Trump’s judicial nominee said transgender children are ‘Satan’s plan’
Speeches from 2015 have revealed a number of homophobic and transphobic comments from Jeff Mateer, Donald Trump’s nominee for a federal judgeship, including that transgender children are evidence of “Satan’s plan.”
He also said that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality, and expressed dismay at the banning of conversion therapy.
Mateer is currently the first assistant attorney general of Texas, and if confirmed by the Senate, will serve on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
At the time of the speeches he was serving as general counsel of the religious freedom advocacy group First Liberty Institute.
In a speech in May 2015 called “The Church and Homosexuality,” Mateer talked about a case in Colorado, where the parents of a young transgender girl sued her school for not allowing her to use the girl’s bathroom.
“I forget the sex, she’s a girl who thinks she’s a boy or a boy who thinks she’s a girl, it’s probably that, a boy who thinks she’s a girl,” Mateer said.
He then said “it just really shows you how Satan’s plan is working and the destruction that’s going on.”
Photo by Ralph Freso/Getty Images
He then discusses the Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed same-sex marriage, which had occurred only a few months before.
He said that now that same-sex marriage was allowed, there would be “no line,” that “disgusting” sex acts would be normalised.
“Why couldn’t four people wanna get married? Why not one man and three women? Or three women and one man? And we’re gonna spare you some of those slides. We actually have a presentation that we get into it. And I’ll tell you, we say it’s PG-13, it may be R, or what do they call the next one? NC-17 or whatever?
“There are people who marry themselves. Somebody wanted to marry a tree. People marrying their pets.
“You read the New Testament and you read about all the things and you think, ‘Oh, that’s not going on in our community.’ Oh, yes it is. We’re back to that time where debauchery rules.”
Later that year, Mateer attended a conference hosted by Kevin Swanson, a pastor who preaches death is the Biblical punishment for homosexuality.
There, Mateer spoke against the banning of conversion therapy, saying that the state was “invading” the rights of biblical therapists.
Mateer’s nomination comes as a drop in the bucket of actions Trump has taken against LGBT people, including banning transgender people from the military.
You can watch the May 2015 speech here.
https://https://vimeo.com/128615817
