Wisconsin Republican says marriage decision insults Christians who died in the 'religious' Civil War

A weekend-hating Wisconsin Republican said the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality was an insult to Christians who died fighting the Civil War.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) told Milwaukee radio host Vicki McKenna that Americans had fought the “strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery,” reported Right Wing Watch.

“Our president during the Civil War was, of course, Abraham Lincoln, who was known as the most biblical of presidents -- somebody who quoted the Bible a lot,” Grothman said.

The court found that, under the Reconstruction-era 14th Amendment, LGBT Americans should enjoy equal protection under the law and struck down state bans on same-sex marriage – which Grothman said Civil War veterans would find outrageous.

"In the Civil War, some 600,000 people died in a country that was much less populated than that today, and it was a much more religious country,” the lawmaker said. “I think a lot of people who died fighting in that war felt they died fighting for a religious cause -- you know, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and all that.”

As former slave states debate whether to remove the Confederate battle flag from government buildings, Grothman said Union troops would find the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling “particularly offensive” to their religious beliefs.

“I think it would shock those people who died in that war to find out the constitutional amendment which was ratified kind of as a culmination of their great efforts and their great deaths would be, 150 years later, a little less than 150 years later, used by these five robed, arrogant, robed people to take this constitutional amendment and say that that constitutional amendment that was drafted after the Civil War was in fact an amendment designed to say that same-sex marriage had to be legal,” Grothman said.