Jenna Ellis, a top adviser for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, apparently thinks same-sex marriage is comparable to bestiality and pedophilia. She also supports criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual encounters.
When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages nationwide, Ellis told the Apologetics.com’s radio show in May 2016, “It’s setting the stage for polyamory, bestiality and eventually pedophilia…. We are saying any sexual urge is valid. So pedophilia, why is that any different than any other form of love? Love is love, right?”
Right-wing conservatives have long linked the LGBTQ movement to people who sexually prey on children, a connection that empowers others to exclude, harass, attack, and even kill queer people under the guise of “protecting kids.”
In her 2015 book, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution, Ellis wrote that she disagrees with the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating anti-gay sodomy laws nationwide. While such laws theoretically criminalized oral and anal sex for all adults, police and state governments mostly used them as justifications for criminalizing private same-sex sexual encounters between consenting adults.
She said the 2003 ruling “ignored the immorality of homosexuality” and”set the groundwork for open celebration of homosexuality and all kinds of deviant sexual behavior with any coupling or grouping.”
In short, Ellis was okay with arresting and throwing gay adults in prison for having consensual sex behind closed doors.
Ellis is also an attorney who worked as the director of public policy for the James Dobson Family Institute. Dobson is a longtime anti-LGBTQ evangelical bigot. However, her views as Trump’s re-election advisor might find welcome among the approximately 81% of Evangelical voters who supported Trump in the 2016 election. Evangelicals remain the religious denomination most opposed to LGBTQ equality.