Sandy Rios, above, a representative of the the right-wing American Family Association this week criticised the confirmation of Eric Fanning to be US Army Secretary.
As a gay man Fanning cannot be an “alpha male” she declared.
When it comes to leading men into battle, when it comes to being secretary of the Army, I’ll take an alpha male any day. I’m sorry. I know these war-like men too well and I don’t think most of them – very few of them are gay.
She added that she didn’t think anyone in the gay community could be described as a “warrior”.
Eric Fanning
Rios contrasted Fanning’s confirmation to the controversy surrounding William “Jerry” Boykin, the retired general who “joked” about using violence to put off trans women who use women’s bathrooms.
Boykin was sacked from a teaching post at Hampden-Sydney College after the comments he posted online.
The former Delta Force soldier and vice president of the vehemently anti-LGBT Family Research Council, said earlier this year that:
The first man who goes in the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery.
He was responding to a number of bills proposed and passed in US states which ban transgender people from using gender-appropriate bathrooms, and it seemed apparent when he referred to “men” that he was misgendering trans women.
But despite appearing to call for violence against trans people, the former soldier has been defended as an “American hero” by sites like World Net Daily (WND) and Fox News.
The latter referred to the leadership at the school as “cowardly”, and said he was:
Ousted because of political correctness.
Moaned Rios:
That’s where we’ve come: an openly gay man is the secretary of the army while the founder of the Delta Force, because he disapproves of transgender bathrooms in North Carolina, is fired from teaching at a college. It’s just amazing.