Kentucky gubernatorial nominee receives backing from anti-gay extremist group

A right-wing extremist organization that opposes same-sex marriage, advocates for allowing businesses to discriminate against same-sex Kentuckians, and wants to ban abortion sent out a campaign mailer backing Republican Daniel Cameron’s gubernatorial bid.

The Commonwealth Policy Center sent a mailer to voters in September that praises Cameron for opposing abortion rights, supporting a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Kentucky, and supporting a bill that would allow teachers to misgender students. At the same time, it attacks Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for vetoing legislation that would have restricted abortion access in the state and discriminated against the LGBTQ community.

“Attorney General Cameron has defended women’s sports, unborn life, religious liberty, and educational freedom,” the group wrote in the mailer. “That’s why CPC has endorsed Daniel Cameron for governor.”

The CPC is a Kentucky-based organization that says on its website that it is “dedicated to preserving the bedrock values of life, religious liberty, marriage, and fiscal responsibility in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. It affirms as stated in the Kentucky Constitution that our civil, political and religious liberties come from God.”

In policy positions detailed on the group’s website, the CPC describes homosexuality as “disordered,” says “redefining marriage will undermine a Biblical ethic of human sexuality,” and suggests children with same-sex parents are being harmed.

“No credible social science indicates that this is a good or healthy thing for children,” the group says of children raised in same-sex parent households.

The CPC advocates revoking the medical licenses of doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors, forcing transgender students to use bathrooms “that correspond with their biological sex,” and allowing teachers to purposefully misgender transgender students.

The CPC is also against abortion. It pushed for an amendment to the state Constitution that said abortion is not a constitutional right in Kentucky, which ultimately failed at the ballot box in 2022. The group also promotes so-called medication abortion reversal drugs, about which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says: “In states across the country, politicians are advancing legislation to require physicians to recite a script that a medication abortion can be ‘reversed’ with doses of progesterone, to cause confusion and perpetuate stigma, and to steer women to this unproven medical approach. Unfounded legislative mandates like this one represent dangerous political interference and compromise patient care and safety.”

In 2013, the CPC opposed Plan B emergency contraception, incorrectly saying the drug “is responsible for taking the lives of children at conception.” In actuality, Plan B usually stops or delays ovulation, which prevents an egg from ever being fertilized in the first place.

Cameron is running to try to prevent Beshear from winning a second term in November. Yet while Kentucky is a strongly Republican state at the federal level, polls show Cameron is struggling to win a majority of support.

Public polls since August have all shown Beshear ahead, with the most recent survey showing Beshear with a 16-point lead. That October poll from Emerson College Polling found Cameron struggling to win over even Republican voters in the state.

Inside Elections, the nonpartisan political analysis outlet, rates the race Tilt Democratic.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.