Matt Staver of the Liberty Counsel
Bil Browning over at LGBTQ Nation posted an interesting article this morning (Wednesday, Jan. 9), about how Mat Staver, founder of the right-wing hate group Liberty Counsel, is campaigning against passage of a federal anti-lynching law because the law includes protections for LGBT people
Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Corey Booker, D-N.J. — the three black members of the Senate — introduced the anti-lynching bill last month, and it passed in the Senate in what Browning described as “a rare unanimous vote.”
But for Staver, the bill is obviously just a plot by all of us evil, scheming homos to take over the world, starting with the U.S. government. He told right-wing news site OneNewsNow that the Senate only passed the bill because some Senate members didn’t realize that “an amendment was added providing special rights for homosexuals and transgenders.”
Staver claims that LGBT activists are using the anti-lynching bill to sneak the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” into a law at the federal level, telling OneNewsNow, “The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in. And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation as part of this anti-lynching bill.”
(First of all, what the hell old saying is that? Has anyone else ever heard that? And second, Staver is full of crap. “Sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are included in federal hate crimes protections, as Bil Browning points out.)
Staver also told OneNewsNow that since “no one can or should oppose a bill that bans lynching,” LGBT activists are using is it as a “back door approach to pass legislation such as the controversial Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Staver said: “”So far they’ve been unsuccessful over the many years in the past, but this is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler at some time in the future.”
I have no idea what poor juggler they plan to go after or why they don’t like jugglers. Unless, maybe, it’s an LGBT juggler with rainbow balls.
Staver told OneNewsNow his organization is lobbying against the bill in the House in an effort to either defeat the measure or have the amendment including LGBT protections removed.
— Tammye Nash
