Gays Have "Lost Their Soul" and Other Claims By Rep Gordon Klingenschmitt

Last November, when we introduced you to Gordon Klingenschmitt, the exorcism-doing, gay slammer who'd just been elected as a state representative, he was already a darling of the progressive media types.

From their perspective, he was the walking, talking embodiment of ultra-conservatism's worst tendencies — and one with the potential of creating guilt by association.

If the man nicknamed "Doctor Chaps" realizes that, however, he certainly hasn't modified his public statements.

In recent weeks, he's declared that gays have "lost their soul" and claimed that a homicidal man had killed three young Muslims because they were acting like Christians, thereby implying that the real victims of the heinous crime were people who believe in the Bible.

On February 18, according to Right Wing Watch, Klingenschmitt used Pray in Jesus Name, his regular YouTube program, to cite an Associated Press poll showing that even though most Americans now support marriage equality, they feel wedding businesses should be able to discriminate against gay couples wishing to use their services.

Those who argue otherwise "want to force Christians to participate in someone else's acts of sodomy," Klingenschmitt argues in a clip on view below. "And if they won't participate, then the Christians should be punished or fined or bankrupted or driven out of business. I think that is not just anti-Christian discrimination, it is open season persecution.

"They're coming after us," he adds, "and, in the long run, this will result not only in fines but in jail time for some Christians, which is a prediction and sign that the End Times are really upon us. When the Antichrist rises up to persecute Christians and behead us and throw us in jail for our Christian faith, you don't think it's going to be over things like this? This is just the camel's nose in the tent."

Then, after sharing a Biblical passage, he maintains that homosexuals have "a demonic spirit that is ruling in their heart and now they have lost their soul."

Mmmm-kay.

Yesterday, Klingenschmitt ventured into dubious territory again when he took on the murder of three young Muslims — Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, nineteen — in Chapel Hill, North Carolina last month.

Craig Stephen Hicks, the man accused of killing the three, is reportedly an atheist, and among the items he posted on his Facebook page was one in which he expressed surprise that Christians and Muslims didn't get along better, since a lot of their ideologies are similar.

For Klingenschmitt, that was apparently proof that Christians were Hicks's de facto targets.

"An American atheist has killed three Muslims in North Carolina because they were like Christians," he asserts at the outset of the clip on view below — and he concludes that Hicks "killed the Muslims because they think like Christians."

We've got a feeling Klingenschmitt will continue generating this kind of material for a long time to come — and by doing so, he'll simultaneously appall and thrill those on the other side of the political fence.

Here are three videos of Klingenschmitt in action — his remarks about gays and souls from last month, his new comments about the Muslim murders and, just for fun, a 2013 item in which he says that President Barack Obama causes cancer. Really.

Send your story tips to the author, Michael Roberts.