Fox News Contributor And Trump Defender Robert Jeffress Is Headlining The Stand4Truth Conference

Stand4Truth Conference Will Focus On The “Politically Incorrect Truth About Sexuality And Gender.” The second annual “Stand4Truth” conference will be held on October 28 and 29 in Houston, TX. The conference purports to tell the “politically incorrect truth about sexuality and gender,” with sessions like “The Truth About Ex-Gay Ministries” and “The Truth of Transgenderism in Ft. Worth” that will advocate for harmful and discredited “ex-gay” reparative therapy. [Stand4Truth.net, accessed 10/27/16; Human Rights Campaign, accessed 10/27/16] 

Fox News Contributor Robert Jeffress Will Deliver Conference’s Two Keynote Addresses. According to the Stand4Truth conference website, Robert Jeffress will deliver Stand4Truth’s two keynote speeches -- “The Most Misunderstood Word In America” on Friday, October 28, and “America’s Coming Implosion” on Saturday, October 29. Jeffress is a Fox News contributor as well as a member of Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Council. [Stand4Truth.net, accessed 10/26/16; Fox News, accessed 10/26/16; Media Matters, 6/23/16] 

Jeffress Has A Long History Of Attacking LGBT People, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, And Mormonism. Jeffress has attacked LGBT people as leading “miserable” and “filthy” lives and said that “homosexuality is perverse, it represents a degradation of a person’s mind.” In 2015, Jeffers cited approval of gay marriage as a sign of the coming apocalypse. In addition to his anti-LGBT rhetoric, Jeffers has called Catholicism a “cult-like, pagan religion,” Islam an “evil, evil religion,” Mormonism a “cult” from the “pit of hell,” and Judaism and Hinduism religions that lead people to “an eternity of separation from God in Hell.” [Media Matters, 9/15/15]

Conference Speakers Include Anti-LGBT Extremists And Hate Group Leaders

Representatives From Five Different Anti-LGBT Hate Groups Will Speak Throughout The Conference. Sandy Rios of the American Family Association (AFA), Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (FRC), Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, and Steve Hotze of the Conservative Republicans of Texas are all scheduled to speak at the Stand4Truth Conference. All five groups have been designated as anti-gay “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for their extremist rhetoric and peddling of “known falsehoods” about the LGBT community. At last year’s conference, Camenker proclaimed that LGBT rights advocates would “send us to concentration camps if they could.” [Stand4Truth.net, accessed 10/26/16; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2/17/16, 11/4/10; Right Wing Watch, 10/27/15]

In The Texas Observer, SPLC Senior Fellow Called The Conference A “Witch’s Coven Of Haters.” In an interview with the Texas Observer, SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok described the conference as a “witch’s coven of haters.” Dan Quinn, a spokesperson for the Texas Freedom Network, similarly described the conference attendees as “political activists who delight in generating hate and contempt for LGBT people across the country.” 

One week before Election Day, prominent anti-LGBT activists and “ex-gay” therapists will gather in Houston for a conference that promises to reveal “the politically incorrect truth about sexuality and gender.”

[...]

Mark Potok, senior fellow at SPLC, called [the conference] “the witch’s coven of haters.”

“These are people who don’t merely represent the religious right, they represent the extreme religious right,” Potok told the Observer. “These are essentially the same people in the evangelical world who’ve refused to move away from Donald Trump.”

[...]

Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the pro-LGBT Texas Freedom Network, said the conference represents “a rogues’ gallery of political activists who delight in generating hate and contempt for LGBT people across the country.” [Texas Observer, 10/13/16]

Sponsors Include Multiple Hate Groups And Advocates For Reparative “Ex-Gay” Therapy. Sponsors of the Stand4Truth conference include Mass Resistance, Liberty Counsel, and a project of Family Watch International (We Are Voices Of Change) -- all of which are designated anti-LGBT hate groups. Other sponsors include David Pickup, whose “Reparative Therapy” organization's website claims that “homosexual attractions” result from “unfulfilled” approval from “primary male relationships”; Light Wins, an anti-gay movie Salon described as 2015’s most “bigoted, dishonest and disgusting film”; and Joel 2:25 International, a Texas-based reparative therapy organization that works internationally to heal the “emotional wounds and relational brokenness” of people “who experience same-sex attraction.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2/17/16; Stand4Truth.net, accessed 10/27/16; davidpickuplmft.com, accessed 10/26/16; Salon, 4/27/15; Joel225.org, accessed 10/27/16]