Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is a proud opponent of marriage equality, a trait that he touted openly this weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference during an interview with Political Correction.
During their discussion, King happily explained his history of working against the equal rights agenda and the "screaming, profane gays."
Iowa's same-sex marriage initiative has been one of the most ambitious and successful in the United States, though recent action the Iowa Legislature, supported by conservatives such as King, is seeking to reverse some of the movement's victories.
Here's Political Correction's transcript of their interview with King:
KING: Well let me just do a little bit of history. I was one of the authors of Iowa's Defense of Marriage Act when I was in the state Senate. The language of that is language that I drafted. So that foundation is there.
And I've been a co-sponsor, original co-sponsor of a constitutional amendment to establish marriage between a man and a woman. When the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices ruled and imposed by judicial fiat same-sex marriage in Iowa, I opposed the three of them that came up on retention ballot.
I went on the judge bus tour with the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council, and I climbed off of that bus into the heart of the screaming, profane gays that met us at nearly every stop, and I took them on directly, and in some cases actually -- not direct violence, but physical. Yeah, so, and then, I went back down and sat down in the radio studio --
POLITICAL CORRECTION: You were physically -- they, like, physically tried to --
KING: Well here's the extent of it. They get right in your face and they scream profanities right at you. And you have to stand there and deliver it. I finally, as my voice gave out, I turned it over to Connie Mackie who is a verbal pugilist of the first order, and they even crowded tight around her, so I turned my back to them and just, I backed up into them. I kept bulldozing them away from Connie Mackie because they were so intimidating and so threatening and so profane.
King's latest willingness to identify himself as a cavalier foil to the equal rights movement appears consistent with a number of firebombs he has launched over the past years in opposition to the cause.
Before partaking in the described anti-gay rights bus tour, King railed against Iowa's action by warning that it would make the state a "gay marriage Mecca." Around the same time, he claimed that the push was coming from those wishing to implement a socialist agenda to undermine "the foundations of individual rights and liberties."
After losing the initial 2009 battle to the Iowa Supreme Court, King renewed his campaign against gay marriage in late 2010, saying that children raised by same-sex married couples would be similar to those "raised in warehouses."
WATCH via Political Correction: