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Deputy White House Liaison to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Merritt Corrigan has been fired after making a series of controversial comments attacking LGBTQ rights and gay marriage, two former Trump Administration officials confirmed to NBC News on Monday.
In a series of tweets Monday, Corrigan wrote that for “too long, I’ve remained silent as the media has attacked me for my Christian beliefs, which are shared by the majority of Americans. Let me clear: Gay marriage isn’t marriage / Men aren’t women / US-funded Tunisian LGBT soap operas aren’t America First.”
For too long, I’ve remained silent as the media has attacked me for my Christian beliefs, which are shared by the majority of Americans
Let me clear:
Gay marriage isn’t marriage
Men aren’t women
US-funded Tunisian LGBT soap operas aren’t America First— Merritt Corrigan (@MerrittCorrigan) August 3, 2020
“It was unclear whether Corrigan’s departure was prompted by the tweets, which described LGBT identity as ‘sexual deviancy,’ or whether another situation may have led to her removal and her decision to issue to the tweets,” reports NBC News.
In her tweetstorm, Corrigan also mentioned having “watched with horror this week as USAID distributed taxpayer funded documents claiming ‘we cannot tell someone’s sex or gender by looking at them’ and that not calling oneself ‘cis-gendered’ is a microagression.”
Corrigan also announced that she planned to hold a news conference on Thursday afternoon “to discuss the rampant anti-Christian sentiment at USAID” alongside Jacob Wohl and Jack Burman, a duo of right-wing activists with a long history of fabricating conspiracy theories and false sexual assault allegations about President Trump’s perceived political opponents. Wohl failed to smear former Mayor Pete Buttigieg with a fabricated sex scandal.
Corrigan had come under intense scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers who took issue with her earlier online comments where she had criticized the U.S. as a “homo-empire” under a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.” Those comments were first reported by Politico in November.
In July, Engel led 20 Democratic lawmakers calling for USAID’s acting administrator John Barsa to dismiss Corrigan over her comments, saying they were “appalling” and “has no place in a federal agency.”
“Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee doubled down on that statement in a hearing the following day, pressing Acting USAID administrator John Barsa over whether the agency deemed Corrigan a qualified employee based on her beliefs,” reports The Hill. “They also questioned the administrator on the employment of Mark Lloyd, a USAID advisor on religious freedom who had called Islam a ‘barbaric cult’, reported by The Associated Press in 2016.”
David Stacy, the Government Affairs Director of the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy organization for LGBTQ rights, said in a statement that Corrigan’s beliefs are “not unique in the Trump administration.”
“She is the exact type of anti-LGBTQ zealot that Trump recruits and places in positions of power. Corrigan’s biased and harmful beliefs are not shared by the vast majority of Americans,” the statement read.
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