Anti-LGBTQ+ minister says God would cure AIDS if we let all HIV patients die first

It sure seems like anti-LGBTQ+ former minister and Christian nationalist advocate Rick Scarborough has admitted to having gaydar.

As People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch reported this week, Scarborough was promoting his new book, America in the Balance: American Dream vs. Woke Nightmare, by appearing last Sunday at Calvary Bible Church in Wichita, Kansas. The founder of the conservative Christian organization Vision America and self-described “Christocrat” delivered a borderline incoherent sermon that made his anti-LGBTQ+ hatred very clear nonetheless.  

Related:

How does gaydar work?

Science has the answer. The explanation is simple.

In a clip of the speech shared by the Right Wing Watch, Scarborough starts by suggesting that God has abandoned the U.S. because of its acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

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“When the homosexual comes out of the closet and he is bragging about his activities, demanding not only acceptance, but endorsement, that is a nation that God is taking his hand off of,” he said. “And that’s exactly who we are.”

From there, Scarborough went off on a truly wild tangent: “Here’s a principle that I want you to never forget: Sin often begins manifesting itself even by the transformation of your characteristics. About 80% of the time before a homosexual opens his mouth, you can see by the look on his face that he’s — I won’t say the word ‘gay.’ It almost slipped out — a sodomite will always reflect it in his countenance.”

So, according to Scarborough, he can tell someone is gay just by looking at them? That sounds a lot like gaydar!

Apparently riffing on his greatest anti-LGBTQ+ hits, Scarborough then seemingly veered toward his 2015 claim that God would provide a cure for HIV/AIDS if the U.S. stopped “tolerating” homosexuality and providing healthcare for people living with the disease.

“We are spending billions of dollars to keep these sodomites alive, and we should out of compassion,” he claimed, conveniently glossing over the fact that not all people living with HIV identify as LGBTQ+. “But it can be cured overnight by repentance, by a change of lifestyle.”

“There will be certain death among those who’ve been practicing,” he continued, “but I believe God would so reveal himself that we’d find the cure and, instead of just keeping them alive with drugs, they’d find a genuine cure if they hadn’t already aborted the one that had the cure.”

So, to recap, according to Scarborough, if HIV-positive LGBTQ+ people would just repent, God would send a cure for HIV from heaven, but we should also deny that cure to “practicing” homosexuals, who would then die. Except, it might be too late for that because probably LGBTQ+ people have already “aborted” the… doctor (?) or scientist (?) or…maybe faith healer (???) who would have provided the cure, in which case…God didn’t provide the cure and can’t do anything about HIV?

Have fun making sense of this goon’s weird logic!