GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore has smartened up. Now he hangs with others who call for butchering gays. Fifteen years ago, he was doing it himself.

The New Civil Rights Movement has a story up today about Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore's penchant for giving interviews to an Iowa Christianist pastor who likes to call for the extrajudicial execution of LGBT Americans, because Bible:

The leader in the race for the nomination to be the Republican Party's candidate for the U.S. Senator from Alabama, Roy Moore, has a history of appearing on the radio program of a right wing Christian pastor who calls for gays people to be executed and says that AIDS is "God's retribution."

Moore, who resigned as the state's Supreme Court chief justice after being suspended until the end of his elected term over his actions against same-sex marriage, at least five times has appeared with Pastor Kevin Swanson, as CNN reports. As recently as February Moore appeared on Swanson's show.

Just how anti-gay is Pastor Swanson?

In late 2015 Swanson held a political religious liberty conference, attended by Sen. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow reported on Swanson's conference, saying a "significant portion" of what was talked about during the event "was the exact contours, the exact language of what they believe is a biblical commandment that gay people in the United States should be rounded up and executed."

"It really was a 'kill the gays' call to arms," Maddow observed. "This was a conference about the necessity of the death penalty as a punishment for homosexuality."

This is no surprise to those who've been paying attention ("I have the memoryof an elephant," Noel Coward used to purr. "In fact, elephants often consult me").

As a member of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore advcated the same thing.

In a routine 2002 child custody case, Ex parte H.H. IN RE: D.H. v. H.H., dissented for pages and pages in a screed driven by one of the parties having been in a same-sex relationship, and called for the same thing Swanson does now:

Custody disputes involve decision-making by the State, within the limits of its sphere of authority, in a way that preserves the fundamental family structure. The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle.