WATCH: Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant Says He’s Willing to Die in Support of Anti-LGBT Discrimination

‘They Don’t Know That if It Takes Crucifixion, We Will Stand in Line Before Abandoning Our Faith and Our Belief in Our Savior Jesus Christ’

Republican Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant says he and other Christians will continue to fight for their right to discriminate against LGBT people, even if it means being crucified — literally. 

Bryant made the comments last week during an acceptance speech at the Family Research Council‘s “Watchmen on the Wall” briefing for pastors in Washington, where he received the anti-LGBT hate group’s first “Samuel Adams Religious Freedom Award.” 

FRC honored Bryant for signing Mississippi’s 2014 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as well as House Bill 1523 — known as the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” — earlier this year. HB 1523, considered even more discriminatory than North Carolina’s anti-LGBT HB2, is being challenged in federal court by both the ACLU and the Campaign for Southern Equality. 

Bryant told the crowd that the LGBT equality movement is “a social political movement that wishes to make sure that we have no religious accommodations.” 

“They would say if you are in the industry of dealing with weddings, the solemnization of marriages, then at the point of a bayonet we’re going to force you to abandon your deeply held religious beliefs and become involved in that ceremony. No accommodation will be offered to you,” Bryant said. He also suggested that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay now have more religious freedom than business owners in Mississippi. 

“Where do they believe we are at now?” Bryant said. “Do they think we will simply abandon that? They don’t know us very well, do they? They don’t know that Christians have been persecuted throughout the ages. They don’t know that if it takes crucifixion, we will stand in line before abandoning our faith and our belief in our savior Jesus Christ. So if we are going to stand, now is the time and this is the place.” 

Bryant also credited “brave” members of the Legislature who drafted the bill and “took to the floor while editorials were begin written, while condemnation poured upon them every single day.” He said GOP state Sen. Philip Gandy, who authored the 2014 RFRA, “stood in the gap when it seemed the very gates of hell had opened upon him.” And he praised FRC President Tony Perkins for supporting both measures. 

“I remember in Sunday school, reading one of my favorite stories,” Bryant said. “It was about a giant, a bad giant. He came into the valley one day and called to the Israelites, ‘Send down your champion and let me vanquish him.’ We were in that valley, but Tony Perkins was there with us. He was there as surely as our lord and savior, as surely as the God of all Gods that stood there with us.”

 

Image: Screenshot via Facebook