Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Gothamist reports:
On Monday, the mayor’s office issued a statement saying that Fernando Cabrera would become a senior advisor in the mayor’s Office of Faith-based and Community Partnerships. Cabrera, who is a pastor, infamously drew sharp backlash in 2014 after he traveled to Uganda and touted the country’s anti-gay and anti-abortion policies.
Referring to an apology that Cabrera posted on his Facebook page, Adams said, “Fernando Cabrera has acknowledged the pain that his past comments have caused and has apologized for the words he used. I heard and accepted his apology. As a man of faith, I have made clear that our administration will serve all New Yorkers equally and fairly.”
From Cabrera’s Facebook post:
First, let me state I am deeply sorry for the undue pain and suffering that my past remarks have caused the LGBTQ+ community, particularly those remarks I made during a Christian workshop in Uganda in 2014. I strongly believe in the rights of all people, regardless of sexual orientation.
I responded to the question of whether Christians should run for political office. At the workshop in 2014, I was unaware of the Ugandan government’s egregious treatment of the country’s LGBTQ+ population.
My remarks were made in the context of movement toward multi-party elections, but with limited information.
I understand how these words caused some to believe that I condone and support the Ugandan government’s historic denial of their LGBTQ+ population’s civil and human rights, but nothing could be further from the truth.
As a Christian and an American, I am guided by my conviction that equality among human beings is real, a human right that must be sanctioned and protected by law – and that includes marriage.
No government or any other organized body should engage in cruelty, torture, or the systemic discrimination and denial of basic human and civil rights of any group or individual based on sexual orientation.
Unquestionably, being LGBTQ+ should never be criminalized in any way, anywhere in the world. Uganda has a shocking history of condoning and exercising such practices which I denounce and wholly reject.
I hope and pray that as a nation, Uganda will come to embrace its entire people, and enact laws that protect every person equally.
Commenters on the post are not buying Cabrera’s claim that he was somehow unaware of Uganda’s plan to execute gays, which was in the national headlines daily at the time. (Watch his 2014 video below.)
From my first report this month about Cabrerra.
Cabrera served in the NYC Council from 2010 to 2021. In 2019 he announced but later withdrew a challenge to AOC. Last year he finished second in the Democratic primary for Bronx borough president.
He first appeared on JMG in 2011 when he attended a rally against same-sex marriage alongside the red-caped Catholic loons.
That same year he was investigated after he allegedly demanded that a group affiliated with his church receive $100,000 a year from a developer seeking to turn the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory into a massive ice rink complex.
Cabrera then appeared on JMG in 2012 when he and viciously anti-LGBT then-state Sen. Ruben Diaz held a rally to protest a ban on churches holding services in public schools. The rally drew praise from hate group leader Tony Perkins, with whom Cabrera has been affiliated.