LANSING — To mark the start of Pride Month, a reminder that failed GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers is running on a decades-long record of opposing LGBTQ rights—from supporting bans on same-sex marriage to voting against federal anti-discrimination protections—and has appointed senior campaign leaders with “hard-line stances on LGBTQ+ issues.”
“For decades, Mike Rogers has opposed equality and basic rights for LGBTQ Michiganders,” said Michigan Democratic Party spokesperson Joey Hannum. “Now, Rogers is elevating extremists in a desperate attempt to divide Michiganders and distract from his agenda that’s raising their cost of living. Rogers doesn’t represent Michigan’s values, and Michiganders will make that clear when they reject him again this November.”
Rogers has spent years opposing LGBTQ rights and has elevated anti-LGBTQ extremists as senior leaders on his campaign:
- In 2004, Rogers argued that banning marriage equality wasn’t discriminatory because it was “a right that never existed.”
- In 2006, Rogers said he would have voted in support of a ban on marriage equality.
- In 2007, Rogers voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have “prohibit[ed] employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”
- In 2010, Rogers voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which barred LGBTQ people from openly serving in the military.
- In 2025, Rogers appointed senior leaders to his campaign team who have a “long record of opposition to LGBTQ+ rights,” including members who “openly opposed gay marriage,” said LGBTQ people were an “abomination,” called federal anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people a “godless, demonic, satanic and wicked agenda of the devil,” and “encouraged the practice of conversion therapy on minors.”
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