Dan Forest, the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina, joined Craig James on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” program yesterday to discuss a new law in his state that allows public officials to temporarily stop performing marriages if they want to avoid marrying a same-sex or even an interracial couple. Forest supported the bill, which the legislature passed over the veto of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

Forest told James that the federal court that had struck down North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage had overstepped its role because not only did it say the marriage ban was unconstitutional, it said that officials in the state “have to perform those marriages” and “went so far as to making sure that law was going to be enforced in North Carolina.”

Forest said that far from being unconstitutional, the new law is actually “upholding the Constitution” because the legislature is the one that assigns duties to magistrates. He added that the law “doesn’t discriminate against anybody, instead it does just the opposite” by supposedly protecting the religious freedom of state magistrates.

“Help me out here, because I’m just somewhat of a country boy,” James added sarcastically. “Go find someone else who will perform your ceremony! What’s wrong with that concept?”

The two then predictably declared that opposition to the new law is just anti-Christian persecution.

“You’re not telling them they can’t have a ceremony,” Forest said, “it’s just protecting the religious beliefs of those who don’t want to do it.”

“So, really what this is from the other side, from the left, this is saying that ‘we are not tolerant of you, we’re not tolerant of your beliefs, you do not fit into our great diverse rainbow of diversity here. We will accept everybody but Christians.’” Forest added. “And so that’s really what’s going on here, is it’s very focused on Christians only and so that’s why we’re seeing these issues.”