Virginia Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao touts ties to anti-LGBTQ+ pastor

Republican 2024 Virginia Senate candidate Hung Cao has repeatedly highlighted his connections to a right-wing megachurch and its vocally anti-LGBTQ+ pastor.

In a July 26 appearance on the Christian nationalist podcast “Hold the Line,” first flagged by the progressive super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, Cao notes that he attends church at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia. (Disclosure: The American Independent Foundation is a partner organization of American Bridge.)

Asked by host Sean Feucht whether Cornerstone Chapel had supported his 2022 bid, Cao answers: “So my church absolutely did. So Pastor Gary Hamrick, we have I think 10,000 in the congregation, both live and online, because during COVID, he said, You know what, I’ve got to keep broadcasting, and at some point he was like, You know what? We’re all coming in. I don’t care, we’re all coming to the church and we’re gonna do it. And everybody was maskless and it was beautiful.”

According to a November 2022 story on the Virginia news site LoudounNow, Hamrick spoke at a Purcellville, Virginia, rally for Cao’s House campaign.

Hamrick’s history of anti-LGBTQ+ comments is lengthy.

In a June 4 sermon called “A Biblical Response to the ‘Transing’ of America,” Hamrick claimed that the nation has been overtaken by “gender confusion and sexual perversion and this so-called woke agenda.”

The Christian Post reported in June 2022 that Hamrick said Christians must not affirm LGBTQ+ people if they love them. Asked how to respond to those who say that love is love, he answered:

If you really believe the Bible is the basis for your belief system, then you are going to recognize that God calls homosexuality sin. And if you operate from that standard, from that description, from that definition, then it’s a matter of, how do I communicate truth in love? Being loving is not denying the truth. That’s a very unloving thing. Being loving toward somebody is figuring out a sensitive way to communicate the truth. It’s a very unloving thing to say, Well, I’m just going to affirm them and not really tell them the truth. So you’re not doing them any good, and you’re not being honest before the Lord or to yourself.

While he said Christians should look for a “gentle and sincere way to communicate truth when necessary, when it comes up,” Hamrick said that they should not affirm anyone for their sins: “If somebody is a pathological liar, Well that’s OK, everybody lies. Why are you saying that? Or somebody is a gossip? Or somebody is in premarital heterosexual sex. Well, that’s OK. You know, we all have urges. Why are we compromising the truth for the sake of just appeasing people?”

In June 2021, the Loudoun County Democratic Committee condemned a May 30 sermon in which Hamrick accused transgender-affirming school board members of “emotional child abuse” and urged that they be recalled from office for “abusing our children by perpetuating the lie about gender confusion.”

During the 2020 presidential campaign, the blog RightWingWatch reported Hamrick framed the election as a “spiritual war” and favored President Donald Trump over Joe Biden in part because Democrats support LGBTQ+ rights: “I cannot, I will not vote for a candidate whose party platform advocates the murder of unborn babies, embraces same-sex marriage, encourages transgender behavior, and ignores God and his word in our culture. I cannot. I will not. Cannot. Will not. Amen.”

A spokesperson for Hamrick did not immediately respond to an American Independent Foundation inquiry for this story. After publication, Cao declined to answer a question from the American Independent Foundation about Hamrick’s anti-LGBTQ+ positions, saying, “Your question is meant to be divisive, and I won’t feed your clearly partisan rhetoric.”

Cao has also opposed LGBTQ+ rights.

His current Senate campaign site falsely claims that in Virginia “a Democrat introduced a bill that would criminally prosecute parents for not redefining their child’s gender, making school administrators a legal arm of Child Protective Services.”

At an April 2022 campaign forum, Cao opposed transgender people using bathrooms or participating on school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. Cao has presented himself as a defender of religious liberty, tweeting after the June 2022 Supreme Court ruling in favor of a high school football coach who led post-game prayers: “The right to express one’s faith is a cornerstone of this country. I’m glad to see religious freedom being protected by the Court.”

In the “Hold the Line” interview, however, Cao claimed that Monterey, California, is “a very dark place now, a lot of witchcraft, and the Wiccan community has really taken over there, and we can’t let that happen in Virginia.”

Cao, who was recruited to run by party leaders, faces other GOP candidates for the 2024 Senate nomination. The winner will likely face incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

Election experts list Kaine as the favorite to win the seat, but Republicans won three statewide elections in Virginia as recently as 2021.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Updated August 1 at 4:35 p.m. with comment from Hung Cao.