Trump-backed game composer says LGBTQ+ people are ‘existential threat’ to Western civilization

Marty O’Donnell, the Trump-backed Republican nominee in a competitive congressional race, has described LGBTQ+ people as part of an alliance pushing Western civilization toward an “abyss.”

O’Donnell, a video game composer best known for his work on the Halo and Destiny franchises, made the remarks during a June 29 interview, weeks after winning the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Susie Lee in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District.

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“Talk about an existential, existential threat,” O’Donnell said. “We are on the cliff looking down into the abyss. And the abyss is Marxism, its anti-Western philosophy.”

He then grouped LGBTQ+ people with Islamists and Marxists, accusing them of pretending to be oppressed. “There is a weird alliance of all these groups,” he said. “So the LGBTQ+ people, the Islamists, the Marxists, you know, they’re all together now.”

The comments are part of a broader record in which O’Donnell has portrayed LGBTQ+ equality as a threat to Christianity and Western culture, opposed marriage equality and disparaged transgender identities.

The race has national implications. Lee’s Las Vegas-area district is expected to help determine control of the narrowly divided U.S. House. She has represented the seat since 2019.

During the same interview, O’Donnell invoked Christian doctrine to condemn Pride. “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins,” he said. “It’s always cracked me up that pride is the big banner for the woke.” O’Donnell added, “I’m all for bringing back shame.”

Pride commemorates the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and represents dignity and resistance to stigma. Later, O’Donnell described arguing with an artificial intelligence chatbot after asking it to compare the lifetime number of sexual partners reported by different groups.

“So, yes, it turns out that gay men have the largest number of sex partners over lives,” he said. O’Donnell said he then told the program, “Gay men are the most promiscuous,” and objected when it warned that the word carried a value judgment.

“But I mean, are we going to lose the words like sin, promiscuity, adultery?” he said. The June comments echo statements O’Donnell has made on his podcast, on social media, and on a campaign-affiliated Discord server.

In a June 2025 episode of The Marty O’Donnell Show, he hosted Ryan Helfenbein, a Liberty University executive who repeated the anti-LGBTQ+ trope that queer people recruit children. “One thing you need to understand about the LGBT movement is they don’t reproduce. They recruit,” Helfenbein said.

“Right,” O’Donnell responded.

“And they’re going to take your children from you,” Helfenbein continued.

In an April 2025 podcast, O’Donnell said LGBTQ+ people had “co-opted” the rainbow, which he described as a symbol of God’s promise. “We have to figure out a way to take those things back,” he said. “Those people don’t get to own that stuff.”

“It is an us-versus-them thing,” he added.

A compilation of O’Donnell’s statements reviewed by The Advocate also documents his opposition to marriage equality, criticism of transgender people and attacks on gender-affirming care.

In 2024, O’Donnell wrote on X that marriage defined as “a union of one man and one woman isn’t just a Christian definition.” Same-sex marriages have been legal nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

That year, he also wrote in a Discord discussion that gender-affirming care was “too new, untested, and chaotic” for him to “take it seriously.”

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, O’Donnell posted “#BoycottOlympics” alongside footage of a French drag performer carrying the Olympic torch. He later demanded that French President Emmanuel Macron apologize after drag artists appeared in the opening ceremony.

The Advocate asked O’Donnell’s campaign whether he stands by his anti-LGBTQ+ comments. The campaign did not respond.