FRC’s Craig James Can’t Quite Bring Himself To Repudiate Demand That Gays Be Put To Death

Craig James, the failed Republican U.S. Senate candidate and former sportscaster who now works at the Family Research Council, spoke on Friday with a “Washington Watch” radio show caller who shared his “solution” to the problem of gay people filing complaints against businesses that deny them service because of their sexual orientation: execute gay people.

“I want to say something very horrific, a solution, and I think it’s the right solution,” said the caller, who said his name was Phillip. “We pray for the homosexuals, we’ve prayed for our enemies but at the same time when they try to force us to go against God, I think that’s where they cross the line and we should pass laws to execute them when they have judges to go against our businesses.”

James couldn’t quite bring himself to denounce or oppose this call to put gays to death, instead merely saying “I don’t know about the executing” before offering up a response about the need for Christians in America, like the martyrs of the past, to get “firm” in challenging gay people:

Thank you Phillip. You know what, that part there, I don’t know about the executing, but I do know that we have to be bold and firm and much stronger. God doesn’t tell us and calls us that we have to be timid and to stand for our straight — our beliefs. I’m doing a course right now in seminary and it’s the history of the early church and it’s fascinating, there’s been lots and lots and lots of men and women who have died for their Christian beliefs since the beginning and now we are in a time in this country and in this world where we must be bold and stand for God and His truths.

Perhaps the FRC just doesn’t mind calls demanding the execution of gay people, as its president Tony Perkins once defended a Ugandan law which made homosexuality a crime punishable by death in certain cases.