Senator admits 'mistake' in confirming Missouri judge who compared marriage equality to bestiality

The U.S. Senate confirmed earlier this month a Missouri lawyer to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge, despite years spent demeaning LGBTQ+ rights, but one Senator who supported the confirmation already calls his vote a “mistake.”

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Joshua Divine won confirmation in a 51-46 vote on July 22 to an appointment as a District Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri. He received no Democratic votes. But U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, voted with Republicans to confirm the Missouri Deputy Solicitor General based on the word of an anti-LGBTQ+ senator.

“I took (Republican Sen.) Josh Hawley’s advice,” King said. “In retrospect, I think it was a mistake, from what I’ve learned about Mr. Divine since. But sometimes, you rely on your colleagues.”

That’s despite Divine, an appointee of President Donald Trump, being widely opposed by LGBTQ+ rights groups, thanks to his record advocating for extreme positions in court.

“Mr. Divine does not possess the requisite experience to be a federal judge, and in his limited legal career he has demonstrated significant hostility to our civil and human rights,” reads a letter to senators from Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Jesselyn McCurdy, the group’s executive vice president of government affairs.

“A 2016 law school graduate, most of his career has either been clerking or working for Senator Josh Hawley. In his short time practicing in the Missouri solicitor general’s office, Mr. Divine has tried to distinguish himself among extreme conservatives by attacking our civil and human rights.”

The letter cited a 2011 op-ed in which Divine decried marriage equality, comparing same-sex marriage to bestiality and polygamy. He argued it wasn’t homophobic to oppose marriage rights.

“Being morally opposed to homosexuality does not constitute people as hateful nor does it make them homophobic,” Divine wrote just four years before the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land.

“It simply means those persons are opposed to any form of sex that goes against the biological design of procreation and the nurturing of a family. This includes homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, fornication, polygamy and all other forms of sex that do not take place in a monogamous-marriage setting. Basically, these people oppose the hedonistic characteristic sex attains when it is performed outside of a unifying process. That doesn’t make them hateful.”

The organization also pointed out several anti-LGBTQ+ stances advocated in court by Divine on behalf of the state of Missouri. That included submitting a brief supporting the recent Skrmetti ruling by the Supreme Court affirming Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

In it, Divine based his argument on the testimony of an individual instead of any science or law, and erroneously alleged that health care providers “bully” parents into approving “dangerous” procedures on children.