SPLC: Top 10 moments from the 2018 Values Voter Summit

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https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/25/top-10-moments-2018-values-voter-summit

Last year, the Values Voter Summit (VVS) was the site of a great celebration.

The Religious Right, including VVS organizer and anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council (FRC), had bet that Donald Trump could win the 2016 presidential election. When Trump won the highest proportion of the white evangelical vote on record, he — giving thanks — became the first sitting president to address the gathering.
At this year’s VVS, the tone was markedly muted in comparison. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence made predictable midterm stump speeches. Bigoted presentations and conspiratorial orations, however, remained on the menu.
Here are 10 things that were said at the annual conference that unites anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim hate groups, activists and prominent politicians.

1. Childhood molestation makes you gay
VVS’s “Student Mixer” gathered a few dozen students ranging from middle-school to college. Speakers on the panel encouraged youth “struggling” with “same-sex attraction or gender confusion” to open up to them, all the while condemning those impulses as “sins.” However, panelists professed support for Christians struggling with those sins. John Reid, the director of social media at FRC, clarified: “I say if you’re gay you’re more than welcome in our church, the doors are wide open. I don’t agree with that lifestyle, I don’t think it’s biblical but you are more than welcome to join.”
Chelsea Vicari, the evangelical program director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, said sexual sins should be tackled by the church and not treated like a “different sin”:
None of us, whatever our issues with sin are, are the sum total of those sins. And no matter what someone is dealing with, if you are struggling with same-sex attraction or gender issues, that is not your identity.
When asked by an earnest young audience member what caused “gender dysphoria,” Reid mentioned his religious roommate, who regularly broke down in tears because of his “same-sex attraction,” a fact Reid “really appreciated about him.” Reid mentioned his roommate had been molested by his uncle as a child and added, “When you’re that young and that impressionable, that kind of trauma, even if you’re very young, has long-term effects.”
Patrina Mosley, the director of Life, Culture and Women’s Advocacy at the FRC, simply deemed being transgender as an effort to “erase God’s design.” While a couple of the young audience members were enthusiastic, most seemed confused by the lack of concrete help.

2. “Transgenderism is a vehicle for tyranny”

VVS2018 Video Archive
VVS is well-known for its anti-trans rhetoric, but seldom does it manage to get so many anti-trans heavy-hitters on one panel. Anti-trans junk scientist Paul McHugh listed several discredited scientific points meant to misrepresent trans populations and described sex-reassignment surgery as only able to enhance people’s well-being for 10 years, comparing it to how some people come to regret tattoos.
He was followed by the former president (now executive director) of the anti-LGBT American College of Pediatricians, Michelle Cretella, who claimed that America is “engaged in large-scale child abuse” before showing a slide that read: “Transgenderism: a Vehicle for Tyranny.”
Elizabeth Johnston, also known as “Activist Mommy,” then addressed the war on American children and called out sex education classes as
pandering obscenity to minors. If the men in this audience were to send that material to a 13-year-old girl, they’d be locked up for pandering obscenity and for sexual grooming. So why are teachers allowed to give these materials out to children and show them videos in class that you would be locked up for showing them?
She concluded that “Conservatives have been playing much too nice with these degenerates.”

3. Brigitte Gabriel ready to take on “antifa thugs”

Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of the largest American anti-Muslim hate group, ACT For America, took to the stage with gusto and began yelling about the assault on Judeo-Christian values and the “indoctrination of Islamic propaganda” inside the classroom: “Our police are being killed by thugs and criminals while the mainstream media victimizes their killers,” she told the crowd while managing to mention the title of her new book, Rise, multiple times.
Gabriel sought to rile up the crowd with graphic descriptions of antifa thugs taking over America’s streets. “We are at war against the radical leftist element in our country that has declared war on us," Gabriel proclaimed, continuing:
America is the greatest nation on the planet. And those who are complaining about America, apologizing for America, want to bring America down to be on par with the rest of the world, we’ll tell them we’ll give them a one-way ticket to get the heck out of this country and back to whatever country of their choice and leave this country to us.

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