03/08/2012

Washington – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today called on Mitt Romney to fire his National Finance Chair Frank Vandersloot who has a long history of anti-LGBT extremism.  Writing recently in Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald details VanderSloot’s radical positions and points out how Mitt Romney has been the beneficiary of his largess – including nearly $1 million to the pro-Romney Super-PAC.

“Frank VanderSloot is a bully who uses his vast resources to vilify and demonize lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” said HRC Communications Vice President Fred Sainz. “Mitt Romney should be ashamed to be associated with him and should immediately relieve him of his campaign position and return all of the money that has funded his race.”

HRC has launched an online action allowing fair-minded Americans to contact the Romney campaign and demand VanderSloot be fired and his campaign contributions returned.

Among VanderSloot’s anti-LGBT actions:

• Belinda VanderSloot, his wife, donated $100,000 dollars to the Proposition 8 effort in California that ended marriage for gay and lesbian couples;
• In his home state of Idaho, VanderSloot funded a billboard campaign that criticized Idaho Public Television for its airing of a documentary that showcases diversity of families and works to educate children on respect and tolerance.  The campaign suggested that the station was involved in an effort to “promote the homosexual lifestyle.”
• When a local reporter in Idaho Falls reported on the cover-up of child molestation incidents by the Boy Scouts and local Mormon church members, VanderSloot led a personal crusade against the reporter and outed him as gay. VanderSloot claimed that “the Boy Scout’s position of not letting gay men be scout leaders, and the LDS Church’s position that marriage should be between a man and a woman may have caused [the reporter] to attack the scouts and the LDS Church through his journalism.”  The reporter later won the Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment for his reporting.

The Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.