Jewish groups have attacked the Family Research Council, for likening gay rights laws to the Holocaust.

Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, claimed earlier this week that people who refuse to serve gay people will be sent to concentration camps.

During a radio show slot, Perkins compared the case of a Colorado baker who has stopped making wedding cakes to the Holocaust.

He said: “I’m beginning to think, are re-education camps next? When are they going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?”

The Anti-Defamation League, which advocates against anti-Semitism, has condemned the comments.

The ADL’s National Director, Abraham Foxman, said in a statement: “There is no comparison between contemporary American political issues and the actions of Hitler’s regime during the Holocaust.

“Such inappropriate analogies only serve to trivialize the Holocaust and are deeply offensive to Jews and other survivors, as well as those Americans who fought valiantly against the Nazis in World War II.”

Perkins last year voiced his disapproval at the Pentagon’s announcement that gay couples will be allowed leave to marry, if they live a certain distance from a state which legally recognises same-sex marriage.

He earlier in 2013 blamed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the US military ban on openly gay people serving, for suicides in the armed forces.

Previously, at the start of the US Supreme Court hearings around two equal marriage cases, Perkins claimed that the court ruling in favour of equal marriage could lead to “revolution”.