DNC Chair and DNC LGBT Caucus Chair Denounce Trump and Rubio Speaking at Anti-Gay Conference

Both Republicans Will Speak at Evangelical Conference Hosted by Anti-Gay Religious Extremist

Two top Democratic National Committee leaders are denouncing Republicans Donald Trump and Marco Rubio for speaking at a conference of evangelical Christian extremists in Orlando this week. The event, which will be attended by 700 evangelical leaders, is being organized and hosted by a far right wing political group funded by an anti-gay hate group, the American Family Association.

“Instead of honoring the memory of those we lost at Pulse two months ago, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have come to Orlando to headline a gathering of some of the nation’s most incendiary anti-gay bigots,” the statement from DNC Chair Donna Brazile and DNC LGBT Caucus Chair Earl Fowlkes reads. 

“We at the DNC join all people of good conscience in expressing our solidarity with the Orlando LGBT community as they continue to grieve the deadliest shooting in American history. We suggest Trump and Rubio disavow these anti-gay extremists who have likened gay people to Nazis and characterized HIV/AIDS as divine ‘penalties’ for being gay. Failing to do so will be yet another example of the utter lack of judgment that makes Trump unfit to serve.”

Donald Trump will speak Thursday around noon, and Marco Rubio will deliver the keynote speech Friday.

The event comes on the two month anniversary of the attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, which was the deadliest anti-gay hate crime and deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, as well as the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

American Renewal Project head David Lane, the event host, penned a 2013 op-ed calling for a “war to restore a Christian America.” 

“Homosexual totalitarianism is out of the closet, the militants are trying herd Christians there,” Lane told Bloomberg News this week.

Also speaking at Lane’s event, as Right Wing Watch reported, will be Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver, discredited “historian” David Barton, and these:

• Maine pastor Ken Graves preaches against “militant homofascism” that he says “seeks to take over our land and make it Sodom” and argues that gay people cannot build happy families because they are “depressed.”

• Bill Federer, a Religious Right activist and conspiracy theorist, believes that gay rights are bringing about the Islamist takeover of America.