WATCH: Rachel Maddow Breaks Down Pastor's 'Kill the Gays' Rally Attended by GOP Candidates

Rachel Maddow focused Monday night on a tale of two forums this past weekend: one she hosted in South Carolina featuring the three major contenders for the Democratic party nomination, and an Iowa conference featuring three antigay Republican candidates for president hosted by a right wing pastor who declared "it's not a gay time!"

"It really was a 'kill the gays' call to arms," said Maddow on her MSNBC program.

She introduced video of Kevin Swanson, a virulently antigay preacher from Colorado, who organized the event in Des Moines. In one clip, Swanson told the National Religious Liberties Conference he believes that churches should have sackcloth and ashes at their entrances for Christian families whose "sons are rebelling, hanging out with homosexuals, and getting married, and their parents are invited."

"And I would sit in cow manure, and I would spread it all over my body."

Swanson, who preaches that homosexuality should be punished with death, drew more than 1,700 to his "religious freedom" conference, including Republicans Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz.

Maddow played a series of excerpts of Swanson's speech, in which he quoted from the bible in calling for the death penalty for gays and lesbians, and then declared that was not as high a priority as giving homosexuals, and all of America, time to repent.

"This was a Republican presidential candidates event," Maddow told viewers. "These were not the 'kill the gays' ravings of the guy hosting this event from some time in his past. This was not something we dug up that he said a long time ago, that maybe these presidential candidates didn't know about." Maddow suggested the might be a good topic for the moderators from Fox Business Network who will put questions to Cruz and the other Republicans running for president Tuesday night.

And lest viewers think the Iowa event was nothing but boring politics, Maddow mentioned how pop culture came under fire from Swanson as well:

"There were denunciations of Harry Potter. There was a big, long soliloquy of a movie called How to Train Your Dragon. There was a big, screaming denunciation of how country music radio stations need to repent, repent, repent because they've gone over to the gay side."

Watch Rachel Maddow break down the Swanson event in the clip below.