Stew Peters, a Russia-backed anti-LGBTQ+ influencer who once baselessly accused a gay father of raping his own children, recently said that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) should be dropped off in Iran’s capital city of Tehran to see if he’ll be killed by anti-LGBTQ+ extremists. He’s just the most recent political figure to accuse Graham of being gay.
“We should drop Lindsay Graham off right in the middle of Tehran to see if these people really do throw queers off of rooftops,” Peters said while complaining about Graham’s support of the current president’s illegal war in Iran.
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Graham has supported the idea of a U.S. war with Iran for decades, according to The Guardian.
Speaking to Fox News in early March, Graham said, “I’m going back to South Carolina, I am asking them to send their sons and daughters to the Mideast. What I want you to do in the Mideast, my friends, in Saudi Arabia and other places, step forward and say, ‘This is my fight too.’”
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Graham is unmarried but has never publicly come out as gay. His sexuality has long been the subject of rumors and innuendo.
Anti-queer conservatives in the U.S., like the current president, often resort to “homonationalism,” citing Muslim-majority countries’ anti-LGBTQ+ policies or their radicals’ extremist actions as a pretext for inciting racism, Islamophobia, and violence against Muslims.
The U.S. president recently told Americans they should be grateful for the war in Iran because Iranians “throw gays off the buildings” and Americans don’t do that. While Iran does have horrific punishments for homosexuality, the current U.S. presidential administration is rolling back LGBTQ+ rights, queer-competent healthcare, and LGBTQ+-inclusive policies nationwide as part of its Christian nationalist agenda.
While Iran has the death penalty for homosexuality, the specific charge of throwing LGBTQ+ people off of buildings is likely a reference to a video released by the Islamic State, throwing allegedly gay men off of buildings in Syria in the mid-2010s.
Peters has repeatedly platformed anti-LGBTQ+ politicians on his broadcasts, referred to transgender people as “tra**y freak shows”, and spread misinformation claiming that gay former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is HIV-positive.
The Anti-Defamation League describes Peters as “an antisemitic conspiracy theorist” who “regularly promotes anti-LGBTQ+ and white supremacist beliefs on his show and social media” and “has engaged in Holocaust denial.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has called The Stew Peters Show “a central hub for antisemitic and conspiratorial content.” He has repeatedly called for the mass expulsion of Jews from America and promoted concepts linked to white supremacy, QAnon, Pizzagate, and other conspiracy theories.
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