To Stone or Not To Stone Gays? That is the Question for GOP Candidate in Oklahoma
Oklahoma City residents have the option to vote for a candidate who once wrote gay people are "worthy of death" and "we would be totally in the right" to stone them.
The Oklahoman reports that Republican Scott Esk, 56, is making headlines for a video that surfaced from 2013 in which he made his incendiary comments. He is running to represent Oklahoma City in the state House and will be on the ballot Tuesday as he vies for the seat being vacated by Democratic state Rep. Collin Walke. His opponent is Gloria Banister. According to Oklahoma City television outlet News4, he is the front-runner.
Esk has defended the comments that he made in 2013 that surfaced when he unsuccessfully ran for a different House seat in 2014.
The issues came to light last month when television station News4 (KFOR) published a report on July 13 revisiting Esk's comments that came in response to the Pope saying in 2013 in regards to homosexuality, "Who am I to judge?"
The News4 report captured his comments in screenshots of Biblical quotes that referred to the punishment of homosexuals in a Facebook conversation between Esk and user Adam Bates. After he posted his initial response, Bates asked "So just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?"
"Esk responded, 'I think we would be totally in the right to do it. That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I'm largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.'"
In 2014 he was asked by journalist Rob Morris from the website the MooreMonthly.com if he stood by those initial comments: "What I will tell you right now is that that was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God. And in that time, there was it was totally just came directly from God."
Adding: "I have no plans to reinstitute that in Oklahoma law. I do have some very huge moral misgivings about those kinds of sins,"
Recently News4 spoke to Morris about what prompted the interview. "I looked at it (Esk's comments) and I thought, 'oh my gosh, did a candidate for political office actually post this on Facebook?' " This led him to contact Esk for clarification. "I bent over backwards to give him an opportunity to kind of at least soften what he said and he didn't take it," Morris recalled to KFOR on Wednesday.
"If somehow that legislation happened, you'd be okay with that?" asked Morris during his phone call with Esk.
"Again, it's a moot point," Esk told Morris.
When News4 reached out to Esk on Wednesday for an interview, he declined to do any interview that wasn't live.
Instead he pointed to a 2014 YouTube video in which he addressed the issue: "Scott Esk Sets the Record Straight."
"I have compassion on anybody in the grips of an insidious addiction, such as homosexuality, and wish to help them," Esk said. "Any Christian should be in the position to say that this is sin or this is good. If we don't make that distinction, we're not going to help people."
Not to be undone, he posted a new YouTube video entitled "Scott Esk Sets the Record Straight (yet again)!!!" in which he addressed the News4 report and, again, sort of doubled-down on his unlibertarian views.
First, he called the News4 report a "hit piece on the fact that I had an opinion against homosexuality."
Asking, "Well, does that make the homophobe? Maybe some people think it does. But as far as I and many of the people, the voters of House District A7 are concerned, it simply makes me a Christian. Christians believe in biblical morality, kind of by definition, or they should."
But he returned to his Biblical roots. "And I'm aware of how homosexuality was handled in the Old Testament. It was commanded by God to put homosexuals to death in the Old Testament, in ancient Israel." But then tempers his homophobic wrath. "And even in the New Testament, in Romans, chapter 1, it says that homosexuality is a sin worthy of death. It also mentioned several other things that are worthy of death too. And just like I wouldn't be for putting people to death for any of those other sins, I'm not for explaining the death penalty in Oklahoma for homosexuality either."
He then rants: "But the fact is, that it's much more offensive knowing what obscene things homosexuals do with each other than it is for somebody to hold the view that it is indecent."