Alabama Senate Democratic candidate Doug Jones says he does not know if he can reassure Alabamians that he will protect their religious freedom and their culture, because if they are not Christian in the same way he is, their culture is “discriminatory.”

During a recent interview with the Economist, the pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage Jones was asked how he could reassure Alabamians he would protect “their religious freedom, or their guns, their culture,” and whether or not the Democrats have been generally “unresponsive” to Americans’ concerns about the nation’s culture.

Jones gave his views of “Christian beliefs and stuff”:

I don’t know if I can. I think actions have to speak louder than words, so once I get elected I can try to do it. But look, when you talk about their Christian beliefs and stuff, that’s one thing, but when you talk about their culture, I’m not sure what you mean by that. If culture means that you have to put down people, if your culture means that you would discriminate against somebody, that you would not treat anybody in the same way that Christ would do, then I’m not going to protect that. I’m not going to protect discrimination of any sort, in any way, whether it’s race, religion, sex orientation or whatever. So I’m not going to protect that culture if that’s what their culture is. What I’m hoping to see is that if they are truly religious and they are truly Christian in the same way that I am, that my faith is, well, we take care of everybody. I’ve always believed the culture of the South, the heritage of the South, is of people treating people like friends, of neighbours helping neighbours. You know, when a tornado comes through Tuscaloosa or Hackleburg, or you have a hurricane comes up the Gulf Coast, we don’t start running around asking people who they are or who their fathers are.

In response to a question about whether the Democratic Party has been “tin-eared or unresponsive” to concerns about the culture of the nation, Jones said:

I don’t know if they’ve been unresponsive. Again, if their culture is such that it’s a discriminatory culture, if that’s what you mean, if that’s what they do, then I don’t think the Democratic Party or the Republican Party should respond to that

Republican opponent Judge Roy Moore read part of Jones’s response to the Economist’s questions about religious liberty during a rally in Fairhope, Alabama Tuesday evening. His campaign sent out a press release in light of the oral arguments heard earlier in the day by the Supreme Court in the case of a Christian baker who declined to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding.

Moore campaign chairman Bill Armistead said Jones cannot reassure Alabamians he will protect their religious freedom.

“Jones’ backers are waging war on the traditional family and suing business owners for seeking to exercise their deeply held religious beliefs,” he said. “Doug Jones is a serious threat to the religious liberty of the people of Alabama.”

“Our love is just as real and true as anyone else’s and we deserve the right to live full lives in public without having that love turned into a weapon” – @ACLU plaintiff David Mullins speaks on the potential harm to #LGBTQ people in the #MasterpieceCakeshop case. pic.twitter.com/3gDJeCSjD1 — Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) December 6, 2017

As the Moore campaign observes, Jones is “funded, supported, and endorsed by the likes of George Soros and one of the nation’s largest LGBT rights organizations, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).”

HRC has led the opposition to Christian baker Jack Phillips of Colorado, as well as other people of faith.

During the rally in Fairhope, Moore read Jones’s response to the Economist’s questions about religious freedom.

“Let me tell you how you translate that,” Moore said. “If your Christian culture, if your beliefs, do not accept abortion, same-sex marriage, sodomy, transgender rights in their school bathrooms and in the military, then by definition you are discriminatory and will not be protected, nor will your rights to own and carry guns be secured.”