Former President Donald Trump endorsed North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) for his state’s governor, calling Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.” However, Robinson has said he considers King to be an “inferior pastor” and a “communist” who wanted to “subvert capitalism” and “free choice.” These comments cap off his years of extremely hateful language towards LGBTQ+ people.
Mark Robinson At a Glance:
Location: High Point, North Carolina
Position Sought: Governor of North Carolina
Current Position: Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina
Born August 18, 1968 in Greensboro, North Carolina as the ninth of 10 children to an abusive, alcoholic father and a custodian stepfather, Robinson lived in foster care before being reunited with his mother and siblings. He graduated from Grimsley High School and subsequently served in the U.S. Army Reserve.
While he took classes at North Carolina A&T State University, he never graduated. He paid for his eventual wife, Yolanda, to get an abortion in 1989 and married her in 1993. He also worked in furniture manufacturing and later enrolled at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro in 2017, though he dropped out to pursue a political career.
After the February 14, 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Robinson delivered an April 3, 2018 speech at the Greensboro City Council in favor of holding a local gun show — his passionate speech quickly went viral, gaining him an invitation to speak at the National Rifle Association of America’s annual convention. In 2019, he launched a successful campaign to become the first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina. On April 22, 2023, he launched his campaign to become governor.
Robinson has filed for bankruptcy three times: in 1998, 1999, and 2003. He has also been reported for questionable expenditures in his campaign finance reports and was found not to have paid seven years of federal income tax, though he says the taxes have since been repaid.
Robinson’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights
Robinson has called homosexuality “an abominable sin,” referred to lesbian celebrity Ellen DeGeneres as a “top ranking demon… proudly serving in Satan’s army,” and has called former First Lady Michelle Obama “a man,” repeating a transphobic misogynoir conspiracy theory. He has also called the trans equality movement “demonic” and “full of the spirit of Antichrist.”
In March 2023, Robinson declared that God created him to battle against LGBTQ+ rights and added, “Makes me sick every time I see it — a church that flies that Rainbow flag, which is a direct spit in the face of God almighty.” In 2021, Robinson compared LGBTQ+ people to cow dung. In 2017, he wrote on Facebook, “You CAN NOT love God and support the homosexual agenda.”
Same-sex marriage
Robinson’s comments about same-sex couples indicate that he does not support same-sex marriage, even though he said he generally supports the constitutional rights of “homosexuals.”
“In America, you have the right to be a homosexual and, as an elected official, I have a duty to protect your constitutional rights, and I will,” he said, adding, “[Heterosexual couples] are superior because they can do something these people can’t do, because that’s the way God created it to be…. And I’m tired of this society trying to tell me it’s not so… If homosexuality is of God, what purpose does it serve? What does it make? What does it create? It creates nothing.”
Evolutionary biologists have observed homosexuality in thousands of animal species and noted that same-sex pairings can reduce group conflict and sexual competition and increase group social cohesion, stress relief, and the likelihood of newborns surviving.
Gender-affirming care for minors
Robinson opposes gender-affirming care for minors and supports his state’s ban on such care for minors. He generally opposes trans people and has accused people “who support this mass delusion called transgenderism” of seeking “to glorify Satan.”
While speaking at the Faith Over Fear Rally in May 2023, he said, “If you believe that a five-year-old should have transgender surgery, I am sorry, but you are a bad person. You are a child abuser, and you should be placed in jail…. If our society continues to cosign on the abusing of our children in that way, we will not have a society for long…. As far as I’m concerned, it should be illegal.” Such surgeries aren’t performed on pre-pubertal minors.
In an October 24, 2019 Facebook post against gender-affirming care for minors, Robinson wrote that trans children are being “mentally raped” by their parents and other supportive adults.
In December 2016, he criticized a National Geographic magazine cover titled “Gender Revolution” that displayed a nine-year-old transgender child.
“The sick, deranged, sexual degenerates who promote this type of demonic behavior are the ones who will take the next step in our continuing moral decline toward total depravity. Free love, then homosexuality. Now the next push; the sexualization of the perverts most cherished target, CHILDREN. These devil-worshipping child molesters will not stop until they can legally abuse God’s most precious gifts to us.” he wrote.
Trans children in sports
“It’s insane to think that young men should be competing against young women in sports,” Robinson said in an August 2023 interview with Newsmax, a right-wing media outlet. “Women should be safe in their locker rooms, and they should be free from having to compete in unfair sports against men. And our children — other peoples’ children — shouldn’t have this forced on them.”
In a November 2019 Facebook post, he wrote, “It’s odd that the left doesn’t call masculinity ‘toxic’ when it’s competing against women in female athletics.”
In an October 25, 2019 Facebook post, Robinson wrote, “It seems men aren’t being encouraged to excel anywhere these days… except in female athletics.”
Don’t say gay/LGBTQ+ discussions in schools
Robinson believes “topics surrounding transgenderism and homosexuality should be discussed at home and not in public education,” his spokesperson John Wesley Waugh told NBC News.
In 2021, Robinson created an education task force to investigate and pull LGBTQ+ literature from public schools, as well as report instances of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools. Teachers’ names, employers, and information were released unredacted by the report, yet many of the complaints weren’t verified or even authenticated.
On June 23, 2023, Robinson delivered remarks at a conference hosted by Moms for Liberty, an anti-LGBTQ+ “parental rights” group that opposes queer-inclusive school curricula and policies. During his remarks, he said people should read 20th century dictators including Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Chinese communist Chairman Mao Zedong, Russian totalitarian Josef Stalin, and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, saying, “It is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes.”
In an October 24, 2019, Facebook post, Robinson wrote, “Children are being used as propagandized shields in the fight to force the sexual preferences of a few down the collective throat of the American people. From teaching ‘gender fluidity’ to grade schoolers, to story time with drag queens, to nine-year-olds sexually dancing for grown-ups, those who intend to victimize children for their own sake are on the march. Those who push these agendas do so by bullying society with threats of castigation. They have created a climate of fear that pushes the painfully obvious voices of reality and reason from the conversation.”
“We’re going to defend women in this state,” Robinson said in a February 2024 campaign speech. “That means if you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden on Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested — or whatever we got to do to you.”
Racism, antisemitic comments, and conspiracy theories
Robinson has previously referred to African Americans as “muddle headed negroes,” “apes,” and “monkey,” all of which are regarded as racial slurs. “I am TIRED of blacks and mexicans running around shouting about being proud of their race,” he wrote on social media, later adding, “Note to liberals; I’ll accept ‘Gay Pride’ when you accept ‘White Pride.’”
He also claimed that the 2018 Marvel superhero movie Black Panther was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists … to pull the shekels [money] out of your Schvartze [Black] pockets.” The film depicted an Afro-futuristic society taken over by a military conquerer.
Despite Robinson’s October 2023 claim that “I’ve never been antisemitic,” in 2017, he referred to the notion that the Holocaust happened as “hogwash” on Facebook. He wrote another Facebook post saying that it was false that six million Jewish people were killed by the Nazis. In 2019, he claimed that Jewish bankers were one of the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” on a podcast. The other three, he claimed, were Muslim people, the CIA, and China.
Robinson has said that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “globalist” conspiracy to defeat then-President Donald Trump. Robinson also referred to survivors of the 2018 Parkland High School mass shooting as “angry, know-it-all CHILDREN”; “spoiled little bastards”; and “media prosti-tots” for supporting gun reforms. He believes school shootings are God’s punishment for abortions, like the one he paid for his then-girlfriend to get in 1989.
Robinson’s Career
Robinson pursued an undergraduate degree and a job in furniture manufacturing before switching to politics.
Served in the U.S. Army Reserve
Attended North Carolina A&T State University
Worked in furniture manufacturing
Attended University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Elected as North Carolina’s lieutenant governor in 2020
Launched campaign to become North Carolina’s governor in 2023
Conclusion
Robinson is a vocal opponent of the LGBTQ+ community. He has been willing to use religious condemnation and conspiracy theories to further his anti-queer agenda. If elected into higher office, he would likely use his governmental power to persecute LGBTQ+ people and roll back queer civil rights.
