GOP Nominates Anti-Gay Minister for Virginia Lt. Gov.

The Associated Press reports that Virginia Republicans have nominated the controversial conservative minister E.W. Jackson for the state's lieutenant governor, making him the first black candidate the party has nominated for statewide office since 1988.

According to U.S. News & World Report, Jackson, a Marines Corps veteran who graduated from Harvard Law School, has been criticized for linking homosexuality to pedophila and comparing Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan.

"We do not need Mr. Jackson to be the standard-bearer for what it is to be a Republican in the United States," Gregory T. Angelo, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative group for the LGBT community. "No one should be equating homosexuality with pedophilia - it is anti-gay, and Democrats are more than happy to demonize Republicans for such comments."
Angelo also pointed out that a recent poll found that 40 percent of Virginia Republicans back marriage equality.

As Good As You notes, Jackson said there was a connection between being gay and pedophilia during a 2010 interview with Christian radio host Janet Porter.

"[Gay people] believe that sexuality is how everybody ought to be defined. And that means sexual freedom, sexual license to do whatever you want to do," he said. "And I know their people say, well, 'It's unfair to associate homosexuality with pedophilia or some of these other perversions.' But I believe that there is a direct connection, because what they really want is absolute sexual freedom."

Jackson was also criticized when he uploaded a YouTube video during last year's presidential election and urged black voters to support the GOP by saying Planned Parenthood is worse to the African American community than the K.K.K.

"The Democrat Party has created an unholy alliance between certain so-called civil rights leaders and Planned Parenthood, which has killed unborn black babies by the tens of millions. Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was," he said in the video.