Last year, we produced a report noting that, prior to the passage of the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, anti-gay Religious Right activists issued all sorts of dire warnings about how the law would lead to Christianity being outlawed and pastors being tossed into prison. Five years after it was signed into law, none of their predictions had come true, but that is not stopping these same activists from continuing to issue the same sorts of absurd warnings.
Today, for the third day in a row, James Dobson dedicated his radio program to discussing the Supreme Court’s upcoming marriage equality case with Mat Staver, Rick Scarborough, and Tim Wildom and, once again Scarborough warned that efforts to ban the use of “ex-gay” conversion therapy on minors will result in Christianity being outlawed and pastors being arrested and imprisoned.
Scarborough actually cited the 2009 Hate Crimes law in making his case, claiming that it was written so that any pastor who preaches against homosexuality can be charged as an accessory to a hate crime if someone who hears that sermon goes out an attacks somebody.
After admitting that this has not actually happened since the law was enacted, Scarborough warned that it will happen if conversion therapy for minors is banned.
“Once this law is passed, they’re going to quickly mold around a whole legal strata of laws where they can begin coming after the more visible,” he said. “They’re going to do that with the most visible preachers, like us who are right now on the broadcast.”
Later in the program, Dobson took issue with pastors “who are compassionate toward those who have attractions to same-sex individuals.”
“I would like them to think, just for a moment, about ‘LGBT,'” Dobson said. “The ‘B’ stand for bisexual! That’s orgies! Are you really going to support this?”
