Marco Rubio to Headline Anti-LGBT Christian Event

Group’s Leader Called for ‘War to Restore a Christian America’

Republican Senator Marco Rubio will be headlining an event hosted by an anti-LGBT group that has ties to a national anti-gay hate group. The Florida senator will be the “Special Guest” of the Florida Renewal Project, an affiliate of the extremist group American Renewal Project, which is funded by the anti-gay hate group American Family Association. 

The event, titled “Rediscovering God in America,” is restricted to Christian pastors and their spouses and focuses on bringing religious leaders into the political process. It was announced by Liberty Counsel Action, the political action arm of the legal firm that represents anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis. According to a video posted on their website promoting a similar event, the goal of the gathering is to encourage pastors to “really get involved in the cultural issues of the day.”

A mission statement posted on the group’s Facebook page states that the goal of the organization is to “encourage people of faith to engage in public policy and elect leaders who will work to renew God’s vision for America.”

Among the many anti-LGBT activists scheduled to appear, as Right Wing Watch reports, is the national group’s leader David Lane, who has an extensive history of homophobic bigotry. Lane has called homosexuality “debauchery,” suggested that Christians should be prepared to martyr themselves in order to prevent marriage equality, and has said that homosexuality is a moral crisis that “threatened our utter destruction.”

Lane’s focus for several years has been to encourage anti-LGBT Christian pastors to run for political offices across local, state, and national levels. He has been closely tied to Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, and Ted Cruz, and in 2013 Lane wrote an op-ed calling for a “war to restore a Christian America.”

Marco Rubio had seemed to have shown some sympathy for the LGBT community in the aftermath of the massacre at Orlando’s LGBT nightclub Pulse. Having dropped out of his senatorial reelection race before losing his bid to obtain the Republican Party’s nomination for President, Rubio cited the Pulse tragedy as part of his motivation to reevaluate his decision not to run for reelection.

“I’ve been deeply impacted by it and I think when it visits your home states, when it impacts a community you know well, it really gives you pause, to think a little bit about your service to your country and where you can be most useful to your country,” Rubio told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

RELATED: Marco Rubio’s Top 10 Anti-Gay Statements

Rubio even seemed to offer support for the LGBT community following the attack. “This is something inspired by radical ideology, then I think common sense tells you that he targeted the gay community because of the views that exist in the radical Islamic community about the gay community,” he told CNN. “We have seen the way radical Islamists have treated gays and lesbians in other countries.”

Support for the LGBT community is a wholly uncharacteristic sentiment from Rubio, who has long been a vocal opponent of marriage equality, LGBT employment discrimination protections, and LGBT adoption. His appearance at this event would seem to suggest that his post-Pulse views on the LGBT community are likely unchanged from his views prior to the Pulse massacre.

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license