The Human Rights Campaign has blasted President-elect Donald Trumps potential appointees in several key areas.
Trump is reportedly considering for his transition team candidates with histories of anti-LGBTQ_animus, including Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council, which has been designated a hate group.
“Ken Blackwell is a man who has spent his entire career going after LGBTQ. Americans,” said JoDee Winterhof, HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs. “Blackwells leadership role in President-Elect Trumps transition team should be a major wake up call for anybody who ever had any doubt that LGBTQ_people are at risk.
“Ed Meese and Kay Cole James, who are also reported to have key roles, have been vocal opponents of equality and other issues we care deeply about. The people President-Elect Trump picks to serve in his administration will have a huge impact on the policies he pursues. We should all be alarmed at who he’s appointing to key posts on his transition team.”
Blackwell is a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council, which was named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also serves on the board of directors of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. In addition to support¬ing measures to ban marriage equality, he believes being LGBTQ is a choice. He has said publicly: “The reality is, again… that I think we make choices all the time. And I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one’s genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist or might make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think that they can be changed? Yes.”
Former Attorney General Eld Meese is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, an organization that asserts that laws protecting LGBTQ_people are not “necessary” and “weaken the marriage culture and the freedom of citizens and their associations to affirm their religious or moral convictions…”
According to NBC, the conservative Heritage Foundation is helping vet candidates for Trumps Cabinet. Meese supported Indiana’s disastrous religious refusal law passed under Vice President- Elect Mike Pence, saying it “has nothing to do with refusing to serve gay people.” Meese has also said that marriage equality “shows how the culture has deteriorated over two centuries.”
Kay Cole James, president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, is a former senior vice president of the Family Research Council and a former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. She worked in the administrations of both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
In her book Transforming America from the Inside Out, James compared LGBTQ_ people to drug addicts, alcoholics, adulterers, or “anything else sinful.”
