A Texas pastor has appeared to say he would be willing to be burned to death in his campaign against gay marriage.

The US Supreme Court is expected to make a significant ruling on the issue at the end of this month. Rick Scarborough, who heads the Vision America and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, made the claim in a podcast interview with EW Jackson on the National Emergency Coalition show.

He referred to cases where Christian businesses had fallen foul of anti-discrimination laws, saying that authorities deliberately "sue them until they go into bankruptcy".

Scarborough said: "We're simply being pre-emptive and saying, no matter what the cost, we are not going to bow, we are not going to bend, and we will burn."

He continued: "The preachers need to get out front, the leaders need to get out front, out front of these ordinary citizens and say, 'Shoot me first'."

Scarborough claimed that "The end game is the complete destruction of the church of the Lord Jesus, the replacement of it with this liberal theology that's not a theology... it goes back to the Garden of Eden when Satan wanted to be God. We now have a race of humans that don't want to acknowledge that there's a God.

"If the court does rule this, they will have to step over natural law."

Lawmakers, he argued, were "going create a new social order. They're after God. This country better be aware, we've suffered a lot of injustices, but I'm not sure God is going to tolerate this one very long."