The Second-Highest Ranking Republican in the Senate Just Endorsed a Candidate Who Wants to Make Being Gay Illegal

John Cornyn Repeatedly Voices  Support for GOP Candidate Who Thinks Gay People Should Be Jailed

Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), the second-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, has just endorsed Alabama’s Roy Moore. Moore is the highly-controversial anti-gay, anti-Islam, religious extremist who was twice booted from his elected role as chief justice of the state Supreme Court after refusing to honor federal laws. Roy Moore also has ties to neo-Confederate, white nationalist, and secessionist groups. On December 12, Moore will face Democratic candidate Doug Jones in a special election to fill the Senate seat formerly held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“Alabamians will soon elect a new U.S. Senator and I hope they will vote for the candidate who will follow in former Senator Sessions’ footsteps as a tireless advocate led by principle rather than politics,” Cornyn (photo) said in a statement reported Wednesday by the right wing website The Daily Caller. “That is why I am proud to offer my support to Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate. I look forward to working with him to pass legislation that will effect meaningful change for all Americans.”

When asked about Moore’s beliefs that homosexuality should be illegal, Cornyn told NBC News producer Frank Thorp V, “I don’t have to agree with somebody to support them over the Democratic nominee. I support the nominee of my party.”

Thorp also asked Moore about his belief that Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison should not be allowed to serve in the U.S. Congress because he is Muslim, Cornyn offered a similar response: “I have disagreement within my own family, doesn’t mean I care for them any less, so I support the nominee of my party.”

Earlier this month Moore called for the impeachment of the Supreme Court justices who ruled that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as different-sex couples.

As recently as 2015 Moore said homosexuality should be illegal. He has equated homosexuality with bestiality, and called it “an inherent evil,” “a criminal lifestyle,” as well as, “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

Moore has said gay people “practice an immoral act that less than 40 years ago was not to be mentioned in polite public circles,” and said 9/11 is God’s punishment for “legitimized sodomy.”

In a 2005 interview Moore falsely claimed that comparing homosexuality to bestiality is one of the “moral precepts” – one of the principles – of American morality, because American morality comes from the Bible.

As CNN recently reported, Moore in that 2005 interview said, “Homosexual conduct should be illegal, yes.”

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