NEW YORK – Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, released the following statement after it was announced Steve Bannon is out as White House Chief Strategist for the Trump Administration.

“Steve Bannon has built a career peddling white nationalism and placing large targets on the backs of marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people. From Day One, President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women, and anti-LGBTQ activists aimed at strengthening institutional discrimination and erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation. Steve Bannon may have resigned, but the fact that he even held the position of White House Chief Strategist is chilling, completely unacceptable, and will not be forgotten.” 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Steve Bannon’s History Targeting Marginalized Communities, Including LGBTQ People  

• Called Islam is “the most radical” religion in the world and the U.S. is engaged in a civilizational struggle potentially leading to “a major shooting war in the Middle East again.
• David Duke, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan called President Trump’s selection of Bannon “excellent,” adding that Bannon was “basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going.” Peter Brimelow, who runs the racist site VDare, said that the Bannon hire was “amazing.”
• Told listeners of his Breitbart News Daily radio show that the United States and the Western world are engaged in a “global existential war,” and he entertained claims that a “fifth column” of Islamist sympathizers had infiltrated the U.S. government and news media.”
• Insisted progressives have a victim mentality: “They’re either a victim of race. They’re victim of their sexual preference. They’re a victim of gender. All about victimhood and the United States is the great oppressor, not the great liberator.”
• Bragged that under his chairmanship, Breitbart became “the platform for the alt-right.” Former Breitbart writer Ben Shapiro, a staunch conservative himself, says Bannon “allowed the site to be taken over and used by a bunch of alt-right people who are not fond of Jews, are not fond of minorities.”
• Under his chairmanship, Breitbart News became known for headlines such as “Trannies 49Xs Higher HIV Rate,” “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,” “Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage” and “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.” The site also purposely misgenders prominent transgender activists.
•  Boasted of Breitbart’s socially conservative influence: “On the social conservative side, we’re the voice of the anti-abortion movement, the voice of the traditional marriage movement, and I can tell you we’re winning victory after victory after victory.”
•  Claimed Target’s inclusivity of transgender individuals is “trying to exclude people who are decent, hard-working people who don’t want their four-year-old daughter to have to go into a bathroom with a guy with a beard in a dress.”
• After “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson made a spate of anti-LGBTQ comments, Bannon gave him an award.
• Invited author Robert Reilly onto his Breitbart radio show in order to promote his aggressively anti-LGBTQ propaganda book, Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything.
•  In a sworn statement, his ex-wife accused him of not liking Jews: “…the biggest problem he had with Archer [School for Girls] is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.”
•  A former colleague of Bannon told The New York Times: “Mr. Bannon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners. “I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “He said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
• Bemoaned the (factually wrong) idea that “two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia.”
•  Aggressively promoted a book calling for civil and criminal prosecutions of President Obama, calling it “a stunning indictment of a presidency out of control, and a roadmap for citizens and legislators.
•  Helped promote the conspiracy theory that Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who is of Pakistani and Indian descent, is connected to terrorism.
• Neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer sums up Bannon’s beliefs: “If politics is about friend vs. enemy, then we definitely count Steve Bannon as a friend. He is on the side of the national populist revolution. His enemies are our enemies.”
•  Insisted Catholics support Hispanic immigration because they want to boost church attendance.