William Barr Would Continue 'Trump Administration's Objective Of Erasing LGBTQ Americans'
- By
- Carlos Santoscoy
- | December 08, 2018
GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) have come out against the nomination of William Barr to head the Department of Justice (DOJ), saying that he – much like his predecessor, Jeff Sessions – is opposed to LGBT rights.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced his intention to nominate Barr to the post, saying he's “one of the most respected jurists in the country,” according to media reports.
Barr previously served in the post from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. He served as a deputy and an assistant attorney general before heading the DOJ.
“William Barr, who has wrongfully suggested that LGBTQ people – not Trump and his destructive policies – have harmed the United States, is the latest in a long line of replacements who President Trump has appointed to his Cabinet who are just as anti-LGBTQ as their predecessors,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement. “If confirmed, there’s little doubt that William Barr would continue the Trump administration’s objective of erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation.”
David Stacy, HRC's director of government affairs, said that Barr was “ill suited” to head the department.
"The Trump-Pence White House and the Justice Department have been pursuing a policy agenda to undermine the legal rights of LGBTQ people since day one," Stacy said in a statement. "From his views around HIV/AIDS during his tenure as attorney general to his more recent writing promoting extreme views around religious exemptions, William Barr looks ill suited to be our country's top law enforcement officer. The Senate has a solemn responsibility to advise and consent on this important nomination and his troubling views on LGBTQ equality and the law must be thoroughly vetted."
Barr has been outspoken in his belief that the “homosexual movement” threatens the rights of people of faith.
“It is no accident that the homosexual movement, at one or two percent of the population, gets treated with such solicitude while the Catholic population, which is over a quarter of the country, is given the back of the hand. How has that come to be?” he wrote in a 1995 article lamenting Catholics adopting “secular” values.
Faiz Shakir, national political director at the ACLU, said that Barr's “record suggests that he will follow Jeff Sessions' legacy of hostility to civil rights and civil liberties.”
The U.S Senate must confirm Barr's nomination.