NEW YORK -- Following fine work last week from likely Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush (“It’s arrogant to think man-made climate change is real”), fellow White House hopeful Marco Rubio moved to provide this week’s dose of measured Republican orthodoxy by calling gay rights a “real and present danger” to freedom.
In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, the 43-year-old Senator from Florida bemoaned how gay rights advocates make it difficult for Churches to peddle anti-gay messages without it being labeled "hate speech." He said it as if this was a bad thing…
Rubio opined: "We are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you are labeled a homophobe and a hater. So what’s the next step after that? After they’re done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech. That’s a real and present danger."
Rubio has some form on LGBT rights. When the Florida court finally legalised gay marriage earlier this year, the Senator publically decried the verdict, arguing: "If they wanted to change that law they should have gone to the Legislature or back to the Constitution and try to change it. I don't agree we should be trying to make those changes through the courts."
Remarkably, Rubio is even less progressive when it comes to climate change. "Humans are not responsible for climate change in the way some of these people out there are trying to make us believe,” he recently argued, adding: “I believe the climate is changing because there’s never been a moment where the climate is not changing.”
To clarify, this man wants to be President of the United States.