Pastor Douglas Wilson is a radically right-wing pastor from Idaho who defends slavery, calls for gays to be exiled and adulterers to be put to death. In 2012, he was invited to speak at Indiana University, which led to protests and confrontation and now, a right-wing documentary about the controversy called “The Free Speech Apocalypse.”

Directed by Darren Doane, perhaps best known for directing Kirk Cameron’s “Saving Christmas,” which is literally one of the worst films ever made, the new movie presents Wilson’s experience of going up against the left-wing “tolerance buzzsaw” and, amazingly, features appearances by Ted Cruz and Ben Carson:

The Free Speech Apocalypse exposes the strategies of the anti-God, anti-traditional, hyper-liberal elite and offers perspective on the cultural decay that has accelerated across the country over the three years since Wilson’s visit to Indiana University. Worst yet, The Free Speech Apocalypse demonstrates clearly the erosion of free speech and religious liberty in America. The right to hold your own opinions if they differ from leftist agendas is vanishing at an alarming rate, and it’s time for ordinary Americans to wake up and speak out. This documentary features (among others) Sweet Cakes owners Aaron and Melissa Klein, as well as presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Dr. Ben Carson outlining the concerns they have that unelected judges are ruling against the common citizen’s Constitutional right to free speech.

A trailer posted on the film’s website prominently features both Cruz and Carson:

Why are GOP presidential candidates appearing in a film promoting someone who holds these sorts of view?

Wilson runs an extreme right religious empire in Moscow, Idaho, that includes a church, Canon Press, and New Saint Andrews College. Popular in neo-Confederate circles as well, he co-wrote a partly plagiarized booklet, Southern Slavery, As It Was, defending Old South slavery; his co-author was Steve Wilkins, a founding member of the neo-secessionist and racist League of the South. Southern Slavery, As It Was is a repulsive apologia for the enslavement of black Americans. Among other things, the booklet contends that, “Slavery as it existed in the South … was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. … There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.” When a University of Idaho professor revealed in 2004 that Wilson’s booklet contained 22 passages plagiarized from a discredited 1974 academic treatise, Wilson scoffed, deriding the “local Banshees” who criticized him over what he portrayed as a mere citation problem. Canon Press then issued a “corrected” version of the booklet — correct in its citations, but unchanged in its portrayal of happy and well-fed slaves whose relationship with their masters was one of mutual affection. Wilson’s views on other issues are just as extreme. Woman “was created to be dependent and responsive to a man,” he has written. If a woman is raped, the rapist should pay the father a bride price and then, if the father approves, marry his victim. Homosexuals, Wilson says, are “sodomites” and “people with foul sexual habits.” Wilson recently told Christianity Today that he’s in favor of the “exile [of] some homosexuals, depending on the circumstances and the age of the victim.” He added, “There are circumstances where I’d be in favor of execution for adultery.” Cursing one’s parents is likewise “deserving of punishment by death.” Though he admits the scripture does not forbid interracial marriage, Wilson warns that, “wise parents” will carefully weigh any union involving “extremely diverse cultural backgrounds.”

Earlier this year, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and various Republican members of Congress appeared in another right-wing anti-gay documentary alongside a Religious Right activist who openly calls for gays and all those how refuse to submit to Christianity to be put to death.

Are GOP presidential hopefuls utterly incapable of doing any research or vetting before agreeing to appear in these sorts of films?