Rudy Giuliani said on CNN just yesterday (emphasis mine):

Well, look, we argue about gay marriage in the United States. There’s nobody in the United States who argues for death for homosexuals in the United States. So this is a very, very different culture. And we’re at a very different level of civilization. And somebody should point out the superiority of our civilization to the barbarians that we’re facing.

Well, aren’t we the superior ones? All we do is debate over how much gays should be discriminated against! We don’t have anyone who calls for gay people to be killed!

Except, how about this guy, Theodore Shoebat, an evangelical Christian:

I don’t believe in vigilantism, but I do believe in the government killing the sodomites. I do believe in the government arresting the sodomites and executing them for homosexuality. Under my rule, that sodomite club in Orlando, it would have been destroyed, it would have been demolished, bulldozed and all the bastards in there would have been arrested, tried, found guilty for homosexuality and executed.

But hey, that’s just one guy.

How about Yosef Edery, an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, who believes that the Bible commands us to kill gays?

The Old Testament is a book that is respected by all faiths, and everybody knows that God says, “A man that will lie with another man, both of them shall be killed.”

… Gay club? I mean, they deserve to die.

But hey, these are just a few extremists! True—but Giuliani said that no one in our culture calls for gays to be put to death.

You want someone more mainstream? How about Pastor Kevin Swanson, director of Generations with Vision, who has a radio show in Colorado. He not only advocated death for gay people, but he did it on the stage at a conference he hosted, which Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal all attended:

There are instances in which both the Old and New Testament speak to the matter with unbelievable clarity. There’s not to be any debate about it. You know what that sin is – it’s the sin of homosexuality. In fact in Romans 1 Paul affirms that this particular sin is worthy of death. The Old and New Testament, I believe both speak with authority and we outta receive it.

Granted, in that speech, he suggested that gays should be “given time to repent” before being killed, so it’s not as if they should be put to death immediately. Because this is a loving guy.

Want more? How about Arizona pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church?

“The Bible says that homosexuals should be put to death, in Leviticus 20:13. Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels. But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed.”

So, Mateen was not wrong about killing gays, he just didn’t follow the proper channels.

California has got people like this too, like Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento:

“Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me — what if you asked me: ​’Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?’ Um, no, I think that’s great. I think that helps society. You know, I think Orlando, Fla., is a little safer tonight. … The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”

Jimenez claimed later that “there are many people out there who agree with what I’m saying.”

Hey, while we’re at it, how about the Westboro Baptist Church? Just do a Google search on them, you’ll find enough. Nor are they the only ones. Search long enough, you’ll find a very long list of people in these United States calling for gays to be killed, and a lot more people who agree with them but remain silent (though less and less so, it seems).

What was Giuliani’s claim again?

“There’s nobody in the United States who argues for death for homosexuals in the United States.”

So, not exactly true.

Not to mention that virtually half the entire country, while not calling for gays to be killed outright, do call for them to be made second-class citizens, who can be discriminated against, fired from their jobs, prevented from holding office or taking on certain professions, or who can be singled out for various punishments short of death. Imprisoned for having sex, harassed and beaten by random members of society, and in general simply despised and mistreated and called every hateful name in the book.

But hey, we’re so civilized that most of us don’t actively call for them to be put to death by law.

That’s gotta be worth something. Surely enough to tout our cultural superiority against those other guys, who are just barbarians.