Another Republican running for state office has weighed in on Jeremy Walters’ reprehensible comments.

Dave Leach, who is running for Iowa state Senate, says that the Republican Party of Iowa erred in denouncing Walters for claiming that AIDS is a punishment from God for homosexuality.

The Iowa Independent has the latest:

Leach, who is running against Democratic state Sen. Matt McCoy in Senate District 31, said Walters statement was “theologically clumsy, but it seemed close enough to Biblical truth to not merit a censure from the Republican Party.”

“GOP head Matt Strawn is right in saying HIV does not discriminate; in other words, the fact that someone has HIV by no means proves they got it through sodomy,” Leach said in an e-mail to Strawn and The Iowa Independent. “But I don’t see that that is what Jeremy said.”

Whether the Bible says there is a connection shouldn’t matter, he said, since, “everyone knows there is this connection.”

From Leach’s email:

Everyone knows sodomites suffer [HIV/AIDS] far more than the rest of the population, and that sodomy’s practices, which are so embarrassingly unsanitary that you dare not detail them in one of your articles, would inevitably create such a disease if it did not already exist. It seems “inappropriate,” to use Strawn’s word, to apologize for saying what the Bible says, with which everyone agrees. It is “inappropriate” for anyone to ask such a thing. I am sorry that Jeremy gave up his ground, although at least he stood it for awhile, which is more than most will do.

You can learn more about Iowa state Sen. Matt McCoy, the Democrat Leach hopes to unseat this fall, here.

Leach recently directed his inflammatory rhetoric directly at Sen. McCoy. At a rally staged by the National Organization for Marriage at the beginning of August, Leach handed out campaign fliers and told The Iowa Independent, “I am running against Iowa’s chief sodomite.”

One Iowa is expressing concern over the increasingly violent rhetoric emerging in the Iowa GOP.

“Considering Leach’s background and his most recent statements, we’re beginning to see a disturbing pattern of Iowa GOP candidates who use violent rhetoric and misinformation as a political weapon,” said One Iowa Executive Director Carolyn Jenison. “These remarks fan the flames of bigotry and hatred and they have no place in our civic dialogue.”