During last week’s National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, where Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee made their pitches for the Latino vote, NHCLC head Sam Rodriguez told a TIME reporter that Republicans will not “fight arduously” to overturn a Supreme Court decision striking down bans on same-sex marriage.
Of course, on the very same day Rodriguez announced that he and other NHCLC leaders signed a pledge to commit civil disobedience in defiance of any Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. Rodriguez also told a reporter for the Christian Broadcasting Network that such a ruling would usher in a wave of anti-Christian persecution and possibly hate speech laws banning pastors from quoting the Bible.
He warned that the Supreme Court ruling will decide the fate not only of gay rights but whether parts of the Bible “will be deemed as hate speech” and whether “I will be deemed as a bigot, as an intolerant human being and then we will have laws that will begin to discriminate against me because I am a Christian.”
“This Supreme Court decision carries the potential of initiating a chapter of intolerance towards Christians and bigotry towards Christians in the 21st century,” Rodriguez said.
