Ivanka Trump: She tweets her support of LGBTQ Pride Month and casually takes selfies with homophobic pastors. That takes a special brand of...cognitive dissonance, to put it nicely.
On Monday night, the White House held a dinner for around 100 evangelical leaders — some of the president's biggest supporters. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, was in attendance, taking selfies not only with Ivanka, but with Melania Trump, Karen and Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, and the president himself, The Daily Beast reported.
The pastor has since deleted all of his selfie tweets, but we took a screenshot of him cozying up to Ivanka and Jared Kushner.
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Garlow's bigotry toward LGBTQ people is well-documented and far-flung. As author Jeremy Hooper pointed out on Twitter, at the Family Leadership Summit in 2017, Garlow said, "The Bible starts with the marriage of a male and a female, and it ends with the wedding in Revelation of a bride and groom. The bottom line is this, If I were Satan, I would want to destroy on the earth the image of God. This is why marriage is such a hotbed issue. It’s more than just the issue of homosexuality. It’s much more than that. It’s much more cosmic. It’s big. It’s enormous. They want to destroy the very image of God upon the planet. This is a demonic happening in our midst."
He also thinks Christians shouldn't have to follow laws laid down by the Supreme Court. "[T]he Supreme Court has passed laws regarding marriage, regarding abortion, and under no condition do we have to follow laws that violate the word of God," he said.
Ivanka may have been fraternizing with bigots (a.k.a. big donors) at Monday's dinner, but in June 2017, she was singing a different tune. Back then, she tweeted, "I am proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy." (But she said nothing when her father tried to keep transgender people from serving in the military later in the summer.)
Nothing new here: The first daughter and White House adviser continues to fail at being a real ally to groups whose rights are at stake, refusing to do the work and actually stand up to bigots like Garlow and instead tacitly playing along with her father's agenda. If she cared one ounce, she would address Garlow's statements to his face instead of smile in photos with him.