Multiple news sites reported this week that Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said same-sex marriage is a “real and present danger” to the “survival of Christianity.”
The problem is, Rubio didn’t actually say this.
In a CBN News interview published Tuesday, Rubio said he is concerned that people will shift eventually from attacking individual Christians who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds to attacking Christianity as a whole.
“If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” Rubio began. “Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you are labeled a homophobe and a hater.”
The senator then asked what comes next.
“After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech, and there’s a real and present danger,” he said.
Not long after CBN News published the Rubio interview, the regular media characters sprung into action, resulting in a flurry of headlines that accused the Florida senator of characterizing the LGBT community as a direct threat to Christianity.
“Marco Rubio: Gay Rights ‘A Real And Present Danger’ To Freedom,” blared a headline Tuesday from the left-wing watchdog group Right Wing Watch.
The Daily’s Beast’s Tim Teeman went after Rubio’s supposed comments with gusto, writing in an article, titled “Marco Rubio Pathetically Plays the LGBT Victim,” that the senator’s “invoking of ‘hate speech’ to describe ‘mainstream Christianity’ is inflammatory and offensive to LGBTs who have endured — sometimes fatally — the years of ‘hate speech’ propagated by the religious Right.”
Raw Story chimed in with a blog post titled, “Marco Rubio: Legalized gay marriage is ‘a real and present danger’ to the survival of Christianity.”
For ThinkProgress, the headline read, “Rubio: If We Don’t Stop Gay Rights, Soon The Teachings Of The Catholic Church Will Be ‘Hate Speech.'”
The next day, MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart hosted a segment titled, “Rubio: Same-sex marriage puts Christianity in danger.”
Rubio was not without at least a few fair reports.
Several prominent outlets, including Politico, the Miami Herald and Bloomberg News, played it straight with the story, reporting accurately on the nuance of the senator’s remarks.
Rubio’s comments were not meant to suggest that same-sex marriage is “real and present danger,” but that he “was referring to people who label Christians ‘haters,'” the Herald noted.
The online dustup aimed at Rubio marks the third time in just a few weeks that a 2016 Republican candidate has taken heat for saying something that he didn’t actually say.
Other examples of GOP hopefuls being dinged in the press for fake “controversial” statements include Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who was accused of saying forced ultrasounds are a “cool thing,” and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who was accused of saying that same-sex lifestyles are more offensive to God than child molestation.
Cruz, Rubio and Walker did not say any of these things.
