Ted Cruz and the Pastor Who Wants to Kill All Gays

As most of us know, Ted Cruz has a laundry list of scandals swirling around him.   From extramarital affairs and his cult-like religion to his sealed citizenship records and undisclosed loans from Wall Street fat-cats, Goldman Sachs – Ted’s closet is overflowing with political skeletons.  Unfortunately for Ted, his ties to a hateful pastor named Kevin Swanson is the latest Cruz-disgrace to poke its head out of the cramped closet.

Kevin Swanson is a religious nutjob from Colorado.  He’s a pastor, an author, and a broadcaster whose offensive rhetoric is akin to the vile preachings from the hatemongers at the Westboro Baptist Church.  Mr. Swanson is known for his offensive rants against homosexuals.

Swanson regularly attacks homosexuals on his radio show and they are a preferred topic of choice in his published pieces as well.  His modus operandi is to use the vilest phrasing possible to elicit shock-value and portray gays as being several notches below sewer vermin. 

Swanson has said that gay people are covered in gaping sores with smiley faces carved into them.  He added that homosexuals love each other the same way cannibals love their victims – because they taste good.  Pastor Swanson’s repertoire of offensive sermons are plentiful and widely known. He has been preaching this sort of repulsive rhetoric for many years.

So you can imagine why many eyebrows went up when Ted Cruz accepted an invitation to be a guest speaker at Pastor Swanson’s National Religious Freedom Conference five and a half months ago on November 6, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Pastor Swanson took the stage and delivered one of his most bombastic “fire & brimstone” sermons, complete with screaming, flying spit, and wildly animated hand and arm gestures.  He spastically ran from one end of the stage to the other, heatedly spewing his hatred for all things gay.

Five minutes before Ted Cruz took the stage, Pastor Swanson began using biblical scripture to support his idea of executing gay people – a common theme he’s threaded throughout his sermons for years.  He insisted, however, that gays be given an “opportunity to repent” before they are sentenced to death.

Several moments before Ted Cruz took the stage, Pastor Swanson launched into a tirade about how he’d react if his son admitted to being gay. “I’m not kidding” he began indignantly, “I’d spread excrement all over myself,” he screeched.  “I’d spread it all over my body, that’s what I would do, and I am not kidding! I am not laughing!” He howled as saliva sprayed from his mouth.

Moments after that vicious tirade, Pastor Swanson introduced his keynote speaker – Senator Ted Cruz – 2016 presidential candidate from Texas.   Cruz affectionately greeted Pastor Swanson as he took the stage and began speaking.  Ted never missed a beat and he never once disavowed or even addressed the hateful rhetoric spewed by Kevin Swanson only moments before. On the contrary – some who witnessed Senator Cruz during Swanson’s sermon said Ted was nodding in agreement throughout much of it.

Months later when Ted Cruz was asked about the vile Pastor and his evil hate speech he told a reporter the following, “I don’t know what this gentleman has said or hasn’t said.”

How can that be? Was Ted sitting in a sound-proof bubble, unable to hear the scorching sermon by Pastor Swanson?  Is Ted so incredibly irresponsible that he neglected to research and vet a person before accepting an invitation to speak at his function?  If Ted had taken the time to Google the “good pastor” he would have had about 368,000 results in 0.30 seconds. But what if Ted agreed with Pastor Swanson’s sermon and that’s why he was seen nodding throughout?

Either way, no one really knows because in typical Ted Cruz fashion he claimed ignorance and behaved as if he were a clueless bystander during the events of his own life.

Does that sound like anyone else we might know?

Ted Cruz often uses Obama-esq tactics to cover up and distance himself from his very own scandals by rarely taking responsibility for anything.  After all, according to Ted, it’s never Ted’s fault.

Later, his campaign was forced to smooth over Ted’s claim that he had no idea what the pastor had or had not said.  They told USA Today that it was a “mistake” for Ted to attend the conference.

Sorry Ted.  Far too little, too late.