DeVos says she’s not anti-gay but her family history speaks for itself

Betsy DeVos defended herself against assertions she has an anti-LGBT history by making a distinction between herself and family members who donated to anti-LGBT groups.

DeVos, Trump’s pick to become the next education secretary, faced assertions she has an anti-LGBT past under questioning before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee.

According to a 2013 report in the Michigan LGBT publication PrideSource.com, Devos and her husband led the effort to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot in 2004 and contributed more than $200,000 to the campaign, which ultimately succeeded. Dick DeVos also contributed $100,000 in 2008 to pass Amendment 2 in Florida, an effort that banned same-sex marriage in the state.

A $20,000 campaign contribution from Dick Devos in 2004 to Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, the campaign that advocated for the anti-gay marriage amendment in Michigan, is in the public record, according to Buzzfeed.

Betsy DeVos’s father, Edgar Prince, was a co-founder of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, and her mother, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, contributed $75,000 to pass the anti-gay marriage amendment in Michigan.

Eliza Byard, GLSEN’s executive director, said in a statement the DeVos hearing “raised a lot of additional deeply troubling issues of grave concern to all parents” and the organization will oppose the nominee if things remain as they stand.

“While we are relieved to hear DeVos rejecting the dangerous and thoroughly discredited practice of conversion therapy her family has previously supported, it was chilling to hear DeVos dodge questions about whether she would keep essential protections for transgender students, and basically refer all other civil rights protections for students with disabilities, students of color, and religious minority students ‘back to the states,’” Byard said.

via Washington Blade