At least week’s Watchmen on the Wall conference, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins presented Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant with the first ever “Samuel Adams Religious Freedom Award” for having signed a radical anti-LGBT bill into law earlier this year that will allow businesses to deny service to gay people.

While introducing the governor, Perkins said that America’s elected leaders should be “ministers of God,” while Bryant praised the hate group leader as something of a modern-day David.

“I remember in Sunday school, reading one of my favorite stories,” Bryant said.”It was about a giant, a bad giant, who came into a valley one day and he called to the Israelites, ‘Send down your champion and let me vanquish him.’ We were in that valley, but Tony Perkins was there with us. He was there as surely as Our Lord and Savior, as surely as the God of all gods stood there with us. And I can tell you how fortunate we are in this nation and in this organization to have a man of faith and leadership in Tony. God bless you for what you do.”

Later, Bryant recalled how “all of the secular progressive world had decided that they were going to pour their anger” out on him for pledging to sign the legislation, wrongly thinking that he could be pressured into backing down because they were unaware that Christians like him would line up to be crucified before turning their backs on Jesus.

“They don’t know us very well, do they?” he asked. “They don’t know that Christians have been persecuted throughout the ages. They don’t know that if it takes crucifixion, we will stand in line before abandoning our faith and our belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So if we are going to stand, now is the time and this is the place.”