The new spokeswoman for the Department of Justice comes from Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ hate group, reported the Advocate.
Kerri Kupec was appointed director of the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs, replacing Sarah Isgur Flores. Flores was one of most visible advocates for Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Along with working with ADF since 2014, Kupec also worked with the White House staff to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She also got her law degree from Liberty University – founded by Jerry Falwell, a homophobic televangelist.
ADF represented Colorado baker Jack Phillips when he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, claiming freedom of religion. Phillips was victorious in the case.
The hate group, dictated as such by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now representing a Michigan funeral home that fired a transgender employee and students who objected to a Pennsylvania school district’s bathroom policy, which sought to include transgender students.
Other anti-LGBTQ clients of ADF include practitioners of conversion therapy and Mississippi’s House Bill 1523, which prevents the penalization of individuals who discriminate on the basis of religious freedom.
“Founded by some 30 leaders of the Christian Right, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy and training group that has support the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society,” reads SPLC’s website.
“ADF also works to develop ‘religious liberty’ legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBT people on the basis of religion. Since the election of President Donald Trump, the ADF has become one of the most influential groups informing the administration’s attack on LGBT rights working with an ally in Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”