Mat Staver, a guy who once said the “Q” in LGBTQ stands for pedophilia and that Jay-Z is a known satanist, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from tax payers.
On Monday, The Department of the Treasury and the Small Business Administration released the names of over 650,000 beneficiaries that received forgivable federal loans though the Paycheck Protection Program, and many include organizations labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including Staver’s Liberty Counsel.
According to the list, the Maitland-based Liberty Counsel received between $350,000 and $1 million on April 27, from Seacoast National Bank, and reportedly retained no jobs. It’s important to note that the Small Business Administration's release of PPP data only gives ranges, and not exact amounts, of the loans.
We reached out to the Liberty Counsel for comment, and will update this post if it gets back to us.
On April 8, the Liberty Counsel actually released a how-to guide for religious organizations to apply for PPP loans, which you can read here. The guide outlines not only how to apply for the loans, but also how not to pay them back, and loopholes for discrimination. The guide also stated that nonprofits like, the Liberty Counsel, should have no ethical qualms with taking the money.
The Liberty Counsel falls under the “hate group” category according to the SPLC, which highlights the group’s numerous anti-LGBTQ stances, including allowing homosexuals into the Boy Scout of America Group will increase pedophilia, advocating for the criminalization of gay marriage, and stating that same-sex marriage will somehow result in the total destruction of society.
However, Staver is probably most well-known for representing Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay people back in 2015.
More recently, Staver also represented Tampa evangelical pastor and conspiracy theorist Rodney Howard-Browne, who was arrested for refusing to close his mega-church amid local shut down orders regarding the coronavirus pandemic. On May 15, the charges of unlawful assembly and violating quarantine orders were dropped, and Howard-Browne resumed services at The River at Tampa Bay Church. However, services are now held outdoors in his parking lot to protect his congregation from “government tyranny,” says Howard-Browne. However, Staver later said in a Facebook Live video that the church lost its insurance.
But the Liberty Counsel wasn’t the only far-right group that received forgivable federal dollars. At least six extremist organizations scored between $2,350,000 and $5,700,000 in total PPP loans, including anti-immigrant groups like the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for Immigration Reform, the anti-Muslim group Center for Security Policy, and the anti-LGBTQ group the Pacific Justice Institute.
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