Amy Coney Barrett’s anti-LGBTQ+ past is under scrutiny yet again followed resurfaced revelations that her praise group expels members for engaging in gay sex.
Craig Lent, leader of the Indiana-based Christian group People of Praise, told the South Bend Tribune in a 2018 profile on the secretive religious organization that anyone who engages in “ongoing, deliberate, unrepentant wrongdoing,” which includes consensual intercourse between someone of the same sex, faces immediate ex-communication.
The Tribune went onto paraphrase Lent, who serves as the coordinator of People of Praise, as saying that the group “believes that only married people should have sex, and only men and women should marry.”
The paper summed up the organization’s views thusly: “Homosexual attraction is not sinful, but acting on it is.”
Those by-laws were reportedly tested when a lesbian member of People of Praise came out to the group after meeting a woman that she was interested in romantically. An unnamed female member reportedly approached her and said other women in the organization “were very uncomfortable that you were talking about that.”
“Either you never mention this again, or you leave,” the anonymous member told her.
The two-year-old comments came to light in a Guardian report on Wednesday as Coney Barrett — whose membership in the group has already faced widespread scrutiny — undergoes questioning from the Senate following her Supreme Court nomination by Donald Trump. The 48-year-old judge, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was tapped to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September following the justice’s sudden death.
Her nomination has faced widespread condemnation from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, who have noted her record is “fundamentally at odds” with equality. In the past, Coney Barrett has signed onto a letter describing marriage as the “indissoluble commitment of a man and a woman,” misgendered trans women as “biological males,” and suggested sex-based nondiscrimination protections don’t apply to transgender people.
For anyone who was concerned Coney Barrett might help the court roll back prior LGBTQ+ rights victories, her hearings haven’t helped matters much. She declined to say, for instance, whether the U.S. constitution affords “gay people the fundamental right to marry” when directly asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
Coney Barrett also drew ire after referring to sexual orientation as “sexual preference.” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) called the term “offensive and outdated,” saying it has been used by “anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice.”
The nominee later apologized, but she has yet to disavow her links to the anti-LGBTQ+ group Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF is a far-right legal organization that has authored numerous anti-trans bathroom bills across the U.S. and “wrote the original language for discriminatory same-sex marriage bans” in states like Colorado, Idaho, and South Carolina, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
In addition to defending anti-gay baker Jack Phillips at the Supreme Court, HRC reports that the organization also supports conversion therapy and has fought cities and states from passing local LGBTQ+ civil rights ordinances. It also believes homosexuality and pedophilia are linked and opposed legalizing sodomy.
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