A GOP candidate in Oklahoma is getting attention for comments he made several years ago when he justified the death penalty by stoning for gay people. When asked recently about it, he didn’t disavow his previous comments.

Scott Esk, 56, is running in the Republican primary runoff election tomorrow for a seat in the state house, and local media is bringing up some extreme comments he made in the past. He’s not handling them well.

In 2013, Esk was commenting in a Facebook conversation about the Pope saying that he couldn’t judge gay people. Esk posted some Bible quotations, including the part of Romans 1 where the Bible says that a long list of people who sinned is “worthy of death.”

Another person asked him: “So, just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?”

Esk responded: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it… Ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”

A year later, a journalist asked him […]