Anti-Queer Christians Invading Target Stores To Preach Are Wreaking Havoc

[icymist]

16. This is going way beyond heterosexual cuddling at a gay bar.

This is organized and well funded:

Money From Washington State Is Funding Anti-Trans Attacks In North Carolina

M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, one of the largest charities in the Pacific Northwest, gave $375,000 this year to a right-wing legal group that supports North Carolina's anti-transgender legislation. In February, the Vancouver, Wash.-based Murdock trust announced a $375,000 grant to a Scottsdale, Ariz.,-based group called the Alliance Defending Freedom. The group is a conservative Christian nonprofit that's backing laws across the nation to require transgender people to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificates. The North Carolina law, the first in the nation to restrict people from using the restrooms that align with their gender identity, has been widely pilloried as an attack on LGBTQ rights.

The Murdock Trust was founded in 1975, it has over $1 billion in assets today, and it gives out $50 million a year. "The Murdock Trust's website says 'the Trust's mission is to enrich the quality of life in the Pacific Northwest,'" Monahan writes. It's hard to see how financing rightwing hate groups in Arizona and their attacks on trans people in North Carolina (and other states) enriches the quality of life around here. And that $375,000 wasn't the first check the Murdock Trust sent to the ADF, an organization co-founded by rightwing hater/loon/fundie James Dobson. The ADF has received nearly a million dollars from the Murdock Trust over the last decade.

Who is sending all that money to haters?

Two of the trust's three current trustees are Oregonians: John Castles and Lynwood Swanson. The third, Jeffrey Grubb, lives in Vancouver. He's an executive vice president and senior managing director in the Portland Wealth Management Group of banking giant Wells Fargo.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/04/12/23944830/money-from-washington-state-is-funding-anti-trans-attacks-in-north-carolina