In his most recent column, Religious Right activist Matt Barber announced that he is endorsing Ted Cruz for president, saying that Cruz is being raised up by God “for such a time as this.”
Barber is the founder of the website BarbWire.com, which is a repository of wild conspiracy theories and viciously anti-gay rhetoric, which is to be expected since Barber himself has a long history of anti-gay activism.
Barber has repeatedly stated that gay marriage is “Satanic” and a cancer and that gay rights activists are fascists, thugs and the “pawns of Satan.” He said that legalizing gay marriage is an act of defiance against God, for which this nation will face divine wrath. He is notorious for having once said that gay male relationships constitute nothing more than “one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.'” He has called for the passage of Russian-style anti-gay laws in America and has said that he has been “called by God” to tell gays that AIDS is God’s punishment for their sin and that it is his mission to wipe out the “sexually immoral scourge of same-sex marriage.”
With these sorts of views, Barber fits right in among Cruz’s other anti-gay endorsers, including the National Organization for Marriage, which exists for the purpose of fighting gay marriage, anti-gay Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who regularly rails against the “rainbow jihad,” and influential Iowa Religious Right activist Bob Vander Plaats, who has warned that gay marriage will lead to “a parent marrying their child.”
Cruz has also scored endorsements from anti-gay activist Michael Brown, Rep. Steve King, who has said that gay marriage will lead to people marrying lawnmowers and “throw this country into an endless trauma,” and Religious Right icon James Dobson, who has made a career out of warning that gay marriage will destroy America and Western civilization.
Cruz named a rabidly anti-gay Republican legislator to lead his campaign in Virginia and another anti-gay activist to serve as co-chair and welcomed the endorsement of a North Carolina pastor who likened gay people to “maggots” and murders and stated that Ebola was God’s judgment on America for accepting homosexuality:
Cruz also welcomed the endorsement of radical right-wing activist Flip Benham, who has crashed the weddings of same-sex couples in protest and declared that gays want to kill Christians because “the homosexual community” is “the most violent community there is”:
On top of that, one of Cruz’s super PACs is being run by David Barton of WallBuilders, a right-wing pseudo-historian who has called for the federal regulation and outlawing of gay sex because it is “very repugnant” and “reprehensible and disgusting.” He has warned that gay marriage will force male and female students to share the same locker rooms, that it has legalized pedophilia and bestiality and will now force churches to hire child molesters to run their day care centers.
Barton has even declared that scientists will never find a cure for AIDS because the disease is God’s punishment for homosexuality:
So Barber is just the latest in a long line of Religious Right activists to throw their support behind Cruz, all of whom seem to have one thing in common: a visceral dislike of gays.
