Trump's New Lawyer Backed Anti-LGBT Laws in Russia & Africa

Remember a year ago when gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans were touting Trump as 2016's most LGBT-friendly Republican? They should have taken a picture. It would have lasted longer.

The appointment of conservative litigator Jay Sekulow as the face of President Trump's legal team in the midst of the Russia investigation is raising eyebrows. And rightfully so, as go to lawyer for the religious right since the 1990's, Sekulow has spent a career dismantling the separation of church and state.

But a recent report published by The Daily Beast on Wednesday should be of particular concern to LGBTQ Americans. In it, it details how Sekulow's Christian legal group the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) was instrumental in passing Russia's law banning "gay propaganda."

According to The Daily Beast, ACLJ has branches around the world: one in Moscow, called the Slavic Centre for Law and Justice (SCLJ). The article notes that while SCLJ pushes back against Putin's government over Christian rights, it is on the record for publicly praising laws banning "gay propaganda" for minors.

Moreover, the Beast points to tax filing that show ACLJ provided more than $1.5 million in funding to from 2011 to 2015. Russia's "gay propaganda" law passed in 2013.

But the limiting of LGBT freedoms isn't just a Russia thing for Trump's new lawyer, in 2004, he blasted the 2003 United States Supreme Court decision that overturned a law banning same-sex couples from having sex.

"By providing constitutional protection to same-sex sodomy, the Supreme Court strikes a damaging blow for the traditional family that will only intensify the legal battle to protect marriage and the traditional family," he wrote.

Slate.com also made note of how Sekulow's ACLJ has an office in Zimbabwe and Kenya. Both offices were set up as the countries were in the midst of revising their constitutions.

The ACLJ lobbied for the inclusion of constitutional bans on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. While neither country wrote total bans on homosexuality into their constitutions, Zimbabwe did include a prohibition on same-sex marriage. (Homosexuality is already illegal in both countries by statute.)