Donald Trump no friend to lgbt community, Marco Rubio an unmitigated liar

Editor's note - There were no news briefs today because the public libary's internet was down. I simply have to get a tablet one of these days.

Thanks to profiles courtesy of Right Wing Watch of a few participants of Thursday's conference to be attended by both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, we have more proof of two things:

Donald Trump is NO friend of the lgbt community in spite of he and other folks,  such as Chris Barron and Milo Yiannopoulos, have said.

And Marco Rubio was being an unmitigated liar when he claimed that the conference was not an anti-lgbt event, but a "celebration of faith."

While Rubio has denied that the “Rediscovering God in America” event has anything to do with LGBT issues, its chief organizer, David Lane of the American Renewal Project, said explicitly that the gathering will focus on how LGBT equality endangers religious liberty. Besides Lane, Trump and Rubio will be joining Religious Right activists Mat Staver, David Barton, Bill Federer and Ken Graves.

That Trump and Rubio would stand with these activists shouldn’t be surprising, since both have promised to back anti-LGBT legislation and support judicial nominees hostile to LGBT rights, but it does show how their promises to defend the LGBT community only amounted to cynical and shallow political ploys.

Here is just a sampling of what Trump and Rubio’s far-right allies have said about the LGBT community:

David Lane

David Lane 

David Lane, the main organizer of the Orlando event, said in 2013 that God would punish America over the appearance of a gay poet and a pro-gay-rights priest at President Obama’s inauguration, including with car bombings in cities across the country. Lane has also written extensively about the LGBT rights movement, describing it as a “pagan onslaught” that “has threatened our utter destruction.” 

Mat Staver

Mat Staver 

Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver has been fighting LGBT rights for years, representing clients like Kentucky clerk Kim Davis and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who both defied the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, and Lisa Miller, who during a custody battle with her former female partner, kidnapped their daughter and fled to Central America. . . . Staver “believes that the gay rights movement is ‘doing the bidding of the Devil ’ and is part of the spirit of the Antichrist and ‘demonic.’”

 

David Barton

David Barton 

David Barton, a Republican Party activist and self-styled historian . . . has said that God is preventing scientists from finding a cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS because such a discovery would remove the divine punishment for homosexuality, arguing that homosexuality is a curse on people and society, while “chasing the sodomites” out of a community would lead to revival.



 And those are just three. Right Wing Watch goes into more detail and provides profiles of a few other attendees and speakers of the conference.

For Trump to appear at an anti-lgbt conference after claiming to be a friend of the lgbt community and for Rubio to straight-up lie about the conference itself is bad enough. But the fact that it seems both actually thought they could get away with their deceptions is downright insulting.


Related post: Trump comes under fire for anti-lgbt conference