Phil Robertson at Ted Cruz Iowa Rally: America's Moral Core Is Collapsing
Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson spoke at an Iowa rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Sunday, calling gay marriage "evil" and "wicked," and warning that America's moral core is collapsing.
"When a fellow like me looks at the landscape and sees the depravity, the perversion – redefining marriage and telling us that marriage is not between a man and a woman? Come on Iowa!" Robertson said in Iowa City, according to CNN.
"It is nonsense. It is evil. It's wicked. It's sinful," he added. "They want us to swallow it, you say. We have to run this bunch out of Washington, D.C. We have to rid the earth of them. Get them out of there."
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Robertson, who leads the Duck Commander family business, endorsed Cruz for president earlier in January, calling him a "godly" candidate that is not afraid to kill and cook a duck.
"My qualifications for president of the United States are rather narrow: Is he or she godly, does he or she love us, can he or she do the job, and finally would they kill a duck and put him in a pot and make him a good duck gumbo?" Robertson said at the time. "Cruz fits the bill."
At the Iowa rally, the star of the hit reality TV show argued that the Texas senator is the only candidate who can restore the traditional definition of marriage in the government.
"Ted Cruz loves God, he loves James Madison and he's a strict constitutionalist. You know what Ted Cruz understands," Robertson said, "God raises these empires up. It is God who brings them down."
Cruz in turn praised Robertson as an "extraordinary human being" when he took the stage on Sunday.
"What a voice Phil has to speak out for the love of Jesus," Cruz said. "What a joyful, cheerful, unapologetic voice of truth Phil Robertson is."
Pastor Rafael Cruz, the father of the GOP hopeful, told The Christian Post in an interview last week that he is also seeing America deteriorate "very rapidly."
"America is a country that was founded on the Word of God. Founded by men and women seeking the freedom to worship God. And yet we have seen for decades now a decay of conscience, we've seen secular humanism take over," Pastor Cruz said.
"I realized that the great majority of Christians are not even voting. Are not even involved in the political process and so what we have in America today has been a result of people of faith, people of principle, becoming disengaged from the political process," he added about what compelled him to write his book, A Time For Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America.
Robertson has made controversial remarks on the topic of homosexuality in the past, arguing in September 2014 that AIDS is God's punishment for gay people.
"A clean guy – a disease-free guy and a disease-free woman – they marry and they keep their sex between the two of them. They're not going to get chlamydia and gonorrhea, and syphilis and AIDS. It's safe," Robertson told in an interview Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council.
"To me, either it's the wildest coincidence ever that horrible diseases follow immoral conduct or it's God saying, 'There's a penalty for that kind of conduct.' I'm leaning towards there's a penalty toward it," he added.
