Trump surrogate Stacy Washington praised Russia’s LGBTQ crackdown and touted discredited and harmful conversion therapy

Special Programs LGBTQ

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published

Stacy Washington with Donald Trump

Photo from Washington’s Facebook page.

President Donald Trump's campaign recently named anti-LGBTQ radio host Stacy Washington to two advisory boards. 

Washington, who states that she doesn’t “support homosexual rights,” has said that “being gay isn't normal” and homosexuality is “deviant sexual behavior"; claimed that “the homosexual lobby and their supporters are three levels above the Nazi’s”; praised Russia's brutal crackdown on LGBTQ people; and touted discredited and harmful conversion therapy, which seeks to change sexual orientation or gender identity, saying that LGBTQ people can have a “permanent reversal.” 

Washington is a commentator, radio host, and Air Force veteran who has appeared in outlets including Fox News, Newsmax TV, and the now-defunct NRATV. She was formerly a host of a program aired on American Family Radio, the radio arm of extreme anti-LGBTQ group American Family Association, before the network culled much of its programming and its dedicated Urban Family Communications network. The outlet regularly pushes misinformation and hate about the LGBTQ community to nearly 200 stations and affiliates in 35 states. Washington now hosts a podcast that is available on various platforms. 

She is also a member of the Trump campaign’s Black Voices for Trump and Veterans for Trump advisory boards. 

Washington met with Trump at the November 8 launch of his Black Voices for Trump coalition. She tweeted on January 8 that she was “pleased to join the Vets for Trump Advisory Board.” She has visited the White House and recently spoke as a Trump surrogate at a Missouri campaign kickoff hosted by the state’s Republican Party.

The Republican National Committee called Washington one of its “favorite radio hosts” when it promoted an interview Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel did with her last year. 

Media Matters recently reported on the anti-LGBTQ views of Trump advisers Jenna Ellis and Robert Jeffress, two commentators who have also promoted conversion therapy. Clarence Mason Weaver, an anti-LGBTQ commentator who said that women should strive to be “handmaidens,” was previously listed on the Black Voices for Trump board but has since been removed without any apparent explanation. 

Here are some of Washington’s worst remarks about LGBTQ people: 

Washington criticized Amazon’s removal of books promoting conversion therapy and touted authors who “used to be practicing homosexuals” as “well-respected.” Conversion therapy is a harmful and discredited practice that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Medical groups including the American Psychiatric Association oppose the practice, with the APA writing that “there is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of ‘reparative therapy’ as a treatment to change one’s sexual orientation” and noting that risks include “depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.”

On the July 10, 2019, edition of her program, Washington criticized Amazon for removing pro-conversion therapy books from its website, specifically citing the removal of authors Anne Paulk and Joe Dallas, who “both used to be practicing homosexuals and now they're no longer practicing homosexuals. They've written books to help other people come out of that lifestyle by choice, no one's being forced.”  

She complained that “there’s no outlet” for young people who want to change their sexual orientation and they’re being told by teachers that they “need to celebrate your LGBTQness and shout it from the rooftops and be flamboyant with it and put it in people’s faces so that you can feel acceptance.” She then compared LGBTQ acceptance to accepting “people who are overweight,” adding that people “are trying to normalize something that’s unhealthy.” 

Washington also said that authors like Paulk and Dallas are not “fly-by-night, just-showed-up-on-our-radar-last-week-type people. They’ve been in this movement writing books and talking about coming out of that lifestyle for a very long time. They’re established and they’re well-respected.”

Washington challenged a Twitter using saying sexuality is not a choice: “Many gays have married, had kids - permanent reversal.” 

Washington: “No amount of coercion will normalize homosexuality.” Washington wrote a December 2013 post headlined “No amount of coercion will normalize homosexuality.” She wrote: 

Being homosexual isn’t normal. No amount of legal, or social coercion will make it so. We can agree to “live and let live”, but to force heterosexuals to lie about it, condone it and promote it will no longer fly.

…

How interesting that even with all of the energy the Homosexual Lobby puts into normalizing “gayness” most Americans are still fervently opposed to it? Children revile it. Nearly all Americans when asked if they would prefer a homosexual child say no. There really isn’t any way around the truth. Yet the grievance industry pushes on, insisting that to simply quote the Bible is bigotry.

Washington: “I'm a Bible believing Christian, which means I don't support Homosexual rights, or marriage. I do not hate gays. Huge difference.”

Washington: “The homosexual lobby and their supporters are three levels above the Nazi’s.” In a December 2013 post explaining why she opposes “the homosexual lobby,” Washington wrote:

I don’t care who you have sex with. I care about you forcing me to condone it. Forcing me to photograph it. Forcing me to bake a cake to celebrate it.

Forcing me to teach it to my kids. Forcing me to have my church marry you. You forcing me into a jail for refusing to bless it.

THAT’S why I care. The homosexual lobby and their supporters are three levels above the Nazi’s. They will have acceptance or you’ll be physically attacked, pay heavy fines, and go to jail or lose your business.

Washington: If the Supreme Court approves same-sex marriage, it is “codifying deviant sexual behavior into the Constitution”; “The very best thing that I can do for you … is to refuse to condone your behavior.” Washington wrote a March 2013 post about the Supreme Court arguments regarding Proposition 8 in which she attacked same-sex marriage. She also linked to a post by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, a writer who “left her female partner after her conversion and is now married to her husband.” From Washington's piece: 

Good Morning folks. I’m using the term loosely as I’ve just spent hours off and on last night arguing with pin heads about the Proposition 8 case that is up before the Supreme Court. Seriously. Right off the bat, gays and their supporters like to equate sexual behavior with innate characteristics. Ask any black person and they are quick to tell you that being gay is nothing like being black. I should know, since HELLO! I’m black. I cannot change being black. Can’t decide one morning if it suits me to just stop being black. Yet that is exactly what gays have been doing for decades. One minute they are a total lesbian, the next they’re married to a man and loving it.

Forgive me if I just don’t want to hear that crap anymore. Additionally, it’s not tolerant to call me a bigot for disagreeing on the homosexual marriage issue. If I’m supposed to tolerate your penchant for forcing your views on America, you should at the very least acknowledge that I have a right to my views as well. Or is that the point? I don’t have a right to my views because if I have a right to oppose gays – then they can’t have total domination; which is why we are embroiled in this fight.

Listening to the oral arguments and the questions from the Supreme Court justices to counsel, I was happy to hear a serious and respectful tone in full consideration of the bungling that burdened our nation with Roe v. Wade. If the conservative justices bungle this one, there will be a serious backlash. And children will suffer, not because America will end, but because the very definition of what a marriage is will be obliterated. The justices seem cognizant of this.

At one point, it was shared that 44,000 children live with same-sex couples in California. Really? That’s our chief consideration? The gays are playing the child card? Whenever it seems they just cant sink any lower, the homosexual lobby shows just how flexible, flexible is. The true measure of who we are as a nation is not measured by how quickly we bend to the will of a very vocal narcissistic minority. No, that measure is found in how we temper freedom of choice with the delicate balance of societal norms and mores. There are some issues that we simply cannot compromise on. Codifying deviant sexual behavior into the Constitution is one highly incendiary example.

So, I’m done ranting about this right here, right now. But it’s going to come up again, and my views will not change. I truly wish the very best for any American struggling with sexual sin. The very best thing that I can do for you, that we can all do for all 3-6% of you, is to refuse to condone your behavior.

Washington criticized gay conservatives.

Washington praised Russia for an infamous “gay propaganda” law. Russia's law bans promoting LGBTQ people and relationships to minors, and Human Rights Watch has noted that it “effectively legalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation” and has led to an increase in homophobic rhetoric and violence in the country.: 

Russia’s “gay propaganda” law is a classic example of political homophobia. It targets vulnerable sexual and gender minorities for political gain. When Russian president Vladimir Putin signed the federal law in June 2013, he pandered to a conservative domestic support base. And on the international stage, the law helped position Russia as a champion of so-called “traditional values.” The legislation, formally titled the law “aimed at protecting children from information promoting the denial of traditional family values,” bans the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors”—a reference universally understood to mean a ban on providing children access to information about LGBT people’s lives. The ban includes, but is not limited to, information provided via the press, television, radio, and the internet.

The law has been used to shut down websites that provide valuable information and services to teens across Russia and to bar LGBT support groups from working with youth. But the law’s effects have been much broader: individual mental health professionals have curtailed what they say and what support they give to students, and the law gives the strong imprimatur of the Russian state to the false and discriminatory view that LGBT people are a threat to tradition and the family. Significantly, mental health providers we spoke with said the law interferes with their ability to offer honest, scientifically accurate, and open counseling services, leading some to self-censor themselves or set out explicit disclaimers at the start of sessions to avoid running afoul of the law.

Given the already deeply hostile climate for LGBT people in Russia when the law was passed, it is not surprising that its passage coincided with an uptick in often-gruesome vigilante violence against LGBT people in Russia—frequently carried out in the name of protecting Russian values and Russia’s children. And while Russian government officials and parliament members claim that the goal of the “gay propaganda” law is to protect children from potentially harmful subject matter, the law in fact directly harms children by denying them access to essential information and increasing stigma against LGBT youth and their families. As the European Court of Human Rights concluded in 2017, the law reflects and reinforces “predisposed bias, unambiguously highlighted by its domestic interpretation and enforcement.”

In July 2013, Washington posted a link to an article in the Russian government-owned outlet Sputnik about the law and wrote: “Instead of celebrating perversion, Russia is curtailing it. Another example of Russia becoming more conservative while we go the way of Gomorrah.”

Washington: “Being gay isn't normal. No amount of legal, or social coercion will make it so.”

Washington: “Homosexuality and its promotion only serve to decrease morality and societal standards for everyone else.”

Washington: Same-sex marriage is an “abomination,” and “pushing the redefinition of marriage to promote the abomination of homosexuality is a sin.”

Washington on photo of same-sex couple kissing: “Disgusting image.”

Washington: “All of the moderators are gay. What is that about? Do Hetero's even count anymore? #Demdebate.” 

Washington on news of then-President Obama appointing Barbara Satin, a transgender woman, to serve on his advisory council: “This mentally ill man is now on the Advisory Council on Faith-based Neighborhood Partnerships.” Satin was “the first transgender woman to serve on the advisory council.” 

Washington told people to contact Chevrolet because the company was “siding with sexual perversion.” In February 2014, Chevy ran an ad during the Olympics which featured same-sex couples. Washington responded by writing: “Tell Chevrolet that we are sick of them siding with sexual perversion.”