Sen. Barack Obama spent months restoring his political image after video of his former pastor making inflammatory statements surfaced on YouTube and ran in a continual loop in the media and on web sites. Now, GOP nominee Sen. John McCain is facing a similar battle as videos of Pastors John Hagee and Rob Parsley, two of McCain's backers, have surfaced, exposing their controversial and disturbing remarks comparing the Catholic church to Hitler and Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan. Yesterday, McCain rejected the endorsements of both pastors. DiversityInc has compiled some of the quotes and videos that have led to that repudiation.
For more on how the Rev. Wright controversy illuminated the cultural divide in America, check out the Ask the White Guy column "Tribal Behavior and the Rev. Wright."
Pastor John Hagee:
"From the Spanish inquisition, from the Holocaust. When Adolph Hitler came to power, he said, 'I'm not going to do anything in my lifetime that has not been done already by the Roman Church for the past 800 years, I'm just going to do it on a greater scale and more efficiently.' And he certainly had done just that. God has said, 'I gave you time to repent and you did not.'"
"'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can't see that.
"Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, 'This land is our land, God wants us to live there.' So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust."
"I want to ask Washington a question: Is there a connection between the 9,000 Jewish refugees being forcibly removed from their homes in the Gaza strip now living tents and the thousands of Americans who have been expelled from their homes by this tremendous work of nature [Hurricane Katrina], is there a connection there? If you've got a better answer, I'd like to hear it."
"If America does not stop pressuring Israel to give up land, I believe God will bring this nation into judgment … and if God brings this nation into judgment, he will very likely release the terrorist that you've already let get here through the ridiculous immigration policy you refuse to stop and this nation is going go through a blood bath that you have permitted because of what you have done. You have disobeyed the law of God, and now we as a nation are going to pay a price for that."
Ron Parsley:
"If I were to call for the sterilization, the elimination of an entire segment of society, I would be labeled a racist or a murderer or at very best, 'Nazi.' Yet every single year, millions of our tax dollars are funding a national organization built upon that very goal. Their target? African Americans. The death toll is nearly 1,500 African Americans.
"Right now, our own government is allowing organizations such as Planned Parenthood to legally take the innocent lives of precious baby boys and baby girls and even footing the bill for (inaudible) with our tax dollars, turning every single one of us into accessories to murder. That's right, your taxes are murdering innocent children, and you know who their biggest fans must be? The Ku Klux Klan, because the woman who founded this organization detested Black people, not to mention poor people, the handicapped, but African Americans were number one on this lady's list."
"The fact is that America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed, and I believed Sept. 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."
"I lift my voice under the agenda of America's tortured and angry homosexual population.
"In essence, the supreme court of the United States on June 26, 2003, legalized the perverted act of sodomy--we said nothing. This is not about homosexual rights or lesbian rights. This is about the very destruction of the very covenant. They are seeking to redefine marriage. In other words, they are intending to pervert God's original intention."
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