USAID official Merritt Corrigan loses job over anti-LGBTQ tweets
Merritt Corrigan, an official of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) appointed by President Donald Trump, has lost her position on the same day she posted several anti-LGBTQ tweets.
Acting USAID Spokesperson Pooja Jhunjhunwala told Forbes that Corrigan was out at the agency after her initial tweets came out.
Jhunjhunwala said, “USAID takes any claim of discrimination seriously, and we will investigate any complaints of anti-Christian bias Ms. Corrigan has raised during her tenure at the Agency.”
Merritt Corrigan goes on a Twitter rampage
Corrigan, who was appointed as the deputy White House liaison to USAID by Trump earlier this year, had made the recent anti-LGBTQ tweets after her Twitter account was locked throughout June and July.
Corrigan said: “Let me clear. Gay marriage isn’t marriage. Men aren’t women. US-funded Tunisian LGBT+ soap operas aren’t America First.”
“For too long, I’ve remained silent as the media has attacked me for my Christian beliefs, which are shared by the majority of Americans,” she declared.
“The United States is losing ground in the battle to garner influence through humanitarian aid because we now refuse to help countries who don’t celebrate sexual deviancy,” she warned.
“I watched with horror this week as USAID distributed taxpayer funded documents claiming ‘we cannot tell someone’s sex or gender by looking at them’ and that not calling oneself ‘cisgendered” is a microagression[sic],” she said.
“I’m not cis-anything. I’m a woman,” she added, saying that she’ll hold a press conference to talk about “rampant anti-Christian sentiment” in USAID.
Merritt Corrigan’s online history revealed
Corrigan had a long history of online posts that attacked liberal democracy, feminism, abortion and the LGBTQ community.
Reporters had uncovered her social media posts attacking the US as being a as a “homo-empire” that “couldn’t tolerate even one commercial enterprise not in full submission to the tyrannical LGBT agenda.”
Likewise, she had previously described Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban as “the shining champion of Western civilisation.” Orban had recently passed a law legally erasing transgender people.
Corrigan had criticized Senator Elizabeth Warren’s support of same-sex marriage as a “sick statement” and “exactly why women shouldn’t be in office.”
A former employee of the Republican National Committee, Corrigan was also an advocate of a “Christian patriarchy.”
USAID in an uproar over Corrigan’s behavior
Because of the earlier posts, employees of USAID raised concerns over Corrigan’s appointment to the agency that was almost an “internal revolt.” Corrigan’s recent tweets also drew criticism.
Jeremy M. Konyndyk, a former Director of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, tweeted back: “Needless to say, this thread reveals far more about Merritt Corrigan than it reveals about USAID.”
“In my years at the agency, I saw none of the anti-Christian agenda she alleges. But it is a place where her style of bigotry would not be welcome,” Konyndyk said.
David Stacy, government director of the advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, said Corrigan is “the exact type of anti-LGBTQ zealot that Trump recruits and places in positions of power.”
Corrigan had also accused several lawmakers– Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) and Cory Booker (D-NJ)– of forcing her to resign “purely because of my Christian beliefs.”
“I WILL NOT be bullied into submission by radical anti-Christian leftists like Cory Booker,” Corrigan said.