Anti-LGBTQ religious right pushing passive-aggressive support of Trump's attempted election coup

Gary Bauer (top pic) and Tony Perkins (bottom pic) are just two members of the anti-LBGTQ religious right giving passive-aggressive support to Trump's attempt to steal election from Joe Biden.

How does the anti-LGBTQ religious right stand on Trump's attempt to cheat his way to second term in spite of the fact that he clearly lost the election to Joe Biden?

Do I even have to ask? 

On Thursday, Trump's legal team, led by former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, held a press conference about the matter. It was panned as bizarre and surreal but totally devoid of any proof that Trump had been cheated out of a second term.

According to one Mediate article:

Not even Vincent LaGuardia Gambini could successfully litigate the groundless voter fraud cases being brought to various state courts by President Donald Trump’s campaign. But that isn’t stopping Rudy Giuliani from trying — by summoning the spirit of the titular lawyer from the ’90s comedy classic My Cousin Vinny, no less. In an utterly bizarre sequence during a Thursday news conference in Washington, the former New York mayor channeled his Big Apple compatriot, actor Joe Pesci, in an effort to claim that Trump campaign representatives were stationed too far away to meaningly observe the ballots being tallied. (The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected this claim on Tuesday.) 

 And Giuliani wasn't the only one called out for oddball behavior:

Rudy Giuliani got things off to a wild start at the press conference held by President Donald Trump’s legal team, but Sidney Powell was next up to speak, and she cranked things up a notch…or several. Powell, known for representing Michael Flynn before Trump, spoke days after after claiming that the CIA is involved in the Dominion voter fraud conspiracy theory, which has been embraced by Trumpworld since the 2020 election ended. She began by claiming that the “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China” is the reason why Joe Biden won.

And besides Twitter, several members of the media were highly critical. CNN's Jake Tapper called it a "hot mess" while Fox News's Kirsten Fisher played fact-checker supreme by pointing out the many lies Giuliani and company told

However at One News Now, a "news source" run by anti-LGBTQ hate group the American Family Association, the reaction to the press conference was, shall we say, a bit more positive to Trump's point of view. Not only that, but the article included comments from various religious right figures which left me wondering just what press conference had they viewed:

"I just found myself hoping and praying that enough Americans were hearing [this new conference] because through the filter of the news, many of them will never know any of that. And I think no matter what side you're on, you're going to be concerned if you hear the evidence that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell laid out about the corruption in this election." - Sandy Rios, American Family Association 

 "We haven't seen the evidence yet – we today heard it described and it's very troubling … and I certainly believe that Donald Trump and Mike Pence won the presidential election. But courts are going to be very reticent to take the risk of throwing out legitimate votes because other votes were illegal or produced from fraud." - Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families 

 "The Trump campaign conference this morning gave me hope: hope that there are still some truly great Americans who love this country enough to go to the mat to save it." Janet Mefferd, Christian radio talk-show host

And it gets more interesting. 

There was also another ugly situation this week involving the election. This time, it had to do with the Wayne Board County of Canvassers in Michigan.

On Tuesday, the board, which certifies local election results before sending them along to the state board, held a public meeting. By any reasonable measure, this should have been a quick vote to certify the results, as usually happens after such a clean and relatively smooth election. Instead, the two Republican members of the board — who are both white — refused to certify the vote count, angering and bewildering the two Democratic members, who are both Black.

Their formal excuse for this refusal to was that the vote count apparently included a few minor mistakes and anomalies, of the sort that occur in any election, in the precinct counting reports. This would, at most, affect a few hundred votes in a county where Joe Biden won by 350,000 votes. The real reasons, of course, were racism and a desire to steal the election for Trump. The two Republicans, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, were making a last-ditch attempt to keep the votes of Detroit, a city whose population is nearly 80% Black, out of the final Michigan vote count. 

. . .After being the target of the wrath of the citizens of Wayne County for the next two hours, Palmer and Hartmann cracked and voted to certify the election. But after talking on the phone with Trump himself later on Tuesday night, the two circled around again, demanding a chance to rescind their votes. They are continuing to push baseless conspiracy theories clearly meant to imply that there’s something shady about the very concept of treating Detroit’s election the same way elections everywhere els are treated.

Another Trump-supporting anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Family Research Council, claimed that the canvassers were forced to certify the election results by threats and supposed false cries of racism:

Can liberal party officials actually harass Republicans into certifying county election results? It looks that way in Michigan, where a sudden decision to formalize Wayne County's tally has onlookers shaking their heads. For days, the two parties were at loggerheads, voting 2-2 to keep the results from being finalized. That all changed overnight -- and now, we may know why: the GOP canvassers and their families were threatened, doxxed, and shamed. Conservatives can be called racist for anything these days, including, it turns out, asking for a fair and honest election. 

FRC glossed over the fact that charges of racism were appropriate, seeing  that one of the canvassers said she would only certify communities which conveniently happened to be predominantly white suburbs and the other canvasser had shared  inappropriate racist memes such as the following:

Did a cruise through Wayne County Canvassing Board member William Hartmann's public Facebook posts. He's a Republican, so not a surprise he is a BIG Trump supporter

I'll let you judge a sample of posts I pulled from 2010. He voted not to certify Wayne County's ballots. pic.twitter.com/vGZt8mGeCF

— Del Quentin Wilber (@DelWilber) November 18, 2020

The point is while groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association and religious right figures such as Gary Bauer aren't up-front with their support of Trump's attempt to steal the election from Biden, they still seem to be on board via passive-aggressive actions. These actions are similar to how they behaved during heyday of the Trump Administration. When they couldn't be vocal with their support of whatever action Trump was committing for the sake of propriety, they pushed "reasons" why said action could be seen as appropriate. 

You see that with FRC defending the Michigan canvassers. It wasn't racism, the group claims, but simply an attempt to ask for a fair election.

It's transparent garbage. And of course highly hypocritical of these groups and figures who seem to be using morality as some sort of dodge.  On more than one occasion FRC, AFA and the rest have spewed predictions of doom for America if the LGBTQ community was given so much as a small degree of support.  How many times have we've had to hear nonsense about America "being on the brink" or America "falling out of God's grace" if even an iota of acknowledgement that LGBTQ rights are human rights was affirmed?

Apparently in their world, God is so busy trying to clamp down on LGBTQ people that He seems to be ignoring coup attempts. In actuality, these folks are attempting to play both sides of the game. Keep their unearned and supposed upstanding reputations while exploiting those reputations to support acts which are far from upstanding.

I'll say one thing on Trump's behalf, though. He may be an incompetent failure who hasn't accomplished hardly a thing as president, but he's certainly gotten the religious right to show their true faces. I just hope America remembers these faces after he's gone.