The backlash to the Republican member of Congress who broke down in tears in her opposition to the same-sex marriage invoice has included a well-recognized face – her nephew, who has referred to as the lawmaker a “homophobe”.
On Thursday, Vicky Hartzler, a Republican consultant from Missouri, shed tears as she urged colleagues within the US Home of Representatives to vote towards the Respect for Marriage Act, which forces states with out marriage equality legal guidelines to acknowledge LGBTQ+ marriages from different states.
Hartzler’s high-profile objection to the invoice, which handed the Home following assent from the Senate and is now set for Joe Biden’s signature, prompted her personal nephew to talk out towards her in a TikTok video that has been seen greater than 200,000 occasions.
Within the video, Andrew Hartzler stated his aunt was crying “as a result of homosexual folks like me can get married”. He added: “So regardless of popping out to my aunt this previous February I assume she’s nonetheless simply as a lot as a homophobe.”
Vicky Hartzler stated the laws was “misguided and harmful” as it might threaten non secular establishments against marriage equality. The tenor of the invoice was “undergo our ideology or be silenced”, the congresswoman claimed in her Home speech.
Her nephew identified that non secular colleges nonetheless obtain federal funding even when they discriminate towards LGBTQ college students. The 23-year-old has stated he was reported for “gay exercise” when attending Oral Roberts College, an evangelical personal faculty in Oklahoma, and is a part of a federal class-action lawsuit towards the US Division of Training for funding such establishments.
The brand new laws doesn’t alter circumstances for such funding and church buildings, mosques, synagogues and different homes of worship is not going to be required to carry out LGBTQ marriages if it goes towards their beliefs.
“It’s extra such as you need the facility to drive your non secular beliefs on to everybody else, and since you don’t have that energy, you’re feeling such as you’re being silenced,” Andrew Hartzler stated to his aunt on his video. “However you’re not. You’re simply going need to study to coexist with all of us. And I’m certain it’s not that tough.”
Andrew Hartzler advised Buzzfeed he isn’t near his aunt, who is taken into account some of the anti-gay members of Congress, and that his relationship along with his conservative, non secular dad and mom has additionally grow to be strained.
“It was bizarre to me that she was crying. I’d say that,” he stated. “I don’t assume that was a efficiency. Realizing my aunt, I feel these have been real tears.
“I do really feel compelled to talk out after I see this simply to counter these messages. I don’t need my final title to be related to hate. I need it to be related to love.”
Vicky Hartzler is simply the most recent Republican politician to be publicly criticized by shut members of their household. In October, Adam Laxalt, a Republican candidate for a intently run Senate seat in Nevada, was confronted with 14 members of his household endorsing his opponent, the incumbent Democrat, Catherine Cortez Masto. Laxalt went on to lose.
In 2018, six of Republican Paul Gosar’s siblings backed his Democratic opponent in midterm elections for the far-right politician’s Home of Consultant district in Arizona. Gosar prevailed regardless of the familial acrimony.