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The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver are among the anti-equality Religious Right leaders coming to the defense of the Trump administration, which has been under fire for naming officials from two anti-LGBTQ groups to an official US delegation at the United Nations.

As we reported last week, the Trump administration appointed representatives from C-Fam, formerly the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, and the Heritage Foundation to the official US delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Advocates for the human rights of LGBTQ people have criticized the appointments, noting among other things that C-Fam’s record of anti-gay extremism had led to its classification as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Heritage Foundation plays a major role in promoting Religious Right resistance to legal recognition for LGBTQ people, including laws that protect them from discrimination on the job.

Staver’s statement, published on Friday, laughably claims that C-Fam and the Heritage Foundation are “thoughtful” groups that “do not demean people with whom they disagree.” In reality, C-Fam’s Austin Ruse continuously smears and demeans the people he disagrees with, portraying advocates for LGBTQ equality as “homofascists,” threats to children and families, enemies of freedom, and even Satan’s minions. Jim DeMint, the head of the Heritage Foundation, once said wants gay people barred from teaching in public schools.

Perkins says C-Fam and Heritage are “respected voices in the conservative movement who reflect the Trump administration’s values.” While that statement may be more accurate than Staver’s, it may also be even more disturbing for what it says about the hard-right values that are now being reflected in the Trump administration’s decisions.

Perkins goes on to dismiss the idea that the United Nations should be protecting the rights of vulnerable LGBTQ people:

"An even deeper problem is that these activists use the term “human rights” but have no clue what it means. The fact that the Left claims that “sexual orientation” and other terms are “human rights” isn’t rooted in anything higher than their own assertion. What gives them the right to define what it means? And why should their policy preference take preference? It doesn’t. Just because they cloak it as a “human right” won’t make it so. The only solution is to search for a standard common to all human beings as derived from a higher authority. Christians and conservatives are uniquely able to offer this. Thank goodness the Trump administration recognizes that and made sure they were represented at the U.N. in the first place."

C-Fam is so committed to resisting any recognition of the human rights of LGBTQ people in international agreements that it has teamed up with some of the world’s most repressive regimes in order to safeguard “traditional” notions of gender, family and marriage. C-Fam’s elevation by the Trump administration is the clearest signal yet that Trump will abandon the Obama administration’s crucial support for the human rights of LGBTQ people around the world.

Staver said C-Fam and Heritage “will come to the table genuinely seeking the best for women across the world.” That’s doubtful, given their support for the Trump administration’s drastic expansion of the “global gag rule,” which could have a devastating effect on public health measures and leave the world’s poorest women even more vulnerable.

Dominionist Lou Engle, taking part in multi-day Ohio gathering of the Religious Right group POTUS Shield called on Friday for God to “sweep away” Supreme Court justices and federal judges who would uphold Roe v. Wade, suggesting that God could do so by converting them or killing them.

POTUS Shield is an operation launched by self-proclaimed apostles and prophets, many affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation, to pray for the Trump administration. The group is holding a multi-day prayer rally at Frank Amedia’s Touch Heaven Ministries Church in Canfield, Ohio, this week. Amedia was a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, who campaigned at a worship event alongside Amedia, and for a time served as the Trump campaign’s volunteer “liaison of Christian policy.” On Friday morning, Lou Engle took the microphone and began to talk about abortion and the federal courts.

Engle said that during a recent five-day fast, he had a dream about women gathering to hear the book of Esther taught. Someone in the dream said that there are two words in the book of Esther that mean “Nazgul,” which Engle stated is the name of “the Witch King” of the ringwraiths in the Lord of the Rings, the “most powerful being of darkness and death” who could be killed by no man, but who is defeated by the King’s daughter as she proclaimed, “I am no man.” Engle said the dream means that God is raising up an Esther movement of conservative women. “We decree it,” shouted Engle. “The voice of Esther is coming to take out the Nazgul, the principalities of witchcraft and death that demand bloodshed for the fueling of the agenda of darkness.”

“God sweep away the judges,” Engle prayed. “Sweep away the Nazgul, the Haman spirit of death. We decree, God, the sweeping of the Supreme Court.”

As we noted earlier this week, Engle called for a three-day Esther Fast to protect Trump from witchcraft; he said women around the world are praying for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and asking God, “pull down these Hamans, remove ‘em, either—” and there he stopped mid-sentence to make a point to those who might be squeamish about his rhetoric:

"I tell you, the church can’t be humanistic right now. I feel this in my spirit. We’re so concerned about these Hamans [the evil advisor to the king in the biblical book of Esther] that we’re not concerned about the millions of babies! I say that we believe that Donald Trump, President Trump, is a Jehu as well as a Cyrus. And I’ve been praying, ‘remove the house of Ahab.’"

In the Bible, God used Jehu to enact his judgment on the sinful house of Ahab, which Jehu accomplished by overseeing the slaughter of Ahab’s family, supporters, and priests. “We need to begin to pray to sweep away the House of Ahab,” Engle said.

“We declare that you are the God of the reversal of Haman’s decrees,” he said. “We declare the reversal of the decree of ’73, Roe v Wade — We declare the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The powers of Nazgul, witchcraft and death are being reversed now over this nation.”

Engle also referred to “The Last of the Giants,” a 1991 book by George Otis, Jr., which describes the history of that moment in terms of spiritual warfare between the church and demonic powers. Engle marveled that when God wanted to “shift and bring down” communism, “one Politboro member after another at that time just simply died—until God got his man Gorbachev.” Engle said another person had dreamed about “The Last of the Giants” and that God and told him, “You’ve been asking for three but I want you to ask for five” judges. “We said ‘Lord, sweep it away.’ Somehow it’s gotta be swept away, by a Sotomayor encounter, or they’re just gonna d—.”

It turns out that both Amedia and Engle have been praying specifically for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to have “an encounter with the living God” so “that she would see things from the mind of Christ, no longer from darkness, but from light, and that she would judge from light.” Engle, who said (wrongly) that Sotomayor’s name means “greater salvation,” prayed that God would “invade her with a dream” and return her to her Catholic roots. “Give us that soul, Lord,” he prayed.

At one point Engle said, “no one wants anybody to die” and that he prays that they get converted, but that when God starts to work he raises up kings and brings them down. Said Amedia, “He can haunt them in the middle of the night.” Amedia talked about his own dream, in which a broom went up one side of the Supreme Court and down the other, but this was not just a house-cleaning broom, but a broom “that brings destruction.”

“The Lord showed me the entire federal court system was getting shook and cleaned,” said Amedia, praising legislation designed to break up the 9th circuit–which he called a “fruitcake court”—and create a new circuit court whose judges Trump would get to appoint.

Amedia said there are 110 federal court vacancies on the federal courts, enough, Engle said, to create “the possibility of shifting the justice system for years.”

Herman Martir, who spoke earlier about his membership on an Asian American advisory panel for Trump, took over to lead prayer for God to “raise up righteous, godly judges.” Said Martir, “We’re legislating in the heavenlies.”

Engle ended the court session with a flourish:

"I want to stand with authority to declare the shifting of these judges, and the shifting of the federal judges of America. We declare it in the name of Jesus. We stand before the courtroom of heaven, presiding God in Canfield on earth, and around the throne in heaven. We stretch forth your rod and rule in the midst of your enemies. We decree a massive shift over the federal courts and the Supreme Court, in the name of Jesus, from the Supreme Court of heaven."

A heads up for you Trump resisters: It’s not just judges who Engle thinks are asking for God’s judgment. Engle had a warning for “those who are funding anarchy.” God is slow to anger, Engle said, but when His time comes, He will “seize the initiative.”