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A trio of UCP candidates came under fire Tuesday as past homophobic comments from two men came to light, while a third candidate’s apparent support for the contentious Yellow Vest movement forced the party leader to come to his defence.

Mark Smith, previously elected as a Wildrose MLA for Drayton Valley-Devon, who also served as the UCP’s education critic, gave a 2013 sermon at the Calvary Baptist Church in Drayton Valley saying media portrayals of LGBTQ love as “good love” are problematic.

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A 45-minute audio clip of Smith’s sermon is posted on the church’s website. On Tuesday, the CJSR radio program Gaywire posted a short clip of the sermon on its Twitter account, saying it revived an ugly attack on the LGBTQ community.

In the sermon, he muses about what love is, and what it means to love God.

“You don’t have to watch any TV for any length of time today where you don’t see on the TV program them trying to tell you that homosexuality and homosexual love is good love,” Smith said in the sermon. “Heck, there are people out there, I could take you to places on the website I’m sure, where you can find out, where pedophilia is love.”

He also said some people would argue it’s more loving to abort a fetus “than to bring a child, unloved, into the world.”