Extreme anti-LGBTQ group Family Research Council (FRC) will host its annual Values Voter Summit from October 11 through 13, and the group just announced President Donald Trump will address the gathering for the fourth time. 

FRC has a long history of anti-LGBTQ extremism, and Trump’s speech to its summit represents the president reaching out to his right-wing, white evangelical base as voters push for an impeachment inquiry following reports that Trump and his associates urged a foreign government to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.   

Trump addressed the Values Voter Summit in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and Vice President Mike Pence addressed the group in 2018. This year’s address comes as FRC President Tony Perkins has moved up on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he was appointed in 2018, to become its chair. 

Other speakers for this year’s gathering include Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, anti-LGBTQ former Fox News personality Todd Starnes, and extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom client Joanna Duka. 

As outlets report on this year’s Values Voter Summit -- especially on Trump and his administration’s participation -- they should contextualize the extremism of FRC and its leaders. Here are some of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and actions FRC and its representatives have engaged in:

• FRC’s official position is that “homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large” and “is by definition unnatural.” 

• FRC promotes harmful and discredited conversion therapy, which seeks to change LGBTQ people’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including by testifying before state legislatures and being quoted in right-wing media. 

• In 2003, FRC filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas in support of anti-sodomy laws.

• In 2015, FRC filed an amicus brief in Obergefell v. Hodges in support of bans on same-sex marriage.

• In 2004, FRC distributed a pamphlet that compared same-sex marriage to marrying a horse.

• FRC and its representatives have regularly pushed the debunked bathroom predator myth.

• Perkins has claimed that Pete Buttigieg, openly gay Christian presidential candidate, goes against the Bible.

• Perkins has said that mass shootings are caused by “an absence of morality” and lack of religion in the public square.

• In 2013, Perkins advocated against LGBTQ Boy Scouts by falsely suggesting that gay men would be more likely to abuse children. Similarly, former FRC Vice President Rob Schwarzwalder accused gay youth of joining the Boy Scouts of America “for predatory purposes.” 

• In 2010, Perkins called pedophilia a “homosexual problem” and falsely claimed that science shows “a correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.” 

• In 2010, Perkins defended a draconian anti-LGBTQ bill in Uganda, which was widely known as the “kill the gays” bill because of its inclusion of the death penalty for “repeat offenders” of gay sexual activity. FRC also lobbied against a U.S. resolution to condemn the bill, calling it an example of “pro-homosexual promotion.”

• Perkins has compared LGBTQ people and advocates to terrorists and Nazis, asking, “Are reeducation camps next? When are they going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?”  

• Perkins has said that if gay marriage were legalized, it could lead to a revolt or revolution.

• FRC senior fellow Peter Sprigg has called for “gay behavior” to be outlawed and said, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

• Sprigg has said, “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe that homosexuality is destructive to society.”

• Sprigg has claimed that HIV is one of the “negative physical health consequences” that result “directly from homosexual acts” and that “the position of social conservatives regarding homosexuality is based on the conviction that homosexual conduct is objectively harmful.” 

• Sprigg posted a blog about LGBTQ Pride Month in which he said gay men should not be proud because HIV is “a direct result of that sexual behavior” and that mental illness in the LGBTQ community is evidence its members are not “natural."

• FRC senior fellow Ken Blackwell has said that “the attack on … natural marriage” was a reason for a mass murder in Isla Vista, California.