Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver: Equality Act Would 'Open The Door To Pedophilia'
Christian conservative Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, has claimed that passage of the Equality Act would "open the door to pedophilia."
"If the so-called H.R. 5 Equality Act is passed, it will open the door to pedophilia," Staver told listeners this week on his Faith and Freedom podcast.
Reintroduced in March with bipartisan support, the Equality Act is a federal bill that seeks to prohibit discrimination against people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
(Related: Pete Buttigieg endorses LGBT protections bill Equality Act.)
On the podcast, Staver is joined by Holly Meade, director of communications at Liberty Counsel. Both agree with an article written by Linda Harvey, founder and president of Mission America, in which she states that the "Equality Act opens a back door to pedophilia."
"So [the Equality Act would] not only lower the age of consent for homosexual behavior but also take away parental rights, where it's saying the parents don't have the right to influence your child's sexual identity anymore, since it is 'immutable,'" Meade said.
"And this also includes this area of what Linda Harvey's pointed out: pedophilia. Lowering the age of consent. Making the age of consent lower, or frankly, abolishing it," Staver said.
Media Matters for America labeled both statements "lies."
Liberty Counsel routinely represents Christians opposed to LGBT rights, including Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The group also submitted a brief before the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas in support of Texas' law that criminalized gay sex.