A gay Republican went on a rant filled with conspiracy theories and false accusations against Muslim American lawmakers and Democrats at a Log Cabin Republican rally in Florida yesterday.
Andrew Brett is the president of the Broward County Log Cabin Republicans, a group for LGBTQ Republicans that held a rally in Wilton Manors. About a dozen people showed up for the rally, according to South Florida Gay News, and about three times as many people attended the counter-protest.
Related: Former Log Cabin Republicans head publicly opposes proposed LGBTQ nondiscrimination law
Brett started his speech by accusing Democrats of becoming the “party of division,” and then he launched a diatribe against Muslims and Democrats.
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He said that the current contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – which include former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg – favor “Socialism in which supports Sharia law.”
He did not explain the connection between Socialism and Islamic religious law.
“The GLBT Democratic residents of Broward County don’t understand or comprehend the catastrophic results of Sharia Law,” he said. “[Rep. Ihlan] Omar [D-MN] and [Rep. Rashida] Tlaib [D-MI] support Sharia Law and definitely do not support the GLBT community even though they claim to be Democrats. Omar and Tlaib are not friends of the GLBT community and support the execution of beheadings of GLBT people.”
Omar and Tlaib are the first two Muslim women to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, and neither supports imposing Islamic religious law on the U.S.
And neither supports beheading LGBTQ people. Indeed, they have both publicly supported LGBTQ equality.
But that didn’t stop Brett. He went on to say that Democrats’ support for modest gun control is a sign that they want to exterminate LGBTQ people.
“Might I remind the GLBT community that Hitler took the guns away from 20,000 people and you saw how that played out,” he said. “The Log Cabin Republicans totally support the Second Amendment and we’ll be damned if any Socialists will take that right a way.”
Brett also defended Donald Trump. “So when GLBT folks, not only in Broward County, but throughout the country say, ‘President Trump is taking our rights away.’ I always ask ‘What rights has he taken away from you when you woke up this morning?’ He hasn’t. And didn’t.”
He listed several things that Trump did for LGBTQ people, most of which were promises (like Trump’s promise to end HIV), probably not true (that Trump nominated a gay judge to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals), or irrelevant (that Trump donates his presidential salary).
At the end of his speech, Brett said that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, which is false, and specifically mentioned King’s niece Alveda King who “carries on his legacy and his message that we were all created equal.”
Alveda King is a Fox News contributor who is probably best known as the homophobic King relative – she has said that the devil created homosexuality, that homosexuality is “unnatural,” that legalizing marriage equality leads to natural disasters, and that homosexuality is comparable to pedophilia.
Activist Michael Rajner led the counterprotest and drowned out the Log Cabin Republicans with his bullhorn, South Florida Gay News reports, because the conservatives forgot to charge the battery for their sound system.
“I think it’s important to be here because generations that follow us will be subject to the horrible laws and punishments from this administration if [Trump] should be reelected,” Rajner said. “He’s appointed some terrible judges that are hostile to the LGBT community, and our protections are eroding so quickly.”
“We must stand up, we must register to vote, and we must get the community to mobilize to stand up against this hate.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Alveda King as Martin Luther King’s daughter. We regret the error.
