House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Win McNamee/Getty)
New York politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has invoked her Christian faith to make a passionate argument for LGBT+ rights.
The Democrat ardently defended the rights of the LGBT+ community during a congressional committee hearing yesterday, calling out the “bigotry” of those who use Christianity to discriminate against marginalised groups.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Jesus would be “maligned as a radical” by today’s congress for his messages of love and inclusion.
The 30-year-old queer ally said: “If Christ himself walked through these doors and said what he said thousands of years ago ― that we should love our neighbour and our enemy, that we should welcome the stranger, fight for the least of us, that it is easier … for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into a kingdom of heaven ― he would be maligned as a radical and rejected from these doors.”
The committee on oversight and reform was holding a hearing on the ways in which the Trump administration has tried to undermine LGBT+ rights.
In November 2019, researchers revealed that under the Trump administration, LGBT+ language, data, resource pages and anti-discrimination information have been disappearing from government websites.
In opening remarks at the committee, Jamie Raskin, the Democrat representative from Maryland, said: “The Trump administration has been working zealously to turn the government into an instrument of hostility and opposition towards LGBTQ rights across the executive branch of government.”
Responding to the HuffPost’s story about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comments, the White House accusing Raskin and AOC of “deliberately distorting the president’s record” and refusing to “credit any action he’s taken to protect and promote LGBTQ Americans”.
“The president believes in human dignity for all and that no one should be discriminated against, including religious organisations and the LGBTQ community,” a White House spokesperson said in an email.
“Since taking office, President Trump has taken actions that build on his longstanding commitment to responsibly safeguard the fundamental right to religious freedom by eliminating unfair and unequal treatment by the federal government.”
Trump’s recent actions related to the LGBT+ community have included randomly retweeting a PinkNews article about a gay Bollywood romance without explanation.