This GOP congressional candidate believes Christians needed forgiveness for getting COVID-19 vaccines

The COVID-19 pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has killed more than 6.1 million people worldwide — including over 978,000 people in the United States. Regardless, far-right Republican anti-vaxxers like Christian nationalist and anti-abortion zealot Janet Folger Porter, who is running for a U.S. House seat in Ohio’s 13^th Congressional District, believe that COVID-19 vaccines, not COVID-19, are the enemy. And Porter is saying that Christians who have been vaccinated for COVID-19 need to pray to God for forgiveness and not get any more booster shots.

On March 29, People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch called Porter out on Twitter, posting some comments she recently made on a Christian fundamentalist radio program. Even former President Donald Trump has been hailing COVID-19 vaccines as a life-saving scientific achievement, but Porter doesn’t agree and is claiming that the vaccines are “poison.”

“Here’s the deal: If God can take poison out of a stew, he can take poison out of a body — and that’s what I’ve been praying,” Porter said on that program. “Yes, we’ve gotta fight this, but if you’ve already had this thing, don’t get any more boosters. But I just want to say that we have a God who heals — who paid for our healing on the cross…. And so, God can heal even from mistakes we make. He can heal from cancer, he can heal from the poison jab, the death jab.”

Porter is among the Republicans who is seeking the GOP nomination in Ohio’s 3th Congressional District; that seat is presently held by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who decided not to seek reelection in the 2022 midterms so that he could run for the U.S. Senate. That primary election in Ohio will be held on May 3.

A long-time writer for World Net Daily, Porter formerly served as legislative director for Ohio Right to Life and has written some fundamentalist-themed books that include “The Criminalization of Christianity” and “True to Life.”

During the Barack Obama years, Porter was a birther — often promoting the racist conspiracy theory that President Obama was really born in Kenya. But the fact that Porter promoted overt racism didn’t stop former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from endorsing her in 2016, when Porter sought the GOP nomination in an Ohio State Senate primary. Despite Huckabee’s endorsement, the nomination went to Larry J. Obhof — who went on to become president of the Ohio State Senate in 2017.