LGBT groups urge rejection of Trump judicial nominee who said same-sex marriages are ‘troubled’

LGBT advocacy groups are demanding that the Senate reject President Trump’s nomination of Gordon Giampietro to a federal court in Wisconsin because of comments he’s made, including that same-sex relationships are “troubled.”

The groups noted radio interviews in 2014 and 2015, first reported by BuzzFeed, in which Giampietro said children are best raised by heterosexual couples.

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He also said that legalizing same-sex marriage would open the door to marriage between siblings and urged listeners to ignore Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality case.

Trump has nominated Giampietro to be a federal district judge in Wisconsin’s Eastern District.

In a letter to the Senate Wednesday, Lamda Legal and 39 national, state and local LGBT groups said the White House should withdraw the nomination.

They said the Wisconsin attorney’s remarks about same-sex marriage and same-sex relationships should disqualify him and that he failed to disclose the radio interviews on the application he filed with Wisconsin’s Federal Nominating Commission.

“Mr. Giampietro has left no doubt that he would be willing to use the federal bench to curtail LGBT protections,” the groups said.

BuzzFeed also reported that Giampietro wrote on the website Catholic Thing in 2015 that “calls for diversity” are “code for relaxed standards (moral and intellectual).”

In the letter, the groups said Giampietro’s appointment to the bench would cause grave harm to the LGBT community and others.

“Unlike attorneys who seek to claim that they were merely advancing the views of their client, Mr. Giampietro has expended significant personal effort to promote discrimination against LGBT people,” they wrote.

“And his derogatory statements about vulnerable minorities make Mr. Giampietro demonstrably unfit for a job as a federal judge.”