Potential Trump religious advisory board includes virulent homophobes

By Rob Howard
Associate Editor

Buried in Donald Trump’s outrageous and insensitive statements in the wake of the Orlando Pulse nightclub terror attack was a claim that LGBT people should like him better than Hillary Clinton, because she supports Muslim immigration, and Muslims “suppress women, gays and anyone else who doesn’t share her views or values.”

If Trump thinks he is going to win the hearts and minds of LGBT voters, he should probably look into the views of the religious advisory panel that he plans to announce this week. It includes some of the most outspoken anti-LGBT clerics in the country.

RightWingWatch.org says, “According to the Wall Street Journal, the group is likely to include longtime [Trump] supporters such as televangelist Paula White, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress.

“Others expected to join the board include Ralph Reed, who recently introduced Trump at an event hosted by his Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ronnie Floyd and Jack Graham, the current and past presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention, respectively, and Jay Strack of the Orlando-based Student Leadership University.”

In one of his sermons played on his Pathway to Victory radio ministry, Jeffress said, “Homosexuality is perverse, it represents a degradation of a person’s mind and if a person will sink that low and there are no restraints from God’s law, then there is no telling to whatever sins he will commit as well.”

Jeffress was trying to point to a right-wing talking point: the allegation that homosexuals are child molesters. He says, “There are a disproportionate amount of assaults against children by homosexuals than by heterosexuals, you can’t deny that….”

In fact, serious studies by social scientists have found that the vast majority of pedophiles identify as heterosexual.

Rev. Ronnie Floyd, the current President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), says homosexuality is a tool of Satan. He said in a sermon preached September 14, 2015, and printed today in Baptist Press’ website, “It appears now that everywhere you look, everything you read and everything you hear is about the gay lifestyle. Satan has taken his tool of homosexuality, a gross and evil sin, and done a con job on the American culture, making it seem like all is okay when you are gay. I hope you are aware that what was once subtle has now turned into the rage of a lion as brazen and threatening as anything in our culture.”

Rev. Jack Graham, one of Floyd’s predecessors at the SBC, told his congregation recently that “’the LBGT [sic] promotes a godless agenda, and now on the backs of many confused and conflicted people, are opening the door, literally, to perversion of all kinds.’ Last year, he encouraged civil disobedience to protest the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality ruling,” according to RightWingWatch.

Ralph Reed has used his Faith and Freedom Coalition to regularly attack LGBT rights, and Falwell’s Liberty University is well-known for its rules against homosexuality and support for anti-gay activism, says the website.

RightWingWatch continues, “Other Trump-backing pastors include Frank Amedia, Trump’s ‘liaison for Christian policy,’ who has described HIV/AIDS as ‘a disease that comes because of unnatural sex’ and said he would be willing to burn to death to resist LGBT rights, and Carl Gallups, a pastor who spoke before Trump at a Florida rally and whose endorsement was touted by Trump’s campaign, who believes, as we recently summarized, that ‘same-sex marriage will completely destroy society by bringing about economic turmoil, severe persecution, the ‘enslavement’ of Christians and divine punishment.’”

Trump spoke today to a gathering of hundreds of evangelicals. According to Patheos.com, “The meeting will bring together people like Tony Perkins, James Dobson, E.W. Jackson, Pat Robertson, and a host of other Christians known to readers of this site for their anti-LGBT, anti-women, anti-everything-that-is-good-and-decent rhetoric.” Perkins, Dobson and Robertson are luminaries in the anti-LGBT circle that Trump is courting for support.

Patheos says, “Trump is already trying to make good with those people by saying, earlier this year, that he would ‘strongly consider’ appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn marriage equality.”

About the religious advisory board, which the website says, “will likely advocate the same bigoted perspectives. I’m guessing few (if any) Muslims, Pagans, Hindus, atheists, and other non-Christians were even invited to be on that slate — though I’d be shocked if any of them accepted the offer.”

And still, Donald Trump continues to say that he is a strong supporter of LGBT rights. Trump has vowed, in talks with evangelicals, to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that gave same-sex couples nationwide the right to marriage.

That pledge, combined with the group he is naming to his advisory board, should convince anyone that Trump is as anti-LGBT as they come.

The Gayly – June 21, 2016 @ 3:30 p.m.