A Tea Party candidate running for office in Oklahoma has endorsed the Old Testament injunction that gay people should be stoned to death. Scott Esk, who is standing for election to Oklahoma’s House of Representatives, made the comments in a series of Facebook posts last year. Responding to Pope Francis’s rhetorical question “Who am I to judge gay people?”, Esk posted a passage from Leviticus which describes homosexuality as “detestable” and demands that men who sleep with men be put to death. When asked by another Facebook user if that meant he supported their execution by stoning, Esk replied: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it. That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realise, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”

This is very intriguing. I was only thinking the other day that people who intimidate and bully young, pregnant girls who, for a variety of reasons, cannot carry a baby to term, ought to to be severely dealt with. Add those who carry loaded guns into shops, if it comes to that. There are all sorts of things that reasonable people consider detestable. Epicureans, however, would never throw the first stone. Some Tea Partiers clearly seem to have no such scruples, despite what the bible tells them.