Donald Trump to become first president to speak at anti-LGBT hate group's annual summit

Donald Trump is to address the annual conference of an anti-LGBT group which has been classified as a hate group.

The US president will become the first sitting president to address social conservative activists and elected officials at the Value Voters Summit in Washington DC on Friday.

President Trump has addressed the event which is hosted by the Family Research Council three times in total and did so last year as the Republican presidential candidate.

The Family Research Council opposes and actively lobbies against equal rights for LGBT persons. The conservative Christian group campaigns against same-sex marriage, same-sex civil unions, LGBT adoption, abortion, embryonic stell-cell research, pornography and divorce.

Every year the conference sparks controversy for its choice of speakers and in 2010 the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a legal advocacy organisation which specialise in civil rights, went so far as to classify the Family Research Council as an anti-gay hate group.

Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, condemned President Trump's decision to address the event.

“By appearing at the Values Voter Summit, President Trump is lending the legitimacy of his office to a hate group that relentlessly demonizes LGBT people and works to deny them of their equal rights," he told The Independent.

"His appearance puts the lie to his campaign promise to be a friend to the LGBT community. Bigotry is not an American value, and our president should speak out against it.”

Tony Perkins, the president of Family Research Council, heaped praise on President Trump for his appearance the conference.

“Values voters have waited eight years for a leader who puts America’s mission first and respects the values that made America into a great nation,” he said in a statement.

“Values voters are coming to our nation’s capital thankful to hear from a president who is fulfilling the promises that he campaigned on. Since the early days of the campaign, President Trump allied himself with values voters, promising to put an end to the eight years of relentless assault on the First Amendment.”

The event, which counts religious extremists, white supremacists, and far-right activists among its attendants, will also include speeches from former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former White House aide Sebastian Gorka.

Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far...

17 show all Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far...

1/17 Defending Russian President Vladimir Putin Donald Trump appeared to equate US foreign actions to those of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” REUTERS/Carlos Barria

2/17 Asked for people to 'pray' for Arnold Schwarzenegger At the National Prayer Breakfast, Donald Trump couldn’t help but to ask for prayers for the ratings on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s show to be good. Schwarzenegger took over as host of “The Apprentice” — which buoyed Mr Trump’s celebrity status years ago. AFP/Getty Images

3/17 Hanging up on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Early in his presidency, Donald Trump reportedly hung up the phone on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after the foreign leader angered him over refugee plans. Mr Trump later said that it was the “worst call” he had had so far. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

4/17 The 'muslim ban' Perhaps one of his most controversial policies while acting as president, Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting predominantly Muslim countries has bought him a lot of criticism. The bans were immediately protested, and judges initially blocked their implementation. The Supreme Court later sided with the administration’s argument that the ban was developed out of concern for US security. Bryan R Smith/Getty

5/17 Praising crowd size while touring Hurricane Harvey damage After Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas, Donald Trump paid the area a visit. While his response to the disaster in Houston was generally applauded, the President picked up some flack when he gave a speech outside Houston (he reportedly did not visit disaster zones), and praised the size of the crowds there. AP

6/17 Called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un 'Little Rocket Man' During his first-ever speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump tried out a new nickname for North Korea leader Kim Jong-un: Rocket Man. He later tweaked it to be “little Rocket Man” as the two feuded, and threatened each other with nuclear war. During that speech, he also threatened to totally annihilate North Korea.

7/17 Attacking Sadiq Khan following London Bridge terror attack After the attack on the London Bridge, Donald Trump lashed out at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticizing Mr Khan for saying there was “no reason to be alarmed” after the attack. Mr Trump was taking the comments out of context, as Mr Khan was simply saying that the police had everything under control. Getty Images

8/17 Claimed presenter Mika Brezinkski was 'bleeding from the face' Never one not to mock his enemies, Donald Trump mocked MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, saying that she and co-host Joe Scarborough had approached him before his inauguration asking to “join” him. He noted that she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at the time, and that he said no.

9/17 Claiming the blame for Charlottesville was on 'both sides' Trump refused to condemn far-right extremists involved in violence at 'the march for the right' protests in Charlottesville, even after the murder of counter protester Heather Heyer AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

10/17 Retweeted cartoon of CNN being hit by a 'Trump train' Donald Trump retweeted a cartoon showing a Trump-branded train running over a person whose body and head were replaced by a CNN avatar. He later deleted the retweet.

11/17 Tweeting about 'slamming' CNN Donald Trump caught some flack when he tweeted a video showing him wrestling down an individual whose head had been replaced by a CNN avatar. Mr Trump has singled CNN out in particular with his chants of “fake news”.

12/17 Firing head of the FBI, James Comey Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey landed him with a federal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election that has caused many a headache for the White House. The White House initially said that the decision was made after consultation from the Justice Department. Then Mr Trump himself said that he had decided to fire him in part because he wanted the Russia investigation Mr Comey was conducting to stop. Getty Images

13/17 Not realizing being president would be 'hard' Just three months into his presidency, Donald Trump admitted that being president is harder than he thought it would be. Though Mr Trump insisted on the 2016 campaign trail that doing the job would be easy for him, he admitted in an interview that living in the White House is harder than running a business empire. REUTERS

14/17 Accusing Obama of wiretapping him Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of wire tapping him on twitter. The Justice Department later clarified: Mr Obama had not, in fact, done so. Reuters

15/17 Claiming there had been 3 million 'illegal votes' Donald Trump was never very happy about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million ballots. So, he and White House voter-fraud commissioner Kris Kobach have claimed that anywhere between three and five million people voted illegally during the 2016 election. Conveniently, he says that all of those illegal votes went to Ms Clinton. (There is no evidence to support that level of widespread voter fraud.)

16/17 Leaving Jews out of the Holocaust memorial statement Just days after taking office, Donald Trump’s White House issued a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but didn’t mention “jews” or even the word “jewish” in the written statement. Getty Images

17/17 Anger over Inauguration crowd size Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd was visibly, and noticeably, smaller than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. But, he really wanted to have had the largest crowd on record. So, he praised it as the biggest crowd ever. Relatedly, Mr Trump also claimed that it stopped raining in Washington at the moment he was inaugurated. It didn’t. The day was very dreary. Reuters

Phil Robertson, a professional hunter who starred on reality TV show Duck Dynasty, is another speaker. The businessman, who has called gay marriage "evil" and "wicked”, stoked controversy for remarks made during a GQ interview back in 2014.

He was asked what was sinful and replied: "Start with homosexual behaviour and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men."

Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who refused to answer a question about whether homosexuality should be punished by death, will also be addressing the summit.

This ties in with the views of the Family Research Council who have previously claimed "homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed" and it is "by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects."

The Family Research Council opposes civil rights laws to be expanded to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity as illegal bases for discrimination. On top of this, it supports a federal conscience clause which allows medical workers to refuse to deliver certain treatments to their patients, such as abortion, blood transfusion or birth control.

Back in February 2010, the organisation’s Senior Researcher for Policy Studies, Peter Sprigg, said on NBC's Hardball that gay behaviour should be outlawed and "criminal sanctions against homosexual behaviour" should be enforced.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre has condemned the beliefs of the Family Research Council and argue it makes untrue claims about the LGBT community founded on “discredited research and junk science”.

“The intention is to denigrate LGBT people as the organisation battles against same-sex marriage, hate crime laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy,” it says in a statement on its website.

“To make the case that the LGBT community is a threat to American society, the FRC employs a number of ‘policy experts’ whose ‘research’ has allowed the FRC to be extremely active politically in shaping public debate. Its research fellows and leaders often testify before Congress and appear in the mainstream media. It also works at the grassroots level, conducting outreach to pastors in an effort to ‘transform the culture’.”

President Trump touted himself as a champion of gay rights during his presidential bid but LGBT rights groups argue he has waged a war on their freedoms. On inauguration day, the Trump administration immediately erased all references to LGBT people and everyone living with HIV from whitehouse.gov.

What’s more, days after being sworn in Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew his predecessor's guidance on protections for transgender students in public schools that allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.

This summer, President Trump, who has long courted the evangelical Christian vote, announced a ban on qualified transgender people serving in the military in a series of tweets. He then signed a directive reinstating a ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military.

The most recent target on transgender people by the Trump team came this week when the Justice Department announced that an anti-discrimination law does not protect transgender workers. This has potentially opened people up to discrimination in the workplace because of their gender identity.