ABOVE: Rep. James Comer, photo via Comer’s Facebook page.
A House Republican whose opposition to LGBTQ rights has been front-and-center on his campaign and Wikipedia pages appears to have tried to sweep his record under the rug — and evidence suggests the person responsible is his communications director.
Rep. James Comer, first elected four years ago to represent Kentucky’s 1st congressional district, has made his opposition to LGBTQ rights clear from the start. That’s consistent with his state being home to Kim Davis, the county clerk famously jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
His campaign website, in its issues section, once proudly declared Comer’s opposition to same-sex marriage as a selling point for his candidacy for the U.S. House in addition to being against abortion rights and Obamacare. The footprint of the older webpage can still be found using archival internet tools.
“I am 100 [percent] pro-life and I oppose gay marriage,” Comer wrote. “While I was a Kentucky State Representative, I cosponsored the 2005 amendment that made same sex marriage illegal in Kentucky. As a Congressman, I will always strongly support life and only support traditional marriage between one man and one woman. I will make sure that liberal, anti-family groups like Planned Parenthood never get one penny of our tax dollars.”
True to his campaign position against LGBTQ rights, Comer in Congress voted “no” both times in 2019 and 2021 when the U.S. House brought to the floor the Equality Act, which would expand the prohibition against LGBTQ non-discrimination under federal civil rights law.
But the congressman’s willingness to make those views available to the public appears to have changed based on alterations to his personal webpages.
Although the “issues” page has been scrapped from his campaign website entirely, much of the identical information can be found on his congressional webpage. Missing, however, is the portion from his campaign page that once denoted his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Further, information on Comer’s opposition to LGBTQ rights, including being against same-sex marriage and his votes against the Equality Act, are included on his Wikipedia, but someone replaced that information after it was deleted last month.
It appears Comer’s own staff has been working to scrub any reference to his opposition to LGBTQ rights. A look at the edits made to the Wikipedia page ascribes the initial change to someone with the username SmithMatt22, which is identical to the Twitter handle of his communications director, Matt Smith.
Comer is acknowledging nothing. His congressional office, and Smith in particular, didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Blade to comment, including to deny his staffers were responsible for seeking to hide his positions on LGBTQ rights.
It’s unlikely objections to Comer deleting the information on his LGBTQ record would impact future elections. Kentucky’s 1st congressional district is weighted R+23 and considered not in play in upcoming elections.
