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Trump and Pence Host Virulently Anti-LGBTQ Pastor In Oval Office to Deliver Easter Blessing

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Bishop Harry Jackson, who delivered the presidential Easter blessing, has a history of opposing marriage equality and was once on NOM’s payroll.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hosted Bishop Harry Jackson, a virulently anti-LGBTQ activist, in the Oval Office Friday to deliver an Easter Blessing.

Trump introduced Jackson as a “highly-respected gentleman,” and “a person that we have tremendous respect for.” Jackson in turn praised Trump for his “insightful leadership” of ensuring churches were eligible for financial support in the $2.2 trillion emergency coronavirus bill.

Jackson informed Trump that Good Friday is “one of the darkest days” in the Christian faith. It is the day Christ is believed to have died on the cross. Barely hours earlier Trump had offensively tweeted, “HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY TO ALL!” earning him broad anger and mockery.

Bishop Jackson was a prominent activist during the years before the Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples have the right to marriage, and was paid $20,000 by the National Organization For Marriage (NOM).

In 2008 Jackson said, “There’s been a hijacking of the civil rights movement by the radical gay movement,” and declared, “You can’t equate your sin with my skin.”

Jackson has equated marriage equality with the “extinction of marriage.”

Candidate Trump appointed Jackson to his Evangelical Executive Advisory Board in 2016.

Full video:

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo by Jim Acosta via Mark Knoller/Twitter

White House Livestreams Pastor Saying ‘Demonic Spirit’ Causes Homosexuality

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The anti-LGBTQ remarks occurred during a livestream of an event where Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a Memphis church. The White House’s YouTube channel broadcast the whole thing.

Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Tennessee this weekend to deliver a speech at a predominantly Black Memphis-area church, just one day before the nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. But it’s not Pence’s remarks that are making headlines. Instead, those of Bishop Jerry Wayne Taylor, who attacked gay people during his sermon – which the White House streamed live – are drawing criticism.

Bishop Taylor, the pastor and founder of the Holy City Church of God In Christ (COGIC), told his 800-member congregation, the Vice President, and the 67,000 people who have viewed the sermon on the White House’s YouTube channel, that homosexuality is caused by “a demonic spirit,” and is wrong because of people’s “plumbing,” while making a gay panic “joke,” as LGBTQ Nation reported.

“We got to expose what the devil is doing,” Bishop Taylor insisted, claiming the devil is “trying to destroy the foundation of marriage,” and “destroy the reproductive process.”  The references are to same-sex marriage, and presumably to contraception and abortion, all issues his church opposes.

“Two men can’t have a baby,” Taylor continued, trying to make his case, while ignoring modern medicine and that same-sex couples can and do adopt, giving children in need loving homes. “Two women can’t have a baby.”

“It’s a demonic spirit that causes another woman to want to lie with another woman,” Taylor professed. “It’s a demonic spirit that causes another man, a man to be attracted to another man.”

“And then the man gets attracted to me and he’ll get in trouble – don’t put your hands on me,” he said, mocking gay people as his congregation laughed at his gay panic “joke.”

“God didn’t make us for that. He made a man to be a man. Somebody said, ‘If you want to know what God made you, when you go to the bathroom just check your plumbing.’ What kind of plumbing are you using?”

Not only did the White House live-stream the entire sermon, it included the video in its YouTube channel.

Neither a warning nor an apology is included.

The Vice President has not made any apologies either.

Watch (relevant remarks begin around the 2:42:53 mark):

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Images via NCRM.

Pence Brags About Trump Allowing Adoption Agencies ‘Right’ to Ban LGBTQ Parents

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“We will stand for the freedom of religion,” Vice President Mike Pence said, defending the Trump administration move to allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Vice President Mike Pence this week attended a federal government event during which he bragged about the Trump administration’s latest attack on LGBTQ people. The vice president (video below) heralded a fast-tracked proposed policy from the Dept. of Health and Human Services that would reverse an Obama-era rule barring discrimination by adoption and foster care agencies against LGBTQ people and same-sex couples.

The proposed rollback of that rule is expected to go into effect in just a few weeks, granting government protection to religious, faith-based, or any other adoption organization that wishes to claim a moral opposition to LGBTQ people from facing a loss of federal funding.

“We will stand for the freedom of religion and we will stand with faith-based organizations to support adoption,” Vice President Pence told supporters at an HHS event Tuesday, as he pounded his fists on the podium, to cheers.

“I couldn’t be more proud that at President Trump’s direction and with the strong support of leaders across foster care, adoption, and our faith communities, we’ve taken decisive action,” Pence bragged.

That “decisive action” literally reduces the pool of prospective parents for large numbers of children who don’t have parents or homes.

“More than 100,000 foster children are awaiting adoption, according to government data, but a constellation of religious agencies refuse to consider same-sex parents when placing these children,” NBC News reports. “Shortly before the end of his second term, President Barack Obama changed nondiscrimination rules governing adoption agencies to expand the definition of groups protected against discrimination to include LGBTQ people. Trump’s proposed rule change will undo that.”

In fact, same-sex couples have far higher rates of adopting and fostering children than their different-sex couple peers.

“A 2018 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 1 in 5 of the estimated 114,000 same-sex couples raising children in the United States are raising adopted or foster children — significantly higher than the 3 percent of heterosexual couples doing so,” reported NBC News.

The latest discriminatory HHS rule Vice President Pence bragged about comes from Roger Severino, HHS’s Director of the Office of Civil Rights. Severino is known as a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist who previously served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He also once served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM. Video via Washington Blade/Facebook. Hat tip: Towleroad

Mike Pence Blasted For Appearing with Anti-LGBTQ Extremists Three Times in Five Days

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The Vice President continues to be blatant in his support for the erosion of LGBTQ rights, and his support of those who work against us.

Vice President Mike Pence has spent three of the past five days appearing at conferences and on stage with anti-LGBTQ extremists, including one who calls gay people “terrorists” and compares them to ISIS, as well as a group that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Some are starting to notice and call him out for it.

“Less than a week after appearing at an Erick Erickson-sponsored conference, and a day after appearing with anti-LGBTQ extremist Sam Brownback, Mike Pence continues his anti-LGBTQ crusade with an appearance at an event organized by the anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom,” the Human Rights Campaign says in an email. HRC points to the Vice President’s “close ties” to ADF, a group that HRC says “is among the most horrific of any group operating in the United States.”

The Vice President late Tuesday morning addressed the ADF, a group that successfully represented an anti-gay Christian baker at the U.S. Supreme Court and works to deprive LGBTQ people of their civil rights, while offering false narratives. Pence, speaking at the Ritz-Carlton in Arlington, Virginia, bragged that he and the Trump administration have “taken action to protect the conscience rights of doctors and nurses and healthcare providers,” and “gone to court to protect the right to religious expression in the public square,” while praising the ADF for being “there every step of the way.”

The Trump administration claims it is working to decriminalize homosexuality around the world (there do not appear to be any public reports on its progress) and yet the Vice President is bragging about his work with the ADF, a group that, according to HRC, “believes in the re-criminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and across the globe.”

ADF also “has advocated for the sterilization of trans people,” and its “extremist views have found their way into Trump administration and state legislative actions.”

Mike Pence Does Not Understand Double Entendres

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This week, Vice President Pence told an interviewer that people should “spend more time on their knees than on the internet.” Yeah, he really said that.

There are a lot of things that Vice President Mike Pence does not understand, and as his time in public office goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that double entendres are on that list.

The second family continued their reign this week as one of the most hated families in the country, as Second Lady Karen Pence came further under fire for her part-time teaching gig at a notoriously anti-LGBTQ Christian School, the Immanuel Christian School, located in Springfield, VA. The school bans both LGBTQ students and students with LGBTQ parents.

Unsurprisingly, Pence was shocked and confused that anyone would take issue with such an institution, in this day and age of legalized marriage for LGBTQ couples and the battling of basic human rights. 

“We honestly didn’t see that one coming. Our kids went to this school,” Pence told the Washington Times, a notoriously conservative newspaper located in the Washington D.C. area.

Naturally the vice president took to prayer to “get his family through this time.” Even more naturally, he was careless with his verbiage and made a response to critics of his wife and family, attempting to encourage them to spend more time in prayer as well.

Except that’s not how he worded it.

“No. 1 is, spend more time on your knees than on the internet,” said Pence. “Forgiveness is a great gift.”

Of course, Pence’s defense throughout the ongoing storm of criticism his wife has received for this teaching gig has been “religious freedom.” Fortunately for us, there’s another freedom Pence seems to care less about: freedom of speech. And no one used their speech to deliver a report better than the queen of wrong-place/right-time, Monica Lewinsky. 

Kudos to Lewinsky for taking a cubic zirconium moment and turning it into a diamond.

As for Pence, he might want to hire an interpreter. We’re certainly not applying for the job, though.

Photo via Mike Pence/Facebook

Buttigieg Says He’d Like to See Pence ‘Evolve’ on LGBTQ Rights – and Not Use Religion ‘To Harm People’

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Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic Party’s first openly gay presidential candidate, has been pushing back against Vice President Pence’s anti-gay agenda throughout his campaign.

2020 Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg is responding to attacks from Vice President Mike Pence, who says the South Bend, Indiana mayor’s belief that God makes people gay infringes on his First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

The Vice President is “entitled to his religious beliefs,” says Buttigieg, who has been mayor since 2012, which includes Pence’s tenure as Governor of Indiana. “My problem is when those religious beliefs are used as an excuse to harm other people,” Buttigieg explained on CNN Tuesday.

Buttigieg reminded viewers that Pence “advanced a discriminatory bill in 2015, under the guise of religious freedom, that said it was lawful to discriminate, provided you invoked religion as your excuse.”

“This isn’t about him as a human being,” Buttigieg added, apparently pushing back against Pence’s false claim that Buttigieg has attacked him personally.

“This is about policies that hurt people, policies that hurt children,” says the South Bend mayor, who would turn 39 the day before being sworn in to office should he win the Democratic nomination and beat Donald Trump.

Buttigieg charges that “to this day” the Vice President “hasn’t brought himself to say that it shouldn’t be legal to discriminate against people in this country because they’re LGBT.”

He notes that Pence “seems to be OK” with allowing LGBTQ people to be denied housing and services, and to be fired because they are LGBTQ.

“I would love to see him evolve on that issue,” Buttigieg said, noting that it’s “part of faith, that all of us can evolve and can grow better.”

Buttigieg, who served in the U.S. Navy as a Lieutenant in Afghanistan, also accused Pence of being against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because “he felt it was too pro-gay. He wanted to make sure that even closeted members couldn’t serve.”

He also called on Vice President Pence to “clear up” his positions against LGBTQ equality and civil rights.