Noted homophobe and disgraced former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt has recently expanded his vitriol to encompass not only gay and lesbian people but transgender youth and the people who support them as well.
On his program Pray In Jesus Name today, Kligenschmitt reiterated a transphobic line of thinking that previously led him to declare that a transgender teenage girl using the women's locker room at her school was tantamount to the teen "visually raping" her classmates. Today, Klingenschmitt directed his misinformed hatred at a Colorado family who successfully fought for their six-year-old daughter's right to use the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity at her elementary school.
Coy Mathis made headlines earlier this year when her family filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, contending that Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain, Colo., a suburb of Colorado Springs, abruptly denied Mathis the right to use the girls' bathroom after she'd been using the facilities without incident for a year. In response, the division issued a landmark ruling declaring that Mathis, and other transgender students enrolled in public schools, have an unalienable right to use the bathroom that reflects their gender identity.
But Kligenschmitt, who has adopted the nickname "Dr. Chaps," doesn't see Colorado's history-making decision as good news.
Consistently mispronouncing Mathis -- who was assigned male at birth but has identified as female since she was 18 months old -- Klingenschmitt claims that the Mathises are abusing their child by validating her identity as a girl.
"He's being abused by his parents," Klingenschmitt said, according to video posted by Right Wing Watch. "These abusive parents now have used this little boy to try and claim that he's a girl to try and tell the world that they ought to let transgender adults into your little girl's public bathrooms!"
"There is a demon of rape inside of this movement," he continued, that intends "to violate your daughters."
Watch Klingenschmitt's transphobic rant below, clipped by RWW, despite the chaplain's repeated but unsuccessful attempts to get the right-wing watchdog group's YouTube account shut down with bogus copyright infringement claims.
