Trump to join some of the most Anti-LGBTQ leaders at a conference by the Faith and Freedom Coalition

NEW YORK – GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today called out President Donald Trump for putting anti-LGBTQ activists ahead LGBTQ Americans during LGBTQ Pride Month. So far this June, Trump broke from tradition by refusing to issue a presidential proclamation that celebrates the LGBTQ community, opting instead to recognize Great Outdoors Month and National Ocean Month. Now, just days before Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Pride and the National Equality March, President Trump is going out of his way to deliver a speech to anti-LGBTQ activists at a conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. The Coalition, founded by Ralph Reed, has a long record of anti-LGBTQ activism, including opposing marriage equality and lobbying against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). 

While President Trump’s daughter Ivanka has tried to save face by issuing empty sentiments in support of Pride Month via two tweets, the Trump Administration has started Pride Month with deafening silence and continuing a trend of systematically erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation. In case Donald Trump’s anti-LGBTQ record isn’t already clear enough, take a look below at who he will be participating in the Faith and Freedom Coalition annual “Road to Majority” conference alongside. Vice President Mike Pence is also scheduled to speak at the conference.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: ANIT-LGBTQ RECORDS OF “ROAD TO MAJORITY” 2017 SPEAKERS

Ralph Reed: Founder and Chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition
— Claimed federal workplace protections for LGBTQ people would be “a dagger aimed at the heart of religious freedom for millions of Americans” and called for federal government to stop giving funding to the National Cathedral simply because of the church’s support for marriage equality.

James Dobson: Anti-LGBTQ Author and Radio Host
— Among his many false claims, Dobson has said being gay “has to do with an identity crisis that occurs too early to remember it” and that gay people “have as many as 300 to 1,000 partners in a lifetime.”  He has also falsely claimed that committed gay couples “cannot be a family” and that allowing them to get married would “destroy the family.”

Michael Medved: Radio Host and Anti-LGBTQ Advocate
— Longtime anti-LGBTQ advocate, has become increasingly focused on promoting transgender hate speech in recent years. Wrote on his website that there is an “unbridgeable distance between transgendered [sic] individuals…and natural men or women.”

Dr. Larry Arnn: Conservative Author
— Argued that “the left has convinced people to ignore the moral foundations of the U.S. Constitution to embrace that same-sex marriage is real (legal) marriage thus overturning by judicial activism hundreds of anti-sodomy laws.”

Kellyanne Conway: Counselor to the President
— Referred to a PBS kids’ show that featured lesbian parents as one of the “outside, external influences corrupting [kids’] minds and their bodies,” and called marriage equality rulings an attempt to “redefine” family to be “whatever feels cool.”

 Dr. Richard Lee: Founding Pastor of First Redeemer Church
— Signed onto an extreme statement insisting the Supreme Court had no authority to issue a marriage equality decision.

Pastor Dan Cummins: Founding Pastor of Bridlewood Church
— After the Supreme Court’s 2013 DOMA ruling, penned over-the-top column calling on anti-LGBTQ minded “hostages” in what he called “the gay zones” of America to flee to “free zones” and become “forearmed.”

Ken Cuccinelli: Former Republican Attorney General of Virginia
— Believed “homosexual acts” are “intrinsically wrong” and against “natural law.”

Pastor Jason Jimenez: Founder of Stand Strong Ministries
— Major opponent of Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance, accusing supporters of being “a bully”; coauthored a book wherein gay people are framed as “enslaved in homosexuality.”

Eric Metaxas: Conservative Author
— Extremely anti-LGBT commentator; called homosexuality a “disease,” and argued that same-sex parents endanger their children. 

Craig DeRoche: Former Member of the Michigan House of Representatives
— Allegedly blocked an anti-bullying bill because of its protection of LGBTQ students.

Reverend Gene Mills: Louisiana Family Forum
— One of the most notoriously anti-LGBTQ activists in the state of Louisiana. He once said that when LGBTQ people feel discriminated against it is really just inner “shame and guilt” they fell surrounding their “ultimate rebellion against God.”

Pat Boone: Musician and Conservative Commentator
— Aggressively anti-LGBTQ for decades. Argued that the Boy Scouts of America’s end of its ban on adult gay members would “inevitably bring about the collapse and demise of Scouting itself” and endanger America.

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