Billington wrote: "Homosexuality is Sin" (hardy billington/facebook)

The only Republican candidate for a Missouri House seat said that homosexuality kills more people than smoking, it has been revealed.

Hardy Billington, 65, is likely to be elected to represent Poplar Bluff in the state House, as the city sits in Butler County, where around 80 percent of residents voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

His uncontested nomination is hardly the only anti-gay candidacy in November’s elections, with Republican Donald McBath running to be an elected judge in Florida despite having said that gay people have a “mental illness” and face “ETERNAL damnation.”

And in March, it was revealed that Erika Harold – a former Miss America winner who is the Republican nominee for Illinois Attorney General – allegedly said she’d rather give a baby to child abusers than a same-sex couple.

Billington has now joined their ranks, as it has emerged that the 65-year-old has published two adverts in the city’s local newspaper in support of anti-gay policies.

In 2012, he bought a space in the Daily American Republic to publicise his support for a law to ban teachers from talking about homosexuality in public schools – similar to Section 28 in the UK.

Instead of focusing on the specifics of the anti-gay bill, however, he wrote about how homosexuality was dangerous for people’s health.

Billington said: “Study after study reveals that homosexuality, whether male or female, can take anywhere from 10, 20 to 30 years off of someone’s lifespan.

“With all the attention on smoking, which the National Cancer Institute says takes from 7 to 10 years off someone’s life, why not the same human outcry on homosexuality?

“Here’s a behaviour that’s killing people 2 to 3 times the rate of smoking, yet nobody seems to care. In fact, we are encouraging and affirming individuals into the ‘gay’ lifestyle.

“If you truly love someone, you would steer them away from self-destructive behaviours, rather than towards them, shouldn’t you? Homosexuals need our tough love, not blind love, the kind of love that is going to love them no matter what they say and do.

“We must extend that helping hand and say ‘I think you’re worth saving. Let’s work on it together,'” he added.

In 2015, just before the Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage across the US, Billington bought an ad urging readers to pray for the court to reject marriage equality.

Below this message, he wrote: “Homosexuality is Sin,” adding that “the love of Jesus can Save You and Change You.”

In a Facebook post announcing the ad, he wrote: “I would not put my name on it, but the paper said I had to do so, not that I am ashame [sic] to do so.”

But in a deeply red city contained within a consistently Republican state, there seems little hope for Billington’s opponent, former circuit judge and assistant prosecutor Robert L. Smith.

Smith, 68, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he could not allow Billington to run unopposed for the seat of House Speaker Todd Richardson, who has come to the end of his term limit.

“I’ve known Hardy for 30 years, and I knew he had published those ads,” said Smith.

“I don’t think it’s right to discriminate against people because of who they are.”

Billington’s campaign treasurer, Thomas W. Graham Jr, said his boss was “not afraid to let anybody know that that’s his position, his personal conviction.

“That doesn’t mean that he has any animosity towards somebody that doesn’t hold that conviction.”

Greg Razer, an openly gay Kansas City Democrat who sits in the state House, said: “What might take years off of peoples’ lives are young people growing up in communities where they hear this (rhetoric) spouted from people of authority.

“Those teenagers then commit suicide, that’s how years come off your life.”