Anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ extremist launches bid for North Carolina governor

Republican North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced on Saturday that he will run for governor in 2024. Robinson, who has served as lieutenant governor of the state since 2021, has a long record of anti-LGBTQ, racist, sexist, Islamophobic, and antisemitic statements.

“I don’t care about the zip code you live in, the size of your paycheck, whether you’re Black, white, straight or gay,” Robinson said in an announcement video. “None of those things should determine your future or your child’s future.”

But Robinson has repeatedly spoken of his hatred of LGBTQ+ people and opposition to their equal rights.

In a 2016 Facebook post, he objected to a National Geographic cover story about a transgender youth, writing: “Free love, then homosexuality. Now the next push; the sexualization of the perverts most cherished target, CHILDREN. These devil worshiping child molesters will not stop until they can legally abuse God’s most precious gifts to us.”

Robinson posted on the site in 2017, “You CAN NOT love God and support the homosexual agenda.”

He received bipartisan criticism and demands for his resignation in October 2021 for delivering a sermon calling it child abuse for kids to be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. “There’s no reason anybody, anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes, I called it filth. If you don’t like it that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you,” he said.

A month later, Robinson claimed same-sex couples are inferior because they cannot reproduce, saying that heterosexual couples “are superior because they can do something these people can’t do because that’s the way God created it to be.”

Robinson said:

I can’t stand to turn that TV on and I don’t want my grandkids watching that television because I don’t want to have to explain to my grandkids why two men are kissing, and I don’t care what anybody thinks about that. Get mad at me if you want to. Ain’t no child got no business seeing no two men kiss. If they did, God would have made it that way! He didn’t!

In March 2023, he told a church congregation outside Charlotte: “Makes me sick every time I see it, when I pass a church that flies that rainbow flag, which is a direct, a direct spit in the face of God almighty.” He said:

God formed me because he knew there was going to be a time when God’s learning was going to be intolerable to the wicked, when children were going to be dragged down to go see the drag show, when pornography was going to be presented to our children in schools.

In January 2017, he posted on Facebook: “The question is not ‘When is the last time you saw anyone but a Muslim holding a severed head and smiling”… The question is, when is the last time you saw a Muslim protesting against a Muslim who severed a head, or bombed a shopping mall, or ran down a group of humans with a truck, or shot up a nightclub, or burned someone alive…..” He later deleted the message.

Robinson, who is Black, in February 2018 posted an attack on the film “Black Panther” because, among other reasons, the namesake character was created by Stan Lee, who was Jewish:

It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people who know so little about their true history and REFUSE to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition can get so excited about a fictional “hero” created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?

That post remains visible, as do a January 2017 post that intentionally misgendered first lady Michelle Obama as “an anti-American, abortion and gay marriage supporting, liberal leftist elitist and I’ll be glad when he takes his boyfriend and leaves the White House”; a March 2018 post sharing a meme claiming that President Barack Obama “entered the White House with a fake birth certificate”; and a February 2018 message attacking survivors of the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting as “silly little immature media prosti-tots.”

Robinson stated in June 2021 that he opposes abortion rights even for survivors of rape and incest and that pregnant women’s bodies are not their own. “It’s not your body anymore, it’s y’all’s body,” he said. “And, yes, that includes the daddy. She’s not your baby mama anymore. She ought to be your wife.”

In the same speech, he dismissed the idea of reparations for Black Americans, saying: “Nobody owes you anything for slavery. If you want to tell the truth about it, it is you who owes. Why do you owe? Because somebody in those fields took strikes for you! … Somebody had to walk through Jim Crow for you! Somebody fought wars and died for you!”

Robinson will run in the Republican primary against State Treasurer Dale Folwell, who also opposes LGBTQ+ and abortion rights. The winner will likely face Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in the general election. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is unable to run again due to term limits.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.