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5 examples that prove the NRA hates LGBTQ people as much as gun control

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The NRA’s stranglehold on American politics is at the heart of the battle brewing over the Florida school massacre. But if you think the NRA and its leaders confine themselves to Second Amendment issues, you’re wrong. As befits an organization that sees itself in a culture war, the NRA is perfectly happy to wade into gay rights issues – in opposition, of course.

Media Matters has done a rundown of the long history of homophobia and transphobia at the organization. Here are five highlights:

Transgender people are “twisted.”

At the NRA’s annual meeting in 2016, Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, complained about how the world was going to hell in a handbasket.

“Everything we believe in, everything we’ve always known to be good, and right, and true has been twisted, perverted and repackaged to our kids as wrong, backwards, and abnormal,” Cox said. “Who are our kids supposed to respect and admire? The media tells them Bruce Jenner is a national hero for transforming his body.”

The Obama administration’s support of transgender students proved it was “in the toilet.”

At the same 2016 meeting, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s leader, argued that the Obama administration was soft on crime because it’s focus was elsewhere.

“And where has this White House put its full weight? In the toilet. In bathrooms in North Carolina, in school districts all over our country.”

Gay marriage causes mass shooting.

After a mass shooting in California in 2014, NRA board member Ken Blackwell said that the root cause of mass shootings is marriage equality.

“When you see there’s a crumbling of the moral foundation of the country, you see the attack on the — on natural marriage and the family that has been a part of the, not only the moral foundation and the upbringing of our children but the teaching of sexual roles and the development of human sexuality in our culture,” Blackwell said.

“When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing and that is a flood of these disturbed people in our society that are causing great, great pain.”

No surprise, given that Blackwell is a fellow at the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council.

Gays are “the most protected class in America.”

Rocker Ted Nugent’s nuttiness knows no bounds; after all, he once called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” Given the opportunity to weigh in on a gay issue, Nugent will go for the most outlandish homophobic remark possible.

That was the case in 2011 when the NBA fined Kobe Bryant for using an anti-gay slur. Nugent went on a tear about homosexuals being “the most protected class in America” and then mocked the NBA and gay people with blatantly homophobic stereotypes.

“If the NBA had any true gay convictions, the NBA should host a Homosexual Night,” Nugent said. “During halftime, the homosexuals could come down on the court, hold hands and prance around the court to music by the Village People. The NBA could then give each homosexual a pink basketball as a symbol of solidarity.”

The NRA fires its law firm for not supporting attack on gay marriage.

When House Republicans decided to sue the federal government in support of DOMA, the law firm King & Spalding originally accepted the case and then dropped it a week later after an uproar. The NRA showed its displeasure by firing the law firm in response.

NRA’s general counsel David Lehman said that the firm’s decision to drop the case was “indefensible,” and argued that the NRA didn’t want to work with anyone who would cave to pressure from outside groups.

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