When the National Association of Christian Lawmakers held its National Policy Conference at Liberty University earlier this month, participants on one panel discussed ways to take advantage of the far-right majority’s control of the Supreme Court to “unwind” the separation of church and state. During a separate session, participants, led by radical right-wing conspiracy theorist and anti-choice activist Janet Porter, discussed a plan to enact laws mirroring the one passed in Texas in 2021 that allows anyone to sue a clinic, doctor, or any person who facilitates an abortion for up to $10,000 and apply the same strategy to LGBTQ issues in public schools.
During her remarks, Porter bragged that she has been working with Jonathan Mitchell, the right-wing attorney behind the Texas abortion law, on her efforts to draft this model legislation and she practically cackled with delight as she unveiled her slogan for it: “If there is grooming, a lawsuit is looming.”
“What if, instead of us putting out all these fires in this library and in this school and in this county, what if we stopped it at the source?” Porter said. “What if we put together a bill that says, hey, guess what, if you’re involved in any kind of grooming … if you don’t tell mom and dad what Johnny and Susie are reading, then you’re liable to a lawsuit.”
“This addresses the transvestites, the Drag Queen Story Hour, the outside speaker that they bring in from GLAAD or from Planned Parenthood or from whatever the name they pick for the latest homosexual activist group,” Porter continued. “I had been praying for years, ‘How do we address the alphabet mafia?’ You know, the LGBTQRSTD. How do we go after that and get it out of our schools? … We can actually take out the grooming, we take out the pedophilia, the sodomy, it’s all listed in this bill. … Essentially, we’ve got a bill that says if Johnny or Susie comes home with any material that violates this long list of anything from pedophilia to grooming to the LGBT agenda, then guess what? They are opening themselves up to a lawsuit.”
Porter then bragged that “just like” the Texas bill, her legislation is crafted so that “we can sue them and we can get the legal fees, [but] if they sue us, they can’t get legal fees.”
“I’m laughing,” Porter admitted. “I’m like, ‘Can can we even do this?’ Well, we can. That bill’s [been] upheld. The court did not strike it down and that same kind of language is in here so that we’re not opening up parents to legal fees.”
“So, it’s just a bill that says again, if you do this, then you will be held accountable, whether you are a teacher, whether you are a librarian, or whether you are an advisor to the gay club on school, whether you are someone who brings in an outside speaker, or the outside speaker,” Porter declared. “We’re going to be able to say, if there is grooming, a lawsuit is looming.”
Founded by zealously anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice former Arkansas state legislator Jason Rapert, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers regularly holds conferences at which Republican leaders, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, and religious-right activists plot strategy about how to enact their radical political agenda throughout the country, largely through model legislation that is specifically designed to be taken home by participating state legislators and turned into law. The ultimate goal of the NACL is to “take authority” over every level of government across the nation and one day put one of its members in the White House.
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