Hate Group's Email Uses Nazi Imagery to Denounce LGBT People

An anti-LGBT, anti-abortion group is sending out a fundraising email featuring a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party, imposed on a rainbow flag.

The email, shared by Media Matters for America, is from the Center for Family and Human Rights, which has special consultative status at the United Nations. The flag image includes this text: "Sexual fascists want to take away your rights. We are beating them at the UN. Help us."

In the body of the email is this passage: "Friends, we are living in fascistic times except this time the hobnail boots are worn by homosexuals and their allies in government and major corporations. These fascists are out to get Christians who view men and women as God made them and who live their lives that way. They seek to stamp us out."

It also refers to several Christians it says were oppressed by "homosexual fascists," including the Colorado baker whose case was heard in the Supreme Court this week. He is appealing a ruling from the state that he violated its antidiscrimination law by refusing to create a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding. The email went out today and is signed by Austin Ruse, C-Fam's president.

C-Fam, once known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, has worked closely with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group representing the baker, Media Matters reports. Both are designated as anti-LGBT hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. C-Fam's website is filled with posts denouncing homosexuality as well as abortion and some other family planning procedures (it links to an article likening a campaign to encourage vasectomies to "state sponsored Mass Sterilization Programs").

"C-Fam's email is just the most recent example of its years-long campaign of demonizing lies and rhetoric about LGBTQ people," Media Matters notes. "Ruse was the subject of controversy in 2014 when he said that 'the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities' should 'all be taken out and shot.' He later had to apologize for the statement. Ruse has also said that all countries should pass laws against homosexual behavior 'even if unenforced,' in order to 'help society to teach what is good' and 'prevent such truly harmful practices as homosexual marriage and adoption.' According to GLAAD, Ruse has claimed that, rather than bullying and social stigma, LGBTQ people and activism are the real cause of LGBTQ teen suicide and alcoholism."

C-Fam has had special consultative status at the U.N. since 2014, and it has frequently used this position to speak out against expansion of LGBT and reproductive rights. This year Donald Trump appointed its executive vice president, Lisa Correnti, as a member of an official U.S. delegation to the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

In an Advocate commentary at the time of her appointment, People for the American Way's Peter Montgomery shared more information about C-Fam's anti-LGBT rhetoric: "In waging its global culture war, C-Fam promotes the destructive smear that LGBT people are threats to children. Last summer Ruse warned his followers about 'radical homosexuals' and their allies: 'Without a doubt they are coming for your daughter and your son and your grandchildren. They don't have any children of their own. They are deliberately barren. So, they have set their sights on yours, your innocent girls and boys.' Similarly, in 2015 he said 'radical homosexuals' are among the devil's 'minions' who are 'coming for our children' and 'want to win our children over for their nefarious causes that come from the very pits of hell.'"

The association of LGBT people with Nazis -- who in reality oppressed and killed LGBT people -- is, it appears, just the icing on C-Fam's hateful cake.