North Dakota Republican politician Janne Myrdal insists she did not intend to compare gay people to Nazis.
Using her personal Facebook page last week, Myrdal shared an article entitled: ‘The Forgotten Gays Part II: Is the LGBT On Crack?’—which featured a rainbow flag with a Swastika overlay.
The article—posted on the website Conservatives 4 Palin— attacked the LGBT+ community for influencing singer Jennifer Holliday’s decision to not perform at the Trump inauguration.
The piece went on to say that the LGBT+ movement is “laser focused on being a for-profit professional agitation group” and that “it’s time for the radical and extreme voices of the LGBT to be replaced by the normal level headed forgotten gays".
Myrdal says she was unaware of the accompanying Swastika image, which is literally at the very top of the article.
“As a daughter of a family that suffered under said image, I deplore this image and I would never post this image on purpose,” says Myrdal.
She has since deleted her original post.
Myrdal sits on the North Dakota state senate and recently helped to defeat a bill that would have updated state laws to reflect the US Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage in 2015.
Terms such as ‘husband and wife’ would have been changed to gender neutral wording on official documents including marriage, divorce and fishing licences.
The Bismarck Tribune reported that Myrdal pointed to a section of the North Dakota Constitution that defines marriage as a ‘legal union between a man and woman’.
“A ‘yes’ vote on Senate Bill 2043 will actually accomplish functionally nothing, though it will serve to diminish with official intent the honour and sacredness of what the human institution of marriage is described as in (the) North Dakota Constitution as it stands today,” says Myrdal.
