From attacks against ‘the homosexual movement’ and ‘the HIV people’ to lamenting church and state separation as a ‘moral lobotomy,’ Barr is not only bad, he’s dangerous.
Some Americans right now are probably thinking that President Donald Trump’s announcement he will nominate William Barr as Attorney General is a good move. They would be wrong.
Barr (photo, left, with President George H.W. Bush) is a former Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. His résumé makes him seem qualified. But his history, policies, beliefs, and actions disqualify him.
William Barr is a devastating pick for LGBTQ people, people who support a woman’s right to choose, those who believe in the separation of church and state, and anyone who believes the rule of law must apply to all – including the President of the United States.
Barr served for 14 months as President George H.W. Bush’s last Attorney General. But it was during his time as Deputy Attorney General that he exposed a set of beliefs and took actions that make him not only unqualified – but dangerous.
It was the early 1990’s, and Barr was able to overturn a draft rule that would have allowed people living with HIV/AIDS to enter the United States. Not only did he stop that rule from taking effect, he proposed that even refugees living with HIV/AIDS seeking asylum not only should be barred from entering into the U.S., they should be sent to America’s military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Today, that’s where America sends enemy combatants in the war on terror.
In a 2001 interview he called people with HIV/AIDS, “the HIV people.” He bragged that he had told Colin Powell, who at the time was serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “we’re not bringing these people into the United States.”
That’s far from the only reason he should not be confirmed.
Another reason? Barr thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.
There are other statements he’s made that make clear his beliefs and interpretation of the Constitution are just plain wrong – and dangerous to a diverse, progressive America.
“This moral lobotomy of public schools has been based on extremist notions of separation of church and state or on theories of moral relativism which reject the notion that there are standards of rights or wrong to which the community can demand adherence.”
That’s what Barr had to say in 1992, on the topic of separation of church and state, as GLAAD reports in a statement sent to NCRM opposing Barr’s nomination.
“It is no accident that the homosexual movement, at one or two percent of the population, gets treated with such solicitude while the Catholic population, which is over a quarter of the country, is given the back of the hand. How has that come to be?” Barr, who is Catholic, once also said.
In that same essay Barr called for school “vouchers at the state level and ultimately at the federal level to support parental choice in education. We should press at every turn for the inclusion of religious institutions.”
GLAAD says that “like his predecessor Jeff Sessions, Barr has a vicious anti-LGBTQ history, even suggesting that equality for LGBTQ Americans has ‘led to America’s decline.'”
“William Barr, who has wrongfully suggested that LGBTQ people – not Trump and his destructive policies – have harmed the United States, is the latest in a long line of replacements who President Trump has appointed to his Cabinet who are just as anti-LGBTQ as their predecessors,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD. “If confirmed, there’s little doubt that William Barr would continue the Trump Administration’s objective of erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation.”