NEW YORK – This afternoon, reports surfaced that the White House is set to announce the appointment of Sheriff David Clarke to be Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Partnership and Engagement, adding yet another anti-LGBTQ activist to the most anti-LGBTQ administration in recent memory.

From saying transgender Americans “suffered from mental disorders” to calling on Americans to “rage, then revolt” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s history marriage equality ruling in 2015, David Clarke’s anti-LGBTQ history runs deep. Check out all of Clarke’s anti-LGBTQ record (and more) and via GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: David Clarke – Possible Assistant Secretary, DHS Office of Partnership and Engagement

Anti-Trans Statements

• Said transgender people “suffer from mental disorders” and are “freakish”: “Folks, more evidence that transgender persons suffer from mental disorders more than physiological disorders…Too often in this assault on the First Amendment, and this very totalitarian attitude from the left that any freakish lifestyle, any marginal lifestyle, is now considered part of the norm, and they’re shoving it down our throats. So if you’re not careful when you engage in this conversation, they’ll look for the trap, and they’ll catch you saying something that’s clumsy or not well articulated, and then they’ll just attack you – they’ll attack you with it. ‘Transgender phobic’ and all this other nonsense.”
• Tweeted that a supportive mother of a transgender elementary school student is guilty of “child abuse.”
• Mocked the idea that transgender people should have a right to use the bathroom: “How did America go from a nation that figured out how to get a man on the moon to one with people confused about what public bathroom to use.”

Anti-Marriage Statements

• Insisted: “There is no constitutional “right” to marry. It is a “state” sanctioned ritual based on ordering our society.”
• Tweeted in response to the 2015 Supreme Court marriage ruling, said he was “born to kick liberal ass.”
• Responded to the 2015 Supreme Court marriage ruling, called on citizens to “rage, then revolt.”

Statement on Mike Pence’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)

• Tweeted that Indiana Republicans were “selling true conservatives into PC slavery” when they compromised on a so-called “religious freedom” bill to make it clear that the law could not be used to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Miscellaneous

• Claimed President Obama has started a “race war.”
• Claimed “Planned Genocide” is the mission of Planned Parenthood.
• Said: “Let me tell you why blacks sell drugs and involve themselves in criminal behavior, instead of a more socially acceptable lifestyle: because they’re uneducated, they’re lazy, and they’re morally bankrupt. That’s why.”
• Insisted “Black Lies Matter will join forces with ISIS to being [sic] down our legal constituted republic.”
• Suggested that the president should suspend habeas corpus and send people to Guantanamo Bay without due process: “I suggest that our commander in chief ought to utilize Article I, Section 9 and take all of these individuals that are suspected, these ones on the internet spewing jihadi rhetoric…to scoop them up, charge them with treason and, under habeas corpus, detain them indefinitely at Gitmo.”

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