chapter of Eagle Forum warned the Supreme Court in an amicus brief that a ruling that “imposes homosexual marriage” on the country “would cause vastly more conflict” than the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision. Not to be outdone, conservative activist Alan Keyes predicted that marriage equality will lead to mass murder and “the separation and dissolution of the United States.”
At least one conservative author thinks that the states of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina should consider seceding from the U.S. and establish their own country in order to preserve gay marriage bans. This new country, naturally, will be named “Reagan.”
2) Terrorism!
David Lane, a conservative political organizer with close ties to the GOP and several Republican presidential candidates, has warned that God will soon usher in a wave of terrorist attacks as punishment for America’s acceptance of homosexuality and abortion. Infuriated by “homosexuals praying” at President Obama’s second inauguration, Lane claimed that God can show the country mercy but it will be a “very painful process,” including “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa.”
American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer warned that because America’s “gay gestapo” is acting like the men of Sodom who tried to rape angels, God will “run out of patience with the United States” and “use pagan armies to discipline his people if they turn from him in rebellion and disobedience and descend into debauchery.”
“What if God will use the pagan armies of Allah to discipline the United States for our debauchery?” he wondered.
Neither prediction holds a candle, however, to talk show host Rick Wiles’ frequent prediction that gay rights will lead to a nuclear attack on the country.
3) Apocalypse!
Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor and author of “Countdown to the Apocalypse,” has called gay marriage “the greatest sign of the End Times that we see in our country right now,” warning that the Supreme Court will embolden pro-gay “extremists” to “make us all bow down and bless what God has called a perversion.”
Janet Porter, an anti-gay activist who held a rally outside of the Supreme Court yesterday, has said that “we are uniquely positioned for the return of Christ like no other time in history” as a result of the Supreme Court marriage cases.
Another conservative pundit, Linda Harvey, claimed in an interview with End Times broadcaster Jan Markell that the legal and political success of gay marriage advocates means that “we’re heading into the End Times, and it sure looks like we may be, or the end of America — or both.”
Michele Bachmann, a frequent guest on Markell’s program, told the End Times evangelist that legal abortion and gay marriage, along with President Obama’s foreign policies, are among the signs that we are entering the Last Days. God will remove his “hedge of protection” from America as punishment for its increasingly “pagan” culture, she warned, and “and we will suffer the consequences as a result.”
4) Flood!
Gay rights advocates are not only turning America into Sodom and Gomorrah (as Pat Robertson claims), but they are also risking the destruction of the planet, argue some far-right pundits who believe that Noah’s Flood was divine punishment for homosexuality. Scott Lively, the pastor best known for his work promoting anti-gay laws in countries like Russia and Uganda, claims that “the Great Flood of Noah in Genesis 6-9 was precipitated by homosexual sin.”
“We need to remember that in the time leading up to the Flood what the rabbis teach about the last straw for God before He brought the Flood was when they started writing wedding songs to homosexual marriage,” Lively said, “and Jesus said that you’ll know the End Times because it will be like the days of Noah. There’s never been a time in the history of the world since before the Flood when homosexual marriage has been open and celebrated, and that’s another sign that I believe that we’re close to the end…. I think this is the issue of the End Times: homosexuality.”
Another pastor claimed God “brought the flood” because he “knew that the people of the earth were going to destroy themselves through same-sex marriage.” Porter has similiarly called gay marriage “the final straw that led to the Flood.”
5) Antichrist!
The destruction of freedom and America at the hands of gay rights advocates, some Religious Right voices warn, will eventually lead to the coming of the Antichrist.
Jeffress said that the purported gay persecution of Christians “will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist, to persecute and martyr Christians without any repercussions whatsoever,” while Gordon Klingenschmitt, a televangelist and Colorado Republican state representative, called LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination laws a “sign that the End Times are really upon us. When the Antichrist rises up to persecute Christians and behead us and throw us in jail for our Christian faith, you don’t think it’s going to be over things like this?”
Lively explicitly linked the coming of the Antichrist to the marriage cases before the Supreme Court, writing that “if we are on the verge of ‘birth pangs’ we will likely know it by Passover, but in either case we should brace for serious judgment on the United States in the form of natural and/or man-made disaster if the Supreme Court established sodomy as a basis for marriage under our constitution.” The one who will “not yet be exposed to the world as the Antichrist” will emerge around September of this year, Lively wrote, noting that “the Biblically literate would recognize him.”
“Even as the rest of the world lauds its ‘savior’ and embraces his government, the Christian believers (and Torah-faithful Jews) would be increasingly reviled and hunted,” Lively wrote. “I don’t think there is any question, Biblically, that the cultural celebration of ‘gay marriage’ portends judgment from God. The only real question in my mind is whether it truly signals the imminent ‘beginning of sorrows’ or is just another step in the path leading to God’s wrath at a later time.”
