About 50 People Attend March ‘Celebrating Freedom From Homosexual/Transgender Lifestyles by the Grace and Power of Jesus Christ’
The Christian Right is the most virulently anti-LGBT segment of America today. The latest polls show at least six out of 10 Americans support same-sex marriage, and the 30 percent who oppose it are made up of “conservative Republicans (58 percent), Republicans overall (51 percent), Mormons (53 percent), white evangelical Protestants (58 percent) and adults in Alabama (51 percent)” – the only state where a majority oppose marriage equality.
So it should come as no surprise the only LGBT people groups like the Family Research Council and the Christian evangelical wing of the GOP “support” are so-called “ex-gay” or “formerly-LGBT” people.
On Saturday afternoon on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the religious right organized a “Freedom March” for people who believe Jesus Christ has transformed them from gay to straight.
Tens of people showed.
Among the speakers at Saturday’s “Freedom March” was conservative Elizabeth Johnston, aka, “The Activist Mommy,” who last month organized a protest that urged parents to keep their children out of school in an anti-LGBT “sit-in,” over comprehensive sex-ed classes. She recorded a crazed video titled, “They Are Coming For Our Children!”
The anti-gay hate group Family Research Council supported the protest, likening sex-ed to child molestation, and using the hashtag, #HandsOffOurKids.
Far right wing anti-LGBT activist Dr. Michael Brown, who falsely claims a new California bill that bans conversion therapy would also ban the Bible, weighed on on the march:
This woman’s Twitter bio says she’s the National Grassroots Co-Director for Patriot Voices, a PAC founded by Rick Santorum. She also thinks being LGBT is a “lifestyle.”
Some who oppose the concept of being “ex-gay” or “formerly LGBT,” because it’s not possible, and actually harmful, weighed in:
It’s important to note that so-called “conversion therapy” which portends to change LGBT people into straight or non-transgender people is fraud, as several courts have ruled. Those who undergo it have called it torture. It has been declared at best ineffective and at worst harmful by major medical organizations. And it has been linked to suicide.
Image: Screenshot via Ford Fischer/Twitter