Right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson says gay people can’t be judges because they can’t be “fair or objective”
E.W. Jackson made the comments during a rant against Trump's 9th Circuit nominee, Patrick Bumatay
E.W. Jackson, the right-wing pastor who previously ran for Virginia lieutenant governor and U.S. senator in past electoral cycles, is demanding that the U.S. Senate vote to reject an openly gay judge nominated to a federal appeals court by President Trump.
Speaking on his radio show, The Awakening, on American Family Radio, Jackson took issue with Trump’s selection of Patrick Bumatay for a position on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Tuesday, the Senate officially voted to confirm Bumatay, making him the nation’s highest-ranking openly gay judge.
Bumatay, who previously clerked for Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge Sandra Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, is an active member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, and reportedly worked on the confirmations of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
Democrats have been wary of Bumatay’s nomination, as they have with all Trump nominees, due to the belief that President Trump is attempting to remake the federal judiciary in order to push it in a more conservative and pro-corporate direction. In fact, conservative and Republican groups previously attacked Senate Democrats, particularly California Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein, for withholding their support for Bumatay’s nomination for political reasons.
“The Democrats play identity politics and they don’t want President Trump to nominate Patrick Bumatay, a highly qualified judicial nominee, who happens to be gay, to the court of appeals,” Mike Davis, the president of the Article III Project, which supports Trump’s judicial nominees, told The Washington Times.
But Bumatay also got significant criticism from right-wing groups, due to his membership in the Tom Homann LGBT Law Association, which some conservatives see as a left-wing group pushing a liberal agenda.
Echoing those sentiments, Jackson criticized Bumatay’s nomination, calling him a “complete and total activist” who is pursuing an agenda to normalize and legalize homosexuality.
“This guy is bad, bad news. He is a homosexual activist… and he brings this into his legal practice,” Jackson said, calling for senators to defeat Bumatay’s nomination or for the president to withdraw it.
“Folks, we don’t need judges who have an ideological agenda to use the bench to transform the culture into something they think it should be, contrary to everything we’ve ever stood for,” Jackson added.
He further opined, following a longer rant against homosexuality, that openly gay judges — and straight judges who support LGBTQ rights — are biased in favor of LGBTQ causes, and because of that lack of impartiality, they are unqualified to sit on the federal judiciary.
“I’m convinced that these folks, because that’s their agenda, they can’t be fair and objective because they’ve got an agenda that is preeminent in their lives, and in their minds, and in their hearts, and in their behavior, and in their activity,” Jackson said.
“There is a tremendous opportunity there for judicial tyranny when people take that job because they’ve got some agenda other than the implementation of the law and the Constitution in a fair and objective way,” he added.
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