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John Kasich: Gay People Need To "Calm Down" About Homophobic Laws

"I just wish that everybody would just take a breath and calm down."

In an interview Sunday night, John Kasich, the current third-place candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and sitting governor for Ohio, advised the LGBT community to "get over" discrimination.

When asked by CNN's Dana Bash on State of the Union if he would take any steps to cease the rampant spread of anti-LGBT legislation through the South, Gov. Kasich said "No, I wouldn't," adding that he hadn't even "thought about" it.

It was a surprising comment from the governor, who just last week came out against the slate of so-called "religious liberty" laws out of North Carolina and Mississippi.

When pressed further by Bash, Kasich responded that "There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty."

"But there's also people who we shouldn't be discriminating against. We need to have a balance."

"I just wish that everybody would just take a breath and calm down," he went on, "because, you see, trying to figure out how to legislate that balance is complicated, and you keep doing do-overs, because nobody gets it right."

For Kasich, the best way to "get it right" is for the disenfranchised to calm down and offer their prayers and thoughts to those who they believe are actively discriminating against them.

"If you don't like what somebody's doing, pray for them," the governor suggested. "And if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just, for a second, get over it, you know, because this thing will settle down."

In conclusion, he said, "We need a united America, not a divided America. As one of my daughters said, 'We're the United States, not the divided states.'"

Check out the entire interview below!

Of the 31 states that have voted in the Republican primary thus far, Gov. Kasich has won only one, his home state of Ohio, which places him at a far third for the Republican nomination behind Cruz and Trump.

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