Marco Rubio is steaming mad. The Florida Republican U.S. Senator this week launched into a paranoid frenzy, furious that the “Twitter mob” supposedly hounded Twitter’s own CEO into issuing an apology after he tweeted a photo of his Chick-fil-A receipt.
Senator Rubio has spent a good part of his tenure as a lawmaker attacking the LGBT community while using his religion (well, one of them) as a shield. He literally used the Pulse massacre, where 49 people, mostly LGBT and mostly people of color, were slaughtered, as the reason to break his promise to not run for re-election.
On Tuesday, the second anniversary of the Pulse attack – which was in Orlando, a city in the state he represents – Rubio was disturbingly silent, aside from issuing a press release.
Could it be because the day before he had gone after LGBT people and their allies while defending a company that supports anti-gay hate?
“This lunacy has gone too far,” an angry Rubio, who starts his days posting a Bible verse, tweeted. “The CEO of @Twitter bullied into apology for patronizing @ChickfilA because owners support ‘biblical definition of marriage’. Holding a personal view taught by mainstream Christianity is now boycott worthy,” he claimed.
Actually, that’s false. On a number of fronts.
The CEO of Twitter was not “bullied into an apology.”
He posted this:
Here’s the “apology” he was “bullied into,” and the “bullying,” according to the CBS News article Rubio linked to. It’s a tweet by one Soledad O’Brien, who a decade ago was lauded by a Catholic publication as a journalist who “extends traditional Catholic values to her children.”
But the Florida Republican wasn’t finished yet.
He went after “the twitter mob,” who were mostly, judging by the comments, people LGBT and not LGBT, who supported or opposed eating at the religious purveyor of chicken fast food.
And here’s where Rubio totally lied.
He claimed that the problem the LGBT community (and not even all of the LGBT community) has with Chick-fil-A is not “b/c owner agrees with what his church teaches about marriage,” but because of what the owner, Dan Cathy, has said and done against LGBT people.
Cathy and Chick-fil-A have donated millions to anti-gay and anti-LGBT organizations, and even at least one hate group. They have supported organizations that advocate for harmful “conversion therapy,” which has been linked to suicide.
Cathy has not just said that he opposes same-sex marriage because his church tells him to. It’s because pf other remarks Cathy has made.
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say ‘we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about,” Cathy said, in an attack on the marriages of same-sex couples.
And he referred to those marriages as “twisted up kind of stuff,” while suggesting those who approve of marriage equality have a “deprived mind.”
Back to Rubio’s rant.
“Why would twitter mob stop at biz owned by Christians? Who is next? Christian schools? Christian charities?”
Seriously?
He ended with this:
No one came after Jack Dorsey’s business or job.
Marco Rubio is just plain lying.
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Image of Marco Rubio by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license