A Christian pastor with a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ comments was invited to be the guest chaplain of the House of Representatives yesterday.
Rev. Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California, gave the opening prayer at the House yesterday morning. In his prayer, he called the Constitution God’s “great gift to all freedom-loving people” but otherwise stayed away from political topics.
Guest chaplains are recommended by members of Congress and the guest chaplain program is a “wonderful opportunity to affirm pastoral leaders from many different backgrounds,” according to the House Office of the Chaplain. The Office’s website currently doesn’t say who invited Hibbs to be a guest chaplain.
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Hibbs is a controversial figure in Christianity because of his extreme antipathy towards LGBTQ+ people. Just last year, he said that “Satan himself” planned the “transgender agenda.” He said that teachers should out LGBTQ+ students to their parents in order to fight the “demonic and dark satanic powers” in public schools that are “sexualizing” and “mentally abusing” children.
“Transgenderism is a violation of the word and will of God,” he said. “It’s a violation of humanity. It’s a violation of science. It’s a violation — if you’re an evolutionist — regarding evolution.”
Hibbs is also a supporter of conversion therapy, the harmful pseudoscientific process by which LGBTQ+ people are converted to be straight and cisgender. In 2018, he spoke at a rally in Sacramento alongside the ex-LGBTQ+ group “Changed” opposing A.B. 2943, a bill that would have labeled conversion therapy a form of “consumer fraud” in the state because practitioners make promises they can’t deliver on.
“The entire gospel is about change. It is about hope,” he said at the rally. “The very gospel message is that Jesus Christ changes lives.”
The state capitol “stands for, they say, choice. And we are just simply asking that people be left alone and let them make their choice. If they want to receive our input from God’s word or not.”
“When two people of the same sex get together, it’s out of sheer wanton lust and pleasure only for self,” Hibbs preached in 2021. “Nothing comes of it. No life can come from it. No family can come from it.”
“Homosexuality—L-B-G-T-Q actions—prove the existence of God, because God’s word says this would be some of the outcome and actions of the Last Days.”
In 2013 and 2014, he was a leader in the fight against a bill in California to reduce anti-LGBTQ+ bullying in schools. One of his arguments was that cis boys would pretend to be trans girls in order to get into the girls’ bathroom, something that just hasn’t happened. He wasn’t so much worried about how this would affect girls but about how a boy who pretended to be trans would get bullied for doing so.
“There’s going to be young men that are going to target that kid and really, really lay it on him,” Hibbs said. “It’s going to make bullying worse.” He then said that the hypothetical kid would get his teeth knocked out and be hospitalized, and he demanded to know which state official would be held responsible for that.
Hibbs has also gotten involved in federal politics in the past. He said in 2021 that President Joe Biden should be tried by court-martial for ending the war in Afghanistan.
“Joe Biden needs to be facing court-martial,” Hibbs preached in his church. “He needs to be tried for his actions! People are dead, and he needs to pay for it. It is a crime what he’s committing. Joe Biden has committed a crime, and in military law, he’s to be removed from office.”
He doesn’t have a high opinion of Vice President Kamala Harris either, saying that she and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are “people with antichrist worldviews.”
“They don’t want you, they don’t honor you, and it breaks our hearts,” he prayed in 2021. “But Father God, we pray that you would take back this government from the brink.”