Former president Jimmy Carter has admitted that there is not a single verse in the gospels where Jesus approves of same-sex sexuality or same-sex marriage.

“Former president Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday that he believes Jesus would approve of gay marriage, though he said that he doesn’t have ‘any verse in scripture’ to corroborate this notion.

“‘I believe he would. I believe Jesus would. I don’t have any verse in scripture…’ Carter responded when asked by HuffPo Live host Mark Lamont Hill whether Christ would embrace same-sex nuptials. ‘I believe that Jesus would approve of gay marriage, but I’m not – that’s just my own personal belief.’”

There you have it – an honest statement from Jimmy Carter: there is no “verse in Scripture” where Jesus “would embrace same-sex” marriage. “Red Letter Christians” take notice.

But this doesn’t matter to Jimmy Carter because he “believe[s] Jesus would approve of gay marriage.” I can call on Jesus as a witness for my defense on any topic if “my own personal belief” is the standard. Can you imagine a lawyer going into court with such a claim even when all the evidence points to the contrary?

Read more: “Fallacies of Red Letter Christianity.”

This latest claim is no surprise since Carter’s view of the Bible has been suspect since he ran for the presidency in 1976. His presidency turned out to be a disaster. Running as a “born again Christian,” he supported abortion and established the Federal Department of Education.

Read more: “Jimmy Carter to Give Keynote Speech at Muslim Convention.”

Carter’s brand of Christianity was decidedly left of center. Dr. Gary North writes that “Carter’s preferred theologians were liberals: Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and especially Richard Niebuhr. He was also appreciative of the existential philosopher, Sören Kierkegaard. It took a non-Christian, libertarian columnist Jeffrey St. John, to put this out in his 1976 paperback, Jimmy Carter’s Betrayal of the South. . . . The Carter administration had not a single self-proclaimed born-again Christian in the Cabinet, or in any other high position. It was staffed by liberals and Trilaterialists, along with some old hands from the Council of Foreign Relations who had not entered the inner sanction of Trilateralism.”

Since being defeated by Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980, Carter’s religiously leftist credentials have become more extreme.

Carter entered the debate over Christian activism and politics with jabs at the “religious right.” While Carter does not claim that Christians should not participate in the political process, he makes some outlandish statements regarding abortion and homosexuality and those who condemn the practices.

He considers abortion and homosexuality to be “emotional” not moral or theological issues. He spouts the all too familiar platitude about believing in the “separation between church and state,” implying that civil laws have no religious or moral context. He seems to forget that the civil rights movement was framed in biblical terms and was led by ministers.

Carter states that “since almost all Protestants now condone divorce as an acceptable fact of life, and rarely mention fornication or adultery — even though these acts were repeatedly condemned by Jesus — it is much easier and more convenient to focus on homosexuality, refusing to acknowledge that this is a sin never mentioned by Jesus.”

Jesus did not have to specifically condemn same-sex sexuality since there are other places in Scripture where it is condemned. In addition, God created Eve to be a helper “suitable” for Adam. That included suitable biology – their sexual equipment.

Read more: “A Response to Bad Arguments in Defense of Same-Sex Sexuality.”

This is why Paul wrote that the same-sexers of his day “suppressed the truth in unrighteousness . . . [and] became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools . . .” As a result, “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. . . . For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (Rom. 1:18, 22, 24, 26-27).