Oklahoma State Representative Kevin Calvey, a Republican from Oklahoma City, struggled recently to find the perfect way to express just how much he hates abortion. He managed it, spectacularly: by saying on the House floor that, theoretically, he’d love to set himself on fire and die over it, if his Christian beliefs didn’t prevent him.
“If I were not a Christian and didn’t have a prohibition against suicide, I’d walk across the street, douse myself in gasoline and SET MYSELF ON FIRE!” he remarked, at a reasonable, primal scream-level volume:
Calvey added that he’d self-immolate “to protest the evil that is going on over there, killing, giving the death penalty, to the will of the people and the will of this body and protecting the least among us.”
He told KFOR earlier this week he doesn’t regret his wording during the abortion debate, arguing that threatening to set himself on fire was a perfectly reasonable thing to do: “No, not one bit, I think that I’m hopeful [sic] to draw attention to this serious issue.”
Calvey, at the podium, speaks at an anti-abortion rally in 2012. Photo via AP