Oklahoma GOP candidate says it is 'totally in the right' to execute gay people

A GOP candidate in Oklahoma's Republican primary runoff election tomorrow is facing backlash after comments he made several years ago have emerged, LGBT Nation reports.

Scott Esk, 56, who is running for a seat in the state's House, commented on a Facebook post back in 2013 where he quoted a bible verse and later added that "we would be totally in the right" to execute gay people.

"Ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss," he wrote.

When a journalist asked him a year later about his comments, he replied that it's “totally just” to kill gay people.

“What I will tell you right now is that that was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God,” he said at the time. “And in that time, there was, it was, totally just came directly from God.”

In a subsequent video explaining his comments, Esk said he has “compassion on anybody in the grips of an insidious addiction, such as homosexuality.”

“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,” he said in the 2015 video.

In another video from earlier this year, Esk called reports on his comments a “hit piece on the fact that I had an opinion against homosexuality.”

“Well, does that make me a homophobe? Maybe some people think it does,” he said. “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.”

“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,” he said.

When The Oklahoman asked him about his views, he referred to the videos and refused to do an interview.

“I’ve stood up for what is right in the past, and I intend to in the future and I am right now,” he told the publication. “That’s got me in trouble. The media are not my friends, as far as I’m concerned.”