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| Mark Harris |
According to Patheos:
Incumbents are typically favored in American elections, but that didn’t save GOP politician Rep. Robert Pittenger from his primary challenger, the anti-gay pastor Mark Harris last night. The surprise upset puts Harris, who helped lead the fight to ban same-sex marriage in North Carolina, against Democrat and Marine Corps veteran Dan McCready. It also puts a somewhat reliable Republican seat into a toss-up.
. . . Harris isn’t just a pastor; he is a fiercely anti-LGBTQ activist known for opposing civil rights and claiming that being gay is a choice. He is best known as a point man for a state amendment to ban same-sex marriages that was ultimately found unconstitutional. More recently, he led forces to repeal protections in Charlotte for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals.
And don't think for a second that marriage equality being legalized by SCOTUS will cause Harris to respect it should he get elected to Congress. On his campaign webpage, Harris said he would support conservative judges who would "revisit" the marriage equality ruling; the translation being he would support putting people on the bench whom he knows would strike down marriage equality before they were even sworn in.
A former blogging compadre of mine, Jeremy Hooper, has a long file on Harris from when he covered the 2012 NC marriage equality vote. The following audio of Harris denigrating marriage equality and the LGBTQ community (in the name of religion, of course) is all you need to hear to know that if this man went to Congress, life for us would become more difficult. It's bad enough that the anti-LGBTQ industry already has much of Trump's attention and a hand in developing policies. Just think of how much more anti-gay havoc Harris would help them cause.
