The chorus calling for the resignation of Colorado State Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams continues to grow, following the release of his email announcing with prophetic confidence “God hates flags” — a veiled reference to the Westboro Baptist’s slur often thrown out as they were protesting the funerals of American servicemen and women killed in action during the War on Terror — and the subsequent official calls to burn the ubiquitous LGBTQ rainbow flags. Add my name to that august list, calling for a resignation that is long overdue.

This was another unforced error by the self-absorbed chair of the Colorado GOP. The moral affront of a party official publicly displaying such unabashed bigotry aside — and the disparagement of an identifiable group of humans for something other than willful actions is just that by definition, bigotry, and rightly anathema in Western civilization — politically it was nothing short of stupid. Whatever one’s personal or religious beliefs may be, civil sentiment, especially in Colorado, has moved in the direction of acceptance. The prevailing attitude among most Coloradans — most voters — is “live and let live”; that the government’s role does not extend to what happens in the bedroom, provided it is consensual. Williams’s acerbic rhetoric turns off thousands of voters, including many who may sympathize with some of the underlying policy issues. Not to mention turning off those many of whom are looking for an excuse to not vote Republican, because that just isn’t cool anymore.

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Williams’s antics hurt the party’s pocketbooks as well. Big corporate donors — whom, let’s just admit it, both parties rely on — flee from such flagrant acts of bigotry. Granted, fundraising is not a strong suit of Williams, most of whose experience with party financing is how to siphon it for his own campaigns.

Then there is the difficulty he is causing for sane, reasonable, adult Republican candidates throughout the state. One would assume the job of a party chairman or chairwoman is to help get members of his or her party elected to public office. I believe that may be even written in the job description. Even before the current conflagration, Williams stacked the deck against the most electable Republicans in the state by injecting the party — or his iteration of the party — into primaries, generally on the side of the wildest, least-electable candidate. Political parties actually spend a lot of time, resources and effort into doing such things — against the opposing party. The Democratic Party has been especially skillful in the last few election cycles at promoting the most beatable Republican candidate in various primaries. Now the Democrats have Dave Williams doing it for them. If Democratic State Party Chairman Shad Murib isn’t paying Williams for this service, he might consider throwing him a few bucks just for making his job so easy.

Beyond the political considerations, there are policy consequences as well. Any movement can have its excesses, and the LGBTQ community is not different. There are legitimate public policy questions surrounding the LGBTQ political agenda that deserve proper scrutiny and public debate. By reducing the conversation to the vulgar and bigoted level he did, Williams rendered that debate all but impossible to be held.

Williams has tried to wrap himself in the cloak of Christianity as a defense for his actions, but those actions have been fundamentally un-Christian. Plenty of things in our modern life are vices — sins even — that don’t merit the level of public vitriol from a public official; adultery, greed, avarice, drunkenness, envy, gluttony. Can you imagine if Williams had put out a similar email denouncing with equivalent vitriol those who have strayed from their marriage vows? Or who ate too much on the weekend?

The Republican Party embraces tradition, and among the most important, and most uniquely American, of those traditions is respect for the individual, respect for social customs of civil discourse and good manners, and respect for differing points of view. Dave Williams has exhibited none of this. Instead he represents a fringe that rejects the precepts of civil society, and that embraces vulgarity, bigotry, disrespect and hatred. These are not conservative values, and not representative of the overwhelming majority of Republican Party, or of Colorado.

We can, and should, have differences regarding public policy matters. But there are ways in which those differences should be expressed and debated, ways which have been developed over centuries within our civilization, including the teachings of Christ Himself. It is the duty of conservatives to preserve these ways of doing things, and it therefore the duty of conservatives to reject the likes of David Williams.

Franklin Graham, whose Christian credentials are rather well established, posted the following on Twitter after the conviction of Hunter Biden:

“This evening, I ask that you pray for the president of our country. How difficult it is for a parent when your children make major mistakes in life. This has nothing to do with whether you support President Biden or not politically, but all authority is appointed by God and He instructs us to pray for our leaders. As Christians, this is a way we can make a difference.”

That is how a Christian ought to present in public. God will forgive Dave Wiliams, if he repents, as he does all sinners, seven times seventy times. If he is truly repentant, and willing to accept penance, he will resign immediately.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.