Yesterday Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant appeared on the American Family Association’s radio show to declare that he signed his state’s anti-LGBT bill in order to protect churches from being closed because they won’t host same-sex weddings. Seriously. Right Wing Watch has the transcript:

“This is about the churches,” Bryant said. “The next stop will be American Family Radio and it will be Mississippi College, it will be St. Dominic’s Hospital as lawsuits will be filed; it will be churches where pastors can say, ‘I can’t perform that ceremony,’ a lawsuit will be filed, it will go to a federal court and the federal court will say, yes, they should be a protected class, those who choose to marry and want to be married in the church and that church might lose its tax-exempt status and they’ll have to close. And church after church after church across this country will close.”

“We think people of faith have rights,” he continued. “I know that’s a strange notion, but we believe the scales of justice must be balanced for those people of faith and those that have other ideas about their desires in life. And that’s what the scales of justice must do is be balanced and we believe that this is a step in protecting the civil liberties of people of faith just as the First Amendment of the Constitution does.”