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Tony Perkins: LGBTQ rights responsible for shooting of Idaho pastor

Tony Perkins: LGBTQ rights responsible for shooting of Idaho pastor

While the facts were still unclear, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins decided to dash off a quick editorial that sketchily links the shooting of an Idaho pastor to a non-discrimination ordinance prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination in Coeur d’Alene:

Like the rest of the country, we were stunned and saddened to hear about the shooting of Pastor Tim Remington in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The beloved church leader, who was known throughout the community for his outreach to the addicted and incarcerated, was gunned down at church a day after opening a Ted Cruz rally with prayer.

While his family and congregation celebrate the good prognosis, disturbing questions still linger. Coeur d’Alene had already grown increasingly hostile toward Christians, as we know from Donald and Evelyn Knapp, a husband-and-wife pastor team that ran a wedding chapel called The Hitching Post. After declining to marry a same-sex couple, Idaho city officials had warned that the decision could send them straight to jail and/or bury them in debilitating fines.

Obviously, the environment toward Christians and pastors preaching the Gospel has made a turn for the worst in the small northern town. How can it not when you have the government ordering believers to participate in things that violate their faith? Whatever the shooter’s motivations, until the policies change, tensions like these will not. In the meantime, we continue to pray for the Remingtons, Tim’s full and complete healing, and for the man responsible to be brought to justice.”

As Right Wing Watch notes, that non-discrimination ordinance didn’t actually force Donald Knapp’s for-profit chapel to host same-sex weddings; it was exempt under the ordinance.

Another important error: Perkins blames the ordinance for the shooting, saying it was created by an air of anti-Christian sentiment.

In truth, the alleged shooter gunned down the pastor because he was quite convinced he was from the planet we call Mars.

A Facebook post by the gunman, who not surprisingly “has a history of mental illness,” wrote that he was absolutely certain Remington was a Martian:

Things are not what they appear to be. The world is ruled by ancient civilization from Mars. Pastor Tim was one of them, and he was the reason my life was ruined. I will be sharing my story with as many people as possible. I don’t have time right now, they are chasing me. I shot Pastor Tim 12 times, there is no way any human could have survived that event. Anyway, I have sent my story to all the major news organizations. I have no time, I have to go.”

The gunman was later arrested at the White House.

Martian meddling — or a vast conspiracy perpetrated by liberal zealots?

Developing.

h/t: Right Wing Watch

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