GOP Candidate For North Carolina Governor Claimed The ‘Homosexual Agenda’ Promoted The Rape Of Children, Pedophilia In New Findings
GOP Candidate For North Carolina Governor Claimed The ‘Homosexual Agenda’ Promoted The Rape Of Children, Pedophilia In New Findings
Mark Robinson also lambasted Michelle Obama and Billy Porter with extreme and dehumanizing language targeting LGBTQ people.
North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the state’s second highest-ranking elected official and the Republican nominee for governor this November, has a long history of extreme and dehumanizing language targeting LGBTQ people. He has said that heterosexual couples are “superior” to gay couples; transgender women who use the women’s bathroom should be arrested; has compared LGBTQ people to maggots and has said that seeing the rainbow pride flag makes him “sick.” Past reports also have him saying that he believes God formed him to fight LGBTQ issues.
But an investigation by Uncloseted Media has uncovered several new, unreported examples of Robinson’s degrading and threatening language toward LGBTQ people, at a time when the community is facing an increase in hate crimes and terror threats at Pride events, according to the FBI.
One of the most alarming instances was in 2018 when Robinson suggested that the “homosexual agenda” promoted the rape of children and would lead to social acceptance of pedophilia.
“What type of diversity are these people reaching out for?” Robinson, who is currently trailing Democrat Josh Stein according to recent polling, said in reference to people advocating for LGBTQ rights in a Dec. 2018 Facebook Live Video “The rape of children? Is that what you're reaching out for?” He added, “All this so-called inclusiveness and diversity. I told somebody else this, the very next human right coming down the pike is going to be pedophilia.”
Video retrieved via Facebook / Mark Robinson
Conspiracies about naked children performing at pride events and drag shows
Also in his 2018 Facebook Live, Robinson—who would become the most powerful politician in North Carolina should he become the state’s governor on Nov. 5—said he saw a video online of a boy who was “maybe nine or ten years old” twerking in a speedo in a public street surrounded by grown men. Shortly after, he said he read in an article that the same child was performing as a drag queen in “highly sexual women's clothing” in a nightclub. Robinson did not provide receipts or links to the article or to the videos.
In other Facebook Live videos, Robinson claimed—also without evidence—that “naked” and “scantily” dressed children are regular performers at pride events and drag shows.
“Look at what's going on with these so-called child drag queens, posing naked with grown men and dancing on stage for money. What kind of filth is that?” he said in a Jan. 2019 video.
In another 2019 upload, he said, “9-year-old boys are being put on the stage and put in parades dressed scantily and dancing provocatively in front of grown homosexual men,” and argued it was “a symptom of "toxic homosexuality.”
It appears Robinson is referring to a 2018 video of child drag performer Desmond is Amazing that went viral and caused outrage in online right-wing circles, though Robinson grossly misrepresented its content.
In the video, Desmond is Amazing is fully clothed and dancing alone to No Doubt’s ‘I’m just a girl.’ The right-wing backlash occurred at the same time that Robinson uploaded his Facebook Live video. Despite Robinson saying the dancing was “highly sexual,” Desmond’s moves mostly involved jumping and running around the stage.
Robinson’s fixation on children being targeted by supporters of LGBTQ rights is a recurring theme in many of the comments Uncloseted Media found in its review of his past statements. It’s not a strategy unique to Robinson, though. Anti-LGBTQ activists have long accused queer people of abusing children, from Anita Bryant’s 'Save Our Children' campaign of the 1970s to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham today claiming that public schools are “essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals.”
“Teaching about homosexuality…needs to be wiped out of our schools.”
Robinson’s campaign for governor of North Carolina marks the latest development in his meteoric rise in Republican politics. He first came to public attention in April 2018, when he attended a city council meeting in Greensboro, N.C., and delivered a fiery, four-minute speech in support of gun rights in the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Before then, he worked in furniture manufacturing.
A video of Robinson’s speech was posted online and went viral in conservative circles. He soon began posting more frequent online content as he became a right-wing influencer and popular speaker at Republican events. In 2019, Robinson announced a run for lieutenant governor, which he won the following year.
Since then, Robinson—the first Black Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina—has embraced the MAGA movement of the Republican party and has become a favorite of former President Donald Trump, who has called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
The office of lieutenant governor has little formal power in North Carolina, but one area of policy it can influence is public education, where he devotes much of his energy to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
But if Robinson were to be elected governor, his power would increase dramatically. For example, he would have the authority to implement and execute state laws—including those that regulate rules around public school education—as he sees fit.
“The thing that I'm most passionate about is that I think we need to take all the social engineering programs out of our schools. We need to remove all that junk,” Robinson said in an Aug. 2019 interview on The Edge Broadcast, a far-right radio show that often delves into conspiracy theories. “All the teaching about, you know, homosexuality, all this wild sex education garbage. It all needs to go. All of it needs to be wiped out of our schools.”
Excerpt of Mark Robinson speaking on The Edge Broadcast, Aug. 2019
Later, in the same interview, the host, Daniel Ott, used a transphobic slur when asked Robinson what parents should do if a drag queen story hour was happening at their local library.
“Tell them I'm not coming back to this library because you are promoting filth to these children,” Robinson responded. “There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to promote that to children other than the fact that you are a pervert trying to pervert children's minds, period.”
Excerpt of Mark Robinson speaking on The Edge Broadcast, Aug. 2019
Drag queen story hours are meant to be child-friendly events at libraries that promote reading and diversity. They have grown in popularity in recent years, which has resulted in a conservative backlash. Many have been canceled due to bomb threats.
In a 2021 speech to the North Carolina Renewal Project, an evangelical Christian organization that promotes a larger role for churches to play in public life, Robinson claimed—without evidence—that schools are telling children that they are the wrong gender.
“Look at what they're doing in school,” Robinson said. “Five, six, seven, eight-year-old children sitting in school and teachers are saying, ‘you're not really a boy, are you? Now you gotta wonder whether or not you're a boy.’ Teaching our children about transgenderism and homosexuality and adult propositions that have no place in the classroom.”
Robinson has a habit of spreading inflammatory misinformation about children and gender identity, the expression “transgenderism” is considered a hate term by GLAAD. At a 2023 rally, he falsely claimed that children as young as five were having gender-affirming surgeries. “We are legally abusing our children,” Robinson said. “When you start talking about clinics allowing five-year-olds to have transgender surgery, that is outrageous. That is abusive. As far as I'm concerned, it should be illegal.”
Fear-mongering about young children having gender reassignment surgery is common in conservative circles, but it has been reported multiple times that these surgeries are incredibly rare for people under the age of 18 and, even then, guidelines recommend patients be at least 15 years old to receive them.
Experts say extreme rhetoric can lead to violence
Experts warn that a rise in extreme rhetoric like Robinson’s in politics against LGBTQ people could lead to increased violence and hate crimes against them.
“Language that dehumanizes a group of people, framing them as threats to children, justifies multiple forms of discrimination and can lead to increases in hate crimes against marginalized groups,” says Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor in anthropology at Vanderbilt University who researches the U.S.-based religious right and white nationalist movements.
“Since the first organized campaigns against LGBTQ rights in the 1970s, activists have portrayed LGBTQ people as threats to children.” This shifts the conversation away from civil rights into a defense of children, justifying prejudice, she says.
Bjork-James says that if conservative activists like Robinson—who is a devout Christian—were truly motivated by concern for children’s safety, they would focus attention on the systemic child abuse in churches and point out the Southern Baptist Convention’s history of covering up child abuse from over 700 sexual predators, rather than condemning imagined abuses committed by drag queens.
Repeatedly and falsely referred to former First Lady Michelle Obama as a man
In addition to accusing the LGBTQ community of being a threat to children, Robinson has attacked public figures using anti-LGBTQ speech.
Indy Week first reported in March 2020 that Robinson misgendered former First Lady Michelle Obama in a Jan. 2017 Facebook post where he wrote: “Michelle Obama is an anti-American, abortion and gay marriage supporting, liberal leftist elitist and I'll be glad when he takes his boyfriend and leaves the White House.”
Uncloseted Media has found two other examples of Robinson misgendering Obama on Facebook. In March 2017, he wrote: “So it's ‘A Day Without Women.’ I wonder if Michelle Obama will take the day off?” Two months later, he wrote, “So what First LADY Melania Trump speaks five languages. First ‘lady’ Michelle Obama spoke five also; female, male, ghetto, anti-American liberal, and wookie.” A “Wookie” is a fictional alien species in the Star Wars films that is notable for being covered in hair and speaking in grunts and roars.
Robinson also condemned former President Barack Obama for being an LGBTQ ally in a Facebook Live video he uploaded the day before Obama left office in 2017.
“You openly and willfully promoted the sin and perversion of homosexuality while spitting in God Almighty's face and demonizing those who believed in Him,” Robinson said. “I have been eagerly awaiting the day that you leave our White House and disappear like a terrible stench in a strong wind.”
Called actor Billy Porter a “proud slave” for wearing a dress to the Oscars
Besides the Obamas, Robinson also lambasted Billy Porter in Feb. 2019 for wearing a dress to the Oscars, where he suggested the Black gay actor rejected the freedom from slavery his ancestors fought for.
“This Black man, who has inherited the freedom fought for by his enslaved ancestors, stood proudly before his new slave masters; masters of his own choosing. The masters of mammon and his own debased and abnormal desire.”
“Mammon” is a biblical reference to the corrupting influence money and wealth have on people.
The Robinson campaign did not return multiple requests for comment. However, in a Facebook Live video from Dec. 2018, Robinson seemed to predict that his controversial opinions on social media might be uncovered someday and expressed that he wasn’t concerned because he stood by his opinions.
“I'm not going to allow some creep, some high-powered creep that thinks they can dredge something up on me from some past Facebook posts to try to demonize me to put me in a state of fear,” Robinson said.
“I do not fear anything that you think you could drag up on me because I said something anti-homosexual or anti-Muslim. I'm not afraid of any of that. Anything that I've stated on social media, I stand by 100%. 100%.”
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The word "Homosexual" was first coined around 1886 by a social activist in Germany, for the purpose of describing , people who did not fit into the class of pedophile or pervert it was felt there was a need for the distinction.
The word "Homosexual" first appeared in the bible in 1946. there is a documentary about this believe the title is the Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture. Because the word was used to replace two Greek words for child molester, and pervert. This was done by a company in the United States which does bible translations. They were informed and aware of this error but printed it anyway.
To this day people use the word coined by one of our own activists in history in the wrong way against us.
I wonder why maggots are perverts? what about trump attracts perverts...oh never mind...