Trump wants crude anti-LGBTQ activist as pick for federal judge

 From Right Wing Watch:

 CNN reported today that Jeff Mateer, a former attorney for the Religious Right legal group First Liberty Institute who President Donald Trump recently nominated to a lifetime seat as a federal district court judge in Texas, has a long history of extreme anti-LGBTQ positions, including saying that transgender children are part of “Satan’s plan” of “destruction” and speaking at a 2015 conference organized by Kevin Swanson, a far-right pastor who has advocated for the death penalty for gay people. 

A Right Wing Watch review of others of Mateer’s speeches and interviews further reveals a clear hostility toward legal protections for LGBTQ equality and reproductive rights

The video below is from a 2015 speech entitled 'The Church and Homosexuality."

. . . CNN notes that , “Mateer said that the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage could lead to what he called ‘disgusting’ new forms of matrimony” such as “people marrying their pets.” Earlier in the presentation, Mateer told the audience that the “elephant in the room is homosexuality and the agenda that this small group is seeking and imposing on the rest of us” and the “legal attacks that that group of individuals and their surrogates are unleashing on the rest of the country.” He added that the U.S. was facing a “clash of absolutes” between “religious liberty rights” and “what is now being raised as a new sexual orthodoxy,” warning that “the other side” wants to see “enshrined in the Constitution” the “right to engage in homosexual conduct and be protected in that”:

For the sake of modesty and my own blood pressure, I will NOT post the video footage of what he said about transgender children..
After listening to the above garbage, would you believe this man even if he sat in front of a Senate committee and swore that he would protect the rights of LGBTQ Americans?

I can just picture the opposition, particularly the Family Research Council, attempting to make this man a martyr.  I can almost predict the rhetoric and lies they will spin in right-wing friendly circles such as Fox News and The Daily Signal:

"Why should Mr. Mateer be persecuted and victimized for his sacred religious beliefs? Are we at a point in this country when Christians are being called "haters" and "bigots" for merely expressing their faith?"

Let me just say  that FRC president Tony Perkins, Tucker Carlson, and the rest of that group can push that manure somewhere. No one gives a damn about Mateer's religious beliefs. We do care about  his potential lack of fairness in deciding court cases.

The man stood up in a church and said that transgender children are a part of  "Satan's plan." He reduced the LGBTQ community to a stereotype of an oversexed mob determined to force their ideas on America.  So what if these are his religious beliefs? It doesn't mean they should be ignored as a potential problem regarding Mateer's possible lack of impartiality.  If that is the case, it only means that this country has learned nothing from our past when supposed religious beliefs were used to justify segregation and general discrimination against the African-American community.

Religious beliefs are sacred and should be protected to a point. But not to the point in which they are exploited as immunity for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to be chosen as an arbiter of our most sacred laws. Particularly when there is proof demonstrating that they are going to corrupt these laws. And in the case of Mateer, that proof is blinking like a giant stop sign. His comments were rude, hateful, bigoted, and shouldn't be pushed aside even if Mateer said that Jesus Himself was feeding them to him.

In spite of all attempts to dehumanize us or make us seem like the dreaded other, LGBTQs are American citizens and we are taxpayers. If there is someone who has shown him or herself as unwilling to be fair or partial to our arguments in courts, our concerns shouldn't be ignored. We shouldn't be placated with paper-thin promises given in front of Congressional committees.

And we darn sure shouldn't be shut down by guilt trips that we supposedly hate Christians and want to keep religion from the public square. We shouldn't be made to feel guilty for  wanting to have judges who will treat us fairly.

Nor will we be.

Mateer has no business even being considered as a nominee to be a federal  judge. Let me elucidate further - Mateer has no business being near a federal bench even if said bench is by the only bathroom in the vicinity and he has a serious bladder problem.

His religious beliefs aren't the problem.  His crude homophobia is.