The Department of Justice's new top
spokesperson previously worked at the Alliance Defending Freedom
(ADF), a legal group vocally opposed to LGBT rights.
According to The Daily Beast,
Kerri Kupec has been named director of the DOJ's Office of Public
Affairs.
“Kupec, the new top spokesperson,
formerly represented the conservative group Alliance Defending
Freedom,” The
Daily Beast
wrote. “She also spent time at the White House helping with
Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.”
ADF is best known for representing
people opposed to same-sex marriage, including Jack Phillips, the
Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple's 2012
wedding reception. While state courts sided with the couple, the
Supreme Court said that the state's Civil Rights Commission had shown
hostility toward Phillips' religious beliefs.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),
which monitors extremist groups, has labeled ADF a “hate group”
over its anti-LGBT rhetoric.
On
its website, the SPLC states that the ADF has supported the
recriminalization of gay sex in the United States, defended
“state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people” abroad, linked
homosexuality to pedophilia and claimed that a “homosexual agenda”
will destroy Christianity and society.