Hackett has a good reason for saying what he said. After all, Pastor Rod Parsley, of "Patriot Pastor" fame, has said that Ohio is a battleground between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell."

Most people have ignored these declarations, as well as the bold campaigns towards theocracy in Ohio.

Hackett hasn't. An editorial in the Columbus Dispatch talks about his candid manner:

With succinct coherence, Hackett said: "I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-gayrights, I'm pro-gun-rights. Call me nuts, but I think they're all based on the same principle and that is we don't need government dictating to us how we live our private lives."

Asked to define being pro-gayrights, Hackett said anybody who tries to deny homosexuals the same rights, including marriage, as every other citizen is un-American. Are you saying, he was asked, that the 62 percent of Ohioans who voted in November 2004 to constitutionally deny same-sex marriages are un-American?

"If what they believe is that we're going to have a scale on judging which Americans have equal rights, yeah, that's un-American. They've got to accept that. It's absolutely un-American."

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"The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of the other religious nuts around the world," he said. "The challenge is for the rest of us moderate Americans and citizens of the world to put down the fork and spoon, turn off the TV, and participate in the process and try to push back on these radical nuts - and they are nuts."

And here's the best part: He's not backing down.

"I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it. Equal justice under the law for all regardless of who they are and how they were born is fundamental to our American spirit and our American freedoms. Any person or group that argues that the law should not apply equally to all Americans is, frankly, un-American."