Trump’s pick for Education Secretary has made huge donations to block same-sex marriage
Donald Trump has made his selection for Education Secretary, and has chosen Betsy DeVos, who has donated large sums of money to attempt to block same-sex marriage from becoming law.
The President-elect announced his selection for Education Secretary in a statement on Wednesday.
“Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate,” Trump said.
“Under her leadership we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families. I am pleased to nominate Betsy as Secretary of the Department of Education.”
But despite thinking education should be a non-partisan issue, DeVos has made donations in the past to attempt to block equality.
Betsy and Dick DeVos donated $200,000 in a successful bid to add an anti-marriage amendment to the Michigan ballot.
The couple have campaigned for some time to privatise the education system.
The 58-year-old and her husband are billionaires and are huge supporters of the Republican Party.
The DeVos family has got a history of donating large sums of money to anti-LGBT causes, despite planning earlier this year to donate $400,000 to the OneOrlando charitable effort to help the victims of the Orlando Pulse shooting in June.
Back in 2012, the Douglas and Maria DeVos Foundation, which is supported by Amway president Doug DeVos, made a donation of $500,000 to the adamantly anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage.
Amway co-founder Richard DeVos previously $100,000 to Florida4Marriage which fought succesfully to ban same-sex marriage in the state.
Richard DeVos previously said: “You live your life the way you want to live and I’ll live mine and I won’t stick my nose in yours, but don’t keep trying to change things, that’s all.”
He also said he felt he was “hung in effigy by the gay community” after he served in President Reagan’s first AIDS commission.
“I said, ‘You are responsible for your actions, too, you know. Conduct yourself properly,’ which is a pretty solid Christian principle,” he said.
“You’ve got to take responsibility for your actions. It went from there to a series of requests for special treatment.”
