Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being accused of lying to a top Democratic Senator in an apparent attempt to hide her ties to and awareness of an anti-LGBTQ hate group that advocates for the re-criminalization of homosexuality and sterilization of transgender people.
Judge Barrett has been paid by and given speeches to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups. ADF advances its agenda by finding and litigating cases involving Christians who say they are being discriminated against for their faith by LGBTQ people, often same-sex couples.
“The head of the Alliance Defending Freedom attended the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett’s #SCOTUS nomination in the Rose Garden,” former US Senator Al Franken tweeted Wednesday.
He posted a devastating video (below) of him questioning Barrett in her 2017 judicial confirmation hearing. The video then cuts to this week’s confirmation hearing, with Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) asking her about the Alliance Defending Freedom.
“Were you aware of ADF’s decades-long efforts to re-criminalize homosexuality?” Leahy asked Barrett on Tuesday.
“I am not aware of those efforts, no,” Barrett firmly responded.
Franken adds, “I questioned her about this in 2017. She spoke to them 5 times, took money from them, and is very, very, very aware of what they do.”
Norman Orenstein, a top political scientist and a resident scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), says Barrett “lied.”