Power

GOP Presidential Candidates to Speak Alongside Anti-LGBTQ Pastor and Radio Host

Conference organizers announced that more than 1,600 people are expected to attend the National Religious Liberties Conference, which will include scheduled appearances by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal—all strident opponents of abortion rights.

Conference organizers announced that more than 1,600 people are expected to attend the National Religious Liberties Conference, which will include scheduled appearances by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal—all strident opponents of abortion rights. Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com

Republican presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will speak this weekend at a religious liberties conference alongside notorious far-right, anti-LGBTQ pastor and Christian radio host Kevin Swanson.

The National Religious Liberties Conference “Freedom 2015” is scheduled for November 6-7 in Des Moines, Iowa, and is slated to address the “persecution for opposing the homosexual agenda” Christians face on account of their beliefs and its impact on the 2016 elections, according to the group’s website.

In a press release detailing the conference’s agenda, the organizers announced that more than 1,600 people are expected to attend the event, which will include scheduled appearances by Cruz, Huckabee, and Jindal—all strident opponents of abortion rights.

The candidates will join Swanson, one of the conference’s organizers.

Swanson has a long history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and is featured in GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project, which highlights figures who “represent extreme animus towards the entire LGBT community.”

The director of Colorado-based Generation Radio, Swanson has gained notoriety for the extreme comments he’s made on his show. In March 2014, Swanson came under fire for claiming that Disney’s Frozen was indoctrinating children with messages of homosexuality and bestiality.

“Friends, this is evil, just evil. I wonder if people are thinking: ‘You know I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my five year old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way,” Swanson said of the film. “I wonder if the average parent going to see Frozen is thinking that way. I wonder if they are just walking in and saying, ‘Yeah, let’s get my five-year-old and seven-year-old indoctrinated early.’”

Right Wing Watch has documented Swanson’s “radical record,” which includes claiming that natural disasters in his state may have been brought on by “decadent homosexual activity,” along with abortion and defending Uganda’s anti-homosexuality laws.

Swanson has said that there is scientific evidence to support the medically inaccurate claim that individuals who use the birth control pill have “little tiny fetuses … embedded into the womb,” turning their wombs into “graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.”