Christian conservative Mat Staver,
founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, has claimed that passage of
the Equality Act would “open the door to pedophilia.”
“If the so-called H.R. 5 Equality Act
is passed, it will open the door to pedophilia,” Staver told
listeners this week on his Faith and Freedom podcast.
Reintroduced in March with bipartisan
support, the Equality Act is a federal bill that seeks to prohibit
discrimination against people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender.
(Related: Pete
Buttigieg endorses LGBT protections bill Equality Act.)
On the podcast, Staver is joined by
Holly Meade, director of communications at Liberty Counsel. Both
agree with an article written by Linda Harvey, founder and president
of Mission America, in which she states that the “Equality Act
opens a back door to pedophilia.”
“So [the Equality Act would] not only
lower the age of consent for homosexual behavior but also take away
parental rights, where it’s saying the parents don’t have the
right to influence your child’s sexual identity anymore, since it
is 'immutable,'” Meade said.
“And this also includes this area of
what Linda Harvey's pointed out: pedophilia. Lowering the age of
consent. Making the age of consent lower, or frankly, abolishing it,”
Staver said.
Media Matters for America labeled both
statements “lies.”
Liberty Counsel routinely represents
Christians opposed to LGBT rights, including Kim Davis, the Kentucky
clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The
group also submitted a brief before the Supreme Court in Lawrence
v. Texas in support of Texas' law that criminalized gay sex.