GOP-appointed state official says LGBTQ+ people are “of the devil”

Jason Rapert, a Christian nationalist member of Arkansas’ state library board, recently said that the LGBTQ+ movement is “of the devil” and told listeners that they should neither support nor vote for anyone who supports queer people.

“Transvestitism, transgenderism, the LGBTQ movement in the country is of the devil. Period. It’s of the devil,” he recently told an audience in a video unearthed by Right Wing Watch. “So you don’t need to be supporting people and voting for people who do things of the devil. There’s no way a real Christian can do it…. I’m telling you today, you cannot be a Christian and vote for people that do the devil’s work.”

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Rapert is a former Arkansas state legislator who launched the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) in 2019, a Christian nationalist organization that seeks to install religious legislators in every level of government to spread theocracy nationwide.

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Christian nationalist Jason Rapert declares that "the LGBTQ movement in the country is of the devil" and therefore "you cannot be a Christian and vote for people that do the devil's work." pic.twitter.com/a16RyJCblA

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 7, 2024

Last November, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) appointed him to the state library board to oversee the funding, development, and leadership of local public libraries. He quickly promised to enforce the state’s anti-LGBTQ+ book-banning law and threatened to defund any libraries that sued the state to block it.

The law, known as Act 372, pledged criminally prosecute librarians and bookstore owners who refuse to remove any books that are deemed as “harmful to minors,” a vague phrase that anti-LGBTQ+ activists often use to ban books with any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity. The law also made it easier for any single person to challenge a book, effectively removing it from shelves while it undergoes review by library, county, or city officials. The law has been blocked by courts from going into effect.

However, he has recently complained about his fellow board not supporting his crusade, saying they should be publicly humiliated, ostracized and injured.

“We are fighting against the people that are putting the queer books into your school libraries and trying to groom these children into homosexuality,” Rapert said in March 2023 while celebrating an anti-trans student state law that he said the NACL helped pass.

“We’re pursuing school board policies to save the nation. We are standing up and have our members running bills in the halls of the state legislatures to stand up against this woke ideology, to push back against the things of the devil in our country,” he continued.

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