Anti-LGBT Groups Launch Movement Against Federal Equality Act

The GTFM officially debuted at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, where participants decried the Equality Act, which has been introduced in Congress in one form or another since 1974 but has never passed. It has renewed support in 2019 from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is committed to passing it.

The GTFM attempts to link LGBT people to pedophilia and refers to the Equality Act as “The Pedophilia Act.” The movement’s website is filled with false assertions that LGBT people are attempting to recruit or assault children.

The site includes a “Proclamation for Morality” and claims that “the consumption of fecal matter” is a common sexual practice among gay men, and homosexuality is a behavioral choice caused by childhood sexual abuse, a common myth among anti-LGBT activists. Visitors to the site are invited to sign their name in support.

The following people spoke at the press conference:

• Scott Lively, best-known for being sued for violating human rights in Uganda and for the pseudohistorical book The Pink Swastika, which claimed gay men were responsible for the Nazi party and the Holocaust
• Peter LaBarbera, director of anti-LGBT hate group Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH), who believes that pedophilia “is a subset of the larger deviance of homosexuality”
• Randy Short, an advocate of anti-LGBT and anti-Soros conspiracy theories
• Stephen Broden, senior pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship, Dallas, Texas, and a Texas Republican congressional candidate with Tea Party ties who peddles conspiracy theories and rails against the “New World Order”
• Stephen Black, executive director of Oklahoma’s ex-gay ministry First Stone Ministries
• Dan Fisher, pastor and former Oklahoma state representative who introduced an anti-trans bathroom bill into the state legislature

Each speaker expressed a litany of grievances against LGBT people and the Equality Act during the over 90-minute event, with a focus on homosexuality and “transgenderism” as behaviors that are not immutable characteristics and therefore are ineligible for protection under the Civil Rights Act.

Randy Short, the first speaker, set the tone of the event, proclaiming, “Today is the day that we declare war on those who are ungodly, unbiblical and wicked.” Short went on to say that “we are sick and tired of all the deviants, all the eugenicists, all the homophiles coming out of the closet to destroy this country.” “We have a group,” Short said, in reference to LGBT people, “that nobody wants, that has decided like a parasite to hook itself to the history and legacy of the African American people.”

Other speakers offered warnings about the “homosexual and pedophile agendas.” Stephen Black claimed bans on pseudoscientific and harmful conversion (ex-gay) therapy are a way to “take our sexually confused youth and bind them into LGBTQ chaos.” Scott Lively warned of nondiscrimination policies including LGBT people that are “the seed that contains the entire tree of the LGBT agenda and all of its poisonous fruit.” According to Lively, LGBT people are introducing the pedophilia agenda through the “transgenderization of the children” while Peter LaBarbera said that nondiscrimination means discrimination against Christians.

GTFM is currently promoting the upcoming “God’s Voice: A Biblical Response to the Queering of the Church” conference, slated for Oklahoma City on Feb. 22 and 23. LaBarbera and Black, members of the GTFM organizing committee, will also be spreading their message there.

Photo illustration by SPLC