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Todd Starnes
Conservative Commentator
Radio Host
—Fox News contributor and former Fox News Radio host.
—On his radio show, echoed right-wing pastor Franklin Graham‘s opposition to a state law that requires schools to teach about LGBTQ history. Graham said that a New Jersey mayor opposing the law “is absolutely right… This is an affront to God and I don’t believe that the schools have the right to teach our children something that is an affront to God.… God made us and created us, he made us male and female so that we could carry on the population, so that we have children and that we would increase, and homosexuality goes against God’s plan for the human race.”
—Opposed Illinois’s HB 246, which would require teaching LGBTQ-inclusive U.S. history (i.e., not omitting figures including Alan Turing and Bayard Rustin), Starnes said, “I’m confused here why the boys and girls need to learn about people simply because of… who they go to bed with. I mean, that’s really what this is about. I mean, we’re talking about highlighting people based on their sexuality. I mean, where are the heterosexual history classes, I mean, if you’re going to go down that path?”
—Said the Frito-Lay company was supporting “godless sickos” when it issued a limited-release rainbow Dorito.
—Attacked a lesbian kiss on network television, calling it “stuff that would make Mickey Mouse blush.”
—Mocked trans soldiers: “Within the ranks of the greatest fighting force known to mankind—the baby’s daddy could also be the baby’s momma.”
—On business owners who are simply told they must serve the public equally said, “It’s hard to imagine a time in American history where Christians were treated with such disregard and shuttled off to reeducation camps so they can be deprogrammed…. First, the LGBT activists came for the flower shops and the photographers. Then, they came for the bakers. And unless we draw a line in the sand, they may one day come for you and your business.”
—When the Supreme Court overturned the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, responded: “Supreme Court overrules God.”
—Claimed that a same-sex wedding ceremony performed live on network TV was “sick,” “bashing God,” and “cramming a social agenda down our throats.”
—Suggested condemnation of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is a sign of the “end of days.”
—Agreed with talk show host who suggests man-on-dog marriage will follow from same-sex marriage. “When you redefine marriage, that means anything goes,” answered Starnes.
—Mocked transgender and gender nonconforming people by writing: “I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the pearly gates on rapture day when all these folks have to explain why they’ve got extra parts the original models didn’t have.”
—Crudely condemned potential transgender beauty pageant contestants by writing, “in the future some of you will have little boy parts.“
—Denigrated transgender woman as a “burly man wearing a dress.”
—Refers to public schools as “indoctrination centers” for marriage equality.
—Claims President Obama is turning America into pre-Nazi Germany.
—When activists and journalists made note of a pastor’s own anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, ultimately leading that pastor to drop out of a planned prayer at the presidential inauguration, Starnes accused his critics of being “anti-Christian Heterophobic bigots.”
—Took to Twitter one afternoon for the sole purpose of mocking attendees at a Gay Pride Parade; in separate instance, Starnes wrote: “It’s Gay Pride Day in Brooklyn and our local children’s park looks like the bar scene in Star Wars. And you won’t believe what they’re doing on the monkey bars.
Carlos Maza has done extensive coverage of Todd Starnes’ anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. More from Maza here.
The GLAAD Accountability Project catalogs anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and discriminatory actions of politicians, commentators, organization heads, religious leaders, and legal figures, who have used their platforms, influence and power to spread misinformation and harm LGBTQ people.
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