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Trump-Endorsed GOP Candidate Says Civil Rights Don’t Apply to Gays, Since ‘They Can Actually Change’

That's not how that works, big guy.

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Vernon Jones, a Democrat-turned-Republican in Georgia, made news when he switched parties shortly after the January 6th insurrection. But he was back in the headlines again after he announced he was running for a House seat in the Peach State’s 10th District.

Appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast last week, Jones displayed some of the bigotry that perhaps explains his ideological shift.

As Bannon was discussing the “difference” between civil rights for gay Americans and for Black Americans, Jones told him, “Civil rights for Blacks, and gay rights for gays, are two different things.”

Bannon said, “But they say it’s the same thing.”

Jones’ reply was shocking:

But it’s not the same thing. I don’t know what you are unless you tell me what you are, if you’re gay. But when I walk in that room, you can tell that I’m Black. I’m Black from cradle to grave, let’s not get that confused.

They can actually change. You can go from being straight, to being gay, to being transgender and all these other genders. But when you Black, I don’t have a choice.

When did gays come over in ships?

While Jones is correct that you can tell he’s Black when he walks into a room, that doesn’t change the fact that there have been laws against homosexuality, some of which still exist in some states. It certainly doesn’t change the fact that gays have been persecuted to the extent that laws are necessary to protect them.

On Twitter, Jones repeated his claim angrily. Using the derogatory term “Rainbow Mafia,” Jones spouted that the aims of the gay rights movement were different than the civil rights movement of Dr. King’s day:

I guess Vernon Jones probably appeals to the Trump crowd. To the rest of us, he just sounds like a homophobe.

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Andrew Simpson
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Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. In his spare time, Andrew loves to think about how nice it would be to have spare time.

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