Attorney General Jeff Sessions is set to speak Tuesday night at an event for the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Summit on Religious Liberty in California.
Alliance Defending Freedom is the legal group supporting Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Colorado bakery at the center of a landmark case the United States Supreme Court recently decided to take up to determine if religious people have a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado in 2012, saying it violated his religious beliefs.
Related: Would Jesus bake a wedding cake for a gay couple?
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Sessions’ speech is closed to the press.
Alliance Defending Freedom’s anti-LGBTQ record resulted in the Southern Poverty Law Center naming them a hate group earlier this year.
“You can judge a person by the company they keep and tonight – Attorney General Jeff Sessions is choosing to spend his time speaking in front of one of the country’s leading anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” Joel Kasnetz, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “The Alliance Defending Freedom actively helped draft discriminatory legislation, worked to preserve laws criminalizing same-sex relations, and attacked the separation of church and state. ADF has been previously designated a hate group and Sessions’ appearance at this event, as the top law enforcement official in the country, brings in to question whether the attorney general intends to protect all Americans.”
The Human Rights Campaign also condemned the speech in a series of tweets.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions will speak to the nation’s largest anti-#LGBTQ legal advocacy group: Alliance Defending Freedom 1/10 pic.twitter.com/phSHk6tmti
— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Alliance Defending Freedom,with a $50M+ annual budget, is an @SPLCenter designated hate group &1 of the most dangerous anti-#LGBTQ orgs 2/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Alliance Defending Freedom was a leader in the fight against marriage equality & wrote the language for state same-sex marriage bans 3/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Alliance Defending Freedom consistently defends the unconscionable license to discriminate against #LGBTQ people 4/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
They actively promote bigotry,standing up for measures that allow discrimination against #LGBTQ people at restaurants, jobs,offices etc 5/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Alliance Defending Freedom also propagates hate & bullying by attacking school districts for teaching tolerance and inclusion 6/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Alliance Defending Freedom even fights to overrule principals & stop schools from treating #transgender students with dignity & respect 7/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
They defend the tremendously harmful and debunked pseudoscience known as reparative or “conversion” therapy. 8/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Alliance Defending Freedom exports hate abroad with an international program that puts #LGBTQ people in danger around the world 9/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
Shame on Sessions & the Trump admin. for supporting this hateful org. @HRC will continue to rise up against discrimination & bigotry 10/10
— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) July 11, 2017
As for the Department of Justice? BuzzFeed News‘ Dominic Holden was simply told, “no comment.”
I asked Sessions’s staff about why he was speaking at this anti-LGBT event and if it signaled new DOJ position in court:
"Decline comment." https://t.co/g4x7UmOC4b
— Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) July 11, 2017