NC Lawmaker: Lincoln Was 'Same Sort of Tyrant' as Hitler

A Republican lawmaker in North Carolina is taking a lot of flak for comparing the first Republican president to Adolf Hitler. State Rep. Larry Pittman of Cabarrus likened Abraham Lincoln to Hitler on Wednesday after a commenter on Facebook criticized a bill he'd introduced to ignore federal rulings and restore the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the Charlotte Observer reports. After being told that the Supreme Court had ruled on the issue and he should just "get over it," Pittman said: "If Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort if [sic] tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional."

State Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Goodwin called for GOP leaders to apologize for the comments, saying Pittman and his "ultra-conservative" allies in the state assembly "have no sense of decency, no sense of shame, and no sense of historical fact." The Facebook conversation came after House Speaker Tim Moore, a fellow Republican, killed Pittman's bill, saying there are "strong constitutional concerns with this legislation given that the US Supreme Court has firmly ruled on the issue," NBC News reports. Pittman, a Presbyterian pastor, hasn't responded to requests to clarify his remarks, including one from another Facebook commenter who asked why he thought the Civil War was unnecessary, reports the News & Observer. (More Abraham Lincoln stories.)