President Donald Trump's nominee for a federal judgeship in Texas, Jeff Mateer, gave speeches in 2015 that described transgender children as evidence of "Satan's plan," and said sanctioning same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality and lamented that states were banning conversion therapy, CNN reported on Wednesday.
Mateer, who is currently first assistant attorney general of Texas, was at the time of the speeches a general counsel of the First Liberty Institute, a religious liberty advocacy group, and opposed the expansion of nondiscrimination protections to LGBT people in the city of Plano.
In a 2015 speech, Mateer discussed a Colorado lawsuit in which the parents of a transgender girl sued her school for preventing her from using the bathroom of her choice, saying "a first-grader really knows what is their sexual identity? I mean it just really shows you how Satan's plan is working and the destruction that's going on."
In the same speech, Mateer also said that the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage could lead to "disgusting" new forms of matrimony, saying "There are people who marry themselves. Somebody wanted to marry a tree. People marrying their pets. It's just like — you know, you read the New Testament and you read about all the things and you think, 'Oh, that's not going on in our community.' Oh yes it is. We're back to that time where debauchery rules."
Mateer also has made comments in another speech appearing to bemoan the disappearance of gay "conversion therapy."
Kathy Miller, of Texas Freedom Network, which presses for the separation of church and state, called the nominations "a clear signal that President Trump intends to make our federal courts the place where civil rights go to die," The Texas Observer reported.
Neither Mateer nor the Department of Justice responded to a CNN request for comment.
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