Kevin Swanson, the pastor courted by Ted Cruz who has repeatedly called for the execution of gay people, including just minutes before speaking with Cruz at an event last November in Iowa, dedicated a radio program last week to attacking the Girl Scouts for supporting women’s and LGBT rights, saying that the group’s leaders are worthy of death.
Swanson, who has spent years calling for a boycott of Girl Scouts cookies and accusing the organization of promoting communism and turning girls into lesbians, said that Girl Scout leaders have violated Jesus’ teaching that it would be better for someone to have a millstone hung around their neck and thrown into the sea rather than cause a child to sin.
This instruction, Swanson said, should be applied literally. After criticizing the Girl Scouts because it “promotes lesbianism” and movies like “Harry Potter” and “How To Train Your Dragon” that feature “homosexual mentors provided to little boys” — a criticism he detailed at the rally with Cruz — Swanson said that people must put into effect Jesus’ teaching against debasing children with such “movies that promote homosexuality or organizations that promote homosexuality.”
“You’ve got to take what He says and you have to apply it,” Swanson said.
Swanson also praised Franklin Graham for urging fans to boycott Girl Scout cookies because the group accepts trans members, lamenting that Graham is “being persecuted by the gay Borg” for his “courageous stand.”
After Cruz appeared at Swanson’s event, which also featured literature calling for the death penalty for gay people, his campaign defended the appearance and deflected questions as to why the senator and presidential candidate appeared alongside Swanson, who had already called for the execution of gay people, among other extremist statements, several times well before the conference.
Then-presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal also addressed the event.
Only a month after the event took place did Cruz's campaign quietly admit that it was “a mistake” to attend Swanson’s rally.
