Michael Farris

—Praised bill signed into law in Arkansas banning transgender students from participating in sports: “Congratulations to the Arkansas legislature and Governor Asa Hutchinson for enacting a bill to protect women’s sports. This is the kind of courage we need. President Trump wasn’t perfect but he showed us what a political leader would do in the face of an attack. He fought back and never caved in.”

—Vowed to “stop same-sex marriage from infecting every state in the nation.”

—Patrick Henry College, a Christian college he founded, listed “homosexual conduct” as a “nonnegotiable principle.” The school’s site reads: “We choose to limit our student body, board, and staff to those who are committed to our statement of faith. PHC is committed to a non-discriminatory policy in so far as it is consistent with our statement of faith. The practice of homosexual conduct or other extra-marital sexual relations is inconsistent with our faith position.”

—Coauthored an amicus brief arguing for the United States Supreme Court to continue criminalizing gay sex. The brief read, in part: “the history of this country reflects a deep conviction that sodomy is criminally punishable conduct and not a constitutionally protected activity.”

—Testified before Congress in favor of upholding and strengthening the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act, comparing marriage equality to bigamy: “While lawyers can make arguments about anything and find state interests that never entered the minds of the legislators who made the law, any honest person would say that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage, just as laws prohibiting bigamy, were based on traditional majority views of morality.”

—Insisted that by accepting LGBTQ youth, the Boy Scouts lost their moral character, and that his son will not be a Scout: “I have gay friends. But I do worry about a society that does not recognize homosexual practice as sin.”

—While chancellor of Patrick Henry College, gained national attention for threatening an LGBT student blog with legal action.

—Claimed Christians are headed to “heresy trials” and “the dark ages” due to marriage equality.

—Insisted that our country would begin a “fatal descent into darkness” unless Indiana’s notoriously anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” bill was allowed to stand. From Farris’ Facebook post: “Homosexuals first asked to be left alone. They won that battle. Then they asked to get married. They are on the doorstep of the final victory for that battle. Now they are demanding the right to punish anyone who refuses to join their celebration.”

—Framed Christian colleges that compromise on civil marriage rights as “dangerous” and instructed parents not to send their kids there.

—Called it an “outrage” that the U.S. Supreme Court left in place California’s state ban on so-called reparative therapy.

—Argued that “it is impossible to say that the God of the Bible would sanction rights of homosexual marriage.”