Bias Watch

Hate group praises out Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for helping to doom LGBTQ rights bill

U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema speaking with attendees at the 2019 Update from Capitol Hill hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry at the Arizona Biltmore Resort in Phoenix, Arizona.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Photo: Gage Skidmore

Brian Brown, one of the most vicious anti-LGBTQ activists around and head of both the National Organization for Marriage and the International Organization for the Family, is praising Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (R-WV).

Both groups have been designated as anti-LGBTQ hate groups by domestic extremist monitors. Brown praises the two Democrats for their help killing LGBTQ rights legislation pending before the Senate and uses Sinema to fundraise for their hateful initiatives.

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Sinema, a white out bisexual woman, and Manchin, a white and straight and notoriously vain conservative, have held up President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda for months by refusing to kill the filibuster, a procedural maneuver historically used to prevent the passage of civil rights legislation.

It is a relic of Jim Crow and is currently being used to stop voting reform, raising the minimum wage, and landmark LGBTQ civil rights legislation like the Equality Act, which protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in federal law.

The measure requires 60 votes instead of the usual 50 to get a bill passed. With the Senate equally divided 50-50, it effectively means that any bill requires the support of at least 10 Republicans to pass. The GOP has been united in opposing any legislation supported by Democrats and refused to support Biden’s agenda.

Without the opportunity to filibuster, 50 Democrats could vote in favor of a bill and Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, would break the tie.

When LGBTQ activists and donors pointedly issued an ultimatum demanding Sinema get on board or lose support from the community, the senator published an op-ed in the Washington Post defending her decision to scuttle bills that tackled issues she campaigned on. By refusing to remove the filibuster, Sinema has essentially doomed what she claims are her own priorities.

Brown is capitalizing off of Sinema’s inaction, emailing his supporters that “the future of the country” is in her hands.

“We’ve been able to stop the Equality Act from passing largely because of the Senate filibuster rule and our enormous grassroots mobilization which has delivered over two million messages to members of the Senate from Americans opposed to the legislation,” Brown notes in his fundraising message.

“But with so much on the line and our fate resting in the hands of just two Senators, we’ve really got to ramp up our opposition. That’s why we’re asking every NOM supporter for financial help now so that we can increase the level of our opposition campaign, especially in Arizona and West Virginia.”

“We need to buttress our opposition to the Equality Act with all Senators, but especially so with Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Joe Manchin in West Virginia,” he added.

In a recently revealed video, several notoriously anti-LGBTQ politicians – chief among them former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) – tell an audience that they should thank Sinema for dooming LGBTQ rights laws.

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