Republican former Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia has joined the Family Research Council (FRC) as a senior adviser to the anti-LGBTQ hate group’s longest-serving president, Tony Perkins. FRC helped launch the religious right as an overt political movement in the 1980s and remains one of the largest anti-LGBTQ organizations in the U.S. Hice described working for the anti-LGBTQ hate group as a “personal mission.”
At the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, D.C., last month, summit co-chairs Sam Brownback and Katrina Lantos Swett addressed a joint session. Noting the summit’s theme, “Religious Freedom for Everybody, Everywhere, All the Time,” Brownback characterized his idea of religious freedom as societies allowing “freedom for the soul and respect for each other.” But the rhetoric of individuals and groups present at the summit shows how extremists wield the language of religious freedom in a very different way: to oppress others.
The former leader of the extremist Proud Boys claimed he received from members of the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) the location of left-wing counterprotesters inside Washington, D.C. Enrique Tarrio made the claim in a deposition to the U.S. House Special Committee investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
An official in Illinois’ DuPage County GOP who frequently appears in local and national media associates with extremist groups and shares racist posts on social media, Hatewatch has found.
The mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which saw a 22-year-old man charged with hate crimes and murder on Monday, came after years of intensifying anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, acts of violence and intimidation, and discriminatory legislation from far-right individuals and groups, including powerful Republican politicians.