It has been announced that Donald Trump will address the 11th annual gathering of the Family Research Council’s  Values Voter Summit, an event that draws thousands of extremist right-wing “Christians”  to the nation’s capital. Trump is scheduled to speak Friday, September 9 — just 59 days before Election Day. This is the first time a Republican nominee for president has addressed the Values Voter Summit since its inception in 2006. 

“As the 2016 presidential election approaches, there is a growing understanding among voters that the future of our freedoms and our identity as Americans hang in the balance. We are therefore very encouraged that Donald Trump has accepted our invitation to address the Values Voter Summit and make his case directly to conservative activists from across the country. The fact that he is the first Republican nominee to attend since the Summit’s inception in 2006, demonstrates his understanding of the importance of values voters in the general election and his desire to work with them in addressing the critical issues facing our nation,” said FRC hate group President Tony Perkins.

In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Woody Jenkins against Mary Landrieu, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Ku Klux Klan leader and state Rep. David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000 for filing false disclosure forms in a bid to hide the payment to Duke. Perkins has stated he did not know about the mailing list’s connection to Duke.

In 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Perkins who addressed the group while standing in front of a Confederate flag, claimed not to know the group’s ideology at the time, even though it had been widely publicized in Louisiana and the nation.

Other extreme right-wing anti-LGBT speakers confirmed to attend include Senators Tom Cotton, and Tim Scott, along with, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, KY Governor Matt Bevin, and U.S. Reps. Diane Black and Louie Gohmert. Additionally, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, Dr. James Dobson, David & Jason Benham, Kirk Cameron, Star Parker, Lt. Col. Oliver North, Duck Dynasty’s Al Robertson, Allen West, Dinesh D’Souza, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are among many other speakers to address attendees.

The event will be held from September 9-11 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.  The Summit is co-sponsored by a veritable Who’s Who of Anti-LGBT groups including  AFA Action, American Values, First Liberty Institute, The D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, United in Purpose, 2nd Vote, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and Family Research Council.

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In Tony Perkins His Own Words:

“The videos are titled ‘It Gets Better.’ They are aimed at persuading kids that although they’ll face struggles and perhaps bullying for ‘coming out’ as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better. … It’s disgusting. And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle.”
—FRC fundraising letter, August 2011

“Those who understand the homosexual community – the activists – they’re very aggressive, they’re – everything they accuse us of they are in triplicate. They’re intolerant, they’re hateful, vile, they’re spiteful. …. To me, that is the height of hatred, to be silent when we know there are individuals that are engaged in activity, behavior, and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation.”
— Speaking to the Oak Initiative Summit, April 2011

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
— FRC website, 2010

The marriage debate “is literally about the entire culture: it’s about the rule of law, it’s about the country, it’s about our future, it’s about redefining the curriculum in our schools, it’s about driving a wedge between parent and child, it’s about the loss of religious freedom, it’s about the inability to be who we are as a people.”
— The Janet Mefford Show, May 22, 2014