The day after the Supreme Court heard the Obergefell marriage cases, Rafael Cruz spoke to a Republican group in Alvin, Texas, where he made frequent warnings about the supposed threat of legalizing same-sex marriage.

While boasting that his son, Ted Cruz, has introduced two measures in the U.S. Senate to block a Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, Cruz told the audience that “we are going to have to stand firm on the agenda to destroy America.”

“I lost my freedom once, I’m not willing to lose it again. I will die fighting before I lose it again and so should you,” he added.

Cruz said that America is experiencing “a lot of persecution against Christians” and predicted that if the Supreme Court rules to “legalize homosexual marriage…the next thing that is going to come is the government coming to your church and saying ‘you must hire a homosexual pastor, you must perform homosexual marriages.’ We are going to come to a crossroads in America. We’re going to have to decide whether we obey God or we obey government if that’s what’s coming. This is about religious persecution.”

He also falsely claimed that Congress once made the Bible the principal textbook in public schools and alleged that both prayer and the Bible are now “banned in public schools.” (The Supreme Court only barred government-organized prayers).

Cruz blamed the court for a surge in violent crime and the resulting billions of dollars spent by the government to fight it: “Even from an economic standpoint, we’ve invested billions and billions of dollars combating crime that was caused by removing prayer and Bible reading from schools.”