While Donald Trump has been laughably trying to claim that he is the real champion of LGBT rights in the presidential race, just this week the man who he has recruited to help him build bridges with the Religious Right said that Christians must be willing to face death fighting Obama administration guidelines on transgender rights in schools.
Televangelist Frank Amedia, a volunteer “Christian policy liaison” for Trump who arranged a recent meeting for the candidate with conservative Christian leaders, addressed the transgender guidelines on the most recent episode of his Daystar program “Deep Calls to Deep.”
Amedia has said that Trump was “raised up” by God as part of a “breaker anointing” that is breaking down “established norms” in preparation for the return of Christ. He returned to this theme on the program, saying that this “breaker anointing” is “happening everywhere,” including politics, science and the schools.
This led him to the president’s “decree” on transgender students, which he likened to a story in the book of Daniel in which King Nebuchadnezzar demands that all local officials worship a huge gold statue of himself or be thrown into a furnace. Three Jews named Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refuse to do so and are thrown into the furnace, but are unharmed thanks to the protection of God.
“I liken it to the same decree that happened to Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in their day, and it said, ‘You will bow down to this false god and if you don’t, I will destroy you,’” Amedia said. “Well, what this decree said to our schools is, ‘You will bow down to the fact that we don’t care anymore about gender and if you don’t, we’re going to take your money from you.’ It’s no different, beloved. It was done with the stroke of a pen.”
“We will not tolerate this,” he added. “We will not stand for it. You may be persecuted, you may be punished, and some of you who are educators, wherever you are, you may have to pay a price. Well, what about the price that you’re going to pay if you don’t stand up to it. So we need to say ‘No more.’ We need to be a people of God that’s strong. We need the people that have the Daniel spirit inside of us and we say, ‘We’re not going to tolerate it, we’re not going to stand for it, and we don’t care what you wrote, we don’t care if you put us in a furnace, we’re going in, because our God shall take care of us.”
