Are you sitting down? Good. Comfy? Excellent. I wouldn’t want you to be hurt when your jaw hits the floor watching this video. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, everyone:

Just in case you missed —and how could you?— here’s the fun bit:

I really wonder how many people in this body who had the ultimate power to decide whether humanity would go forward or not, whether there was an asteroid coming or something that would end humanity on Earth as dinosaurs were ended at one time–okay. We have a spaceship that can—as Matt Damon did in the movie—plant a colony somewhere. We can have humans survive this terrible disaster about to befall.



If you could decide what 40 people you would put on the spacecraft who would save humanity, how many of those would be same-sex couples?



You are wanting to save humankind for posterity—basically, a modern-day Noah. You have that ability to be a modern-day Noah. You can preserve life.



How many same-sex couples would you take from the animal kingdom and from humans to put on the spacecraft to perpetuate humanity and the wildlife kingdom?



That is why it has been called part of the natural law, natural law given by the Creator; but when we continue to abolish the first words of the Bill of Rights—the First Amendment—and we continue to prohibit the free exercise of religion, we don’t have much longer to go.

I’m not sure what’s more worrisome: That Gohmert seems so very concerned about gay space colonists in case of planetary armageddon, that he thinks his own religion is exempt from the First Amendment, or that, in 2016, a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives thinks that being gay or transgender is a “mental disorder” and “perverse.”

This might be a good time to note that elections have consequences. You put people in power, and they make laws. What they base those laws on might be their desire for religious oppression, their homophobia, their racism, their desire to please the people who fund them, or their simple desire to seize power and maintain it.

For example, in 2002 Texans elected Tom Delay, who became the House majority leader. He then led an effort, sadly effective, to gerrymander Texas District 1, which had been historically Democratic. It became heavily Republican, and Gohmert was the beneficiary of that action. Much to our nation’s embarrassment.

Elections have consequences. Choose carefully.

Tip o’ the gay spacesuit helmet to Brian Gaensler.

Update, June 1, 2016: In the perfect timing department, I just found out right after publishing this that June 2016 has been declared LGBT Pride month by President Obama. I’m guessing Gohmert won’t be attending the parade.