'We Will Burn:' Texas Pastor to Set Himself Aflame if Marriage Equality Wins

The architect of a massive effort to challenge a pro-LGBT ruling by the Supreme Court has also offered to be shot.

Update: The pastor has issued a clarifying statement in the wake of the nationwide marriage ruling.

Rick Scarborough, the antigay Texas pastor who already made headlines with a full-page newspaper ad announcing that he had at least 44,500 followers who pledged to go to jail to defend so-called traditional marriage, is now threatening to set himself on fire to stop marriage equality.

“We’re simply being preemptive and saying, no matter what the cost, we are not going to bow, we are not going to bend, and we will burn,” said Scarborough on a recent National Emergency Coalition conference call hosted by fellow antigay preacher E.W. Jackson.

“The preachers need to get out front, the leaders need to get out front, out front of these ordinary citizens and say, ‘Shoot me first,’” said Scarborough said, according to Right Wing Watch. The pastor was reportedly referring to business owners such as bakers and florists who claim to be victims of nondiscrimination laws (which would not be directly impacted by the pending Supreme Court decision on marriage equality).

On the conference call that took place June 16, Scarborough labeled gay marriage a Satanic plot:

“The end-game is the complete destruction of the church of the Lord Jesus, the replacement of it with this liberal theology that’s not a theology, it’s a philosophy, human-made, it goes back to the Garden of Eden when Satan wanted to be God. We now have a race of humans that don’t want to acknowledge that there’s a God.”

“They’re after God,” he said of the nine Supreme Court justices who are expected to rule soon on whether state bans on same-sex marriage should be struck down. “This country better be aware, we’ve suffered a lot of injustices, but I’m not sure God is going to tolerate this one very long.”

Listen to Scarborough's remarks below: