President Donald Trump nominated Jeff Mateer, who was serving as an assistant attorney general in Texas to be a federal district judge.
Mateer worked for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a strong Trump supporter.
The White House then withdrew the Mateer nomination after excerpts from a video speech he made were released that included, among other things, that he described transgender children as proof of “Satan’s plan”; promoted the discredited conversion therapy to change a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation; and said that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality.
Perhaps Mateer’s statements could be explained as youthful indiscretions, things he said as a college student and later regretted.
Or not.
Trump nominated Mateer in 2017. He made the aforementioned statements in 2015.
CNN reported that Mateer, who was then working as general counsel for a religious liberty advocacy group, addressed a Colorado lawsuit in which the parents of a transgender girl sued her school so that the girl could use the bathroom of her choice.
“In Colorado, a public school has been sued because a first grader and I forget the sex, she’s a girl who thinks she’s a boy or a boy who thinks she’s a girl, it’s probably that, a boy who thinks she’s a girl . . .And the school said, ‘Well, she’s not using the girl’s restroom.’ And so she has now sued to have a right to go in. Now, I submit to you, a parent of three children who are now young adults, a first grader really knows what their sexual identity? I mean it just really shows you how Satan’s plan is working and the destruction that’s going on.”
And, whatever you do, don’t ask Mateer about gay marriage.
This is what he said:
“Why couldn’t four 4 people wanna get married? Why not one man and three women? Or three women and one man? And we’re gonna spare you some of those slides. We actually have a presentation that we get into it. And I’ll tell you, we say it’s PG-13, it may be R, or what do they call the next one? NC-17 or whatever?”
. . . “I mean, it’s disgusting. I’ve learned words I didn’t know. I mean, other than . . . my assistants here, have you ever heard the word ‘throuple’?’Throuple’ so that’s three people coming together of different sexes, maybe mixed sexes. Them coming together. There are people who marry themselves. Somebody wanted to marry a tree. People marrying their pets. It’s just like – you know, you read the New Testament and you read about all the things and you think, ‘Oh, that’s not going on in our community.’ Oh yes it is. We’re back to that time where debauchery rules.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/20/politics/kfile-jeff-mateer-lgbt-remarks/index.html
U.S. Sen. John Cronyn of Texas, who, with the state’s other senator, Ted Cruz, recommended Mateer, then asked Trump to withdraw the nomination because Mateer had not disclosed the video before he was nominated.
“That’s a big problem,” Cronyn told Politico.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/13/brett-talley-trump-nominee-withdraws-295322
Mateer’s name was withdrawn from consideration.
