WASHINGTON, D.C., October 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Another homosexual judge with ties to a LGBT legal group is among President Donald Trump’s latest batch of judicial nominees, this time to the influential Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The White House announced a handful of federal appointees Wednesday, including assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Bumatay. A member of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Tax Forces Section in the Southern District of California, Bumatay currently advises Attorney General Jeff Sessions on issues including opioids and organized crime.

National Review adds that he worked on the confirmations for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, and Justice Neil Gorsuch, as well as Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Bumatay would also be the nation’s second openly homosexual federal appeals court judge and the first on the Ninth Circuit, the San Francisco Chronicle notes. The White House’s press release also notes that he’s a member of the Tom Homann LGBT Law Association, an organization dedicated to the “advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues throughout California and the nation.”

The Homann Association has staked out a number of left-wing positions, including disappointment that the Supreme Court upheld Christian baker Jack Phillips’ right to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex “wedding,” and “unequivocally denounc[ing]” the Trump administration’s ban on transgender military service.

Pro-family advocates agree that Trump’s judicial nominees are one of the highlights of his presidency, potentially shifting the federal judiciary to the right for generations to come. But Bumatay follows Judge Mary Rowland, an open homosexual who has ties to the left-wing Lesbian & Gay Bar Association of Chicago and Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, as the second appointee whose background raises doubts as to whether he would separate his homosexuality from his jurisprudence.

Conservatives see trustworthy nominees as particularly critical on the Ninth Circuit, a notoriously liberal court whose record includes blocking the administration’s transgender troop ban, a string of decisions favorable to Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against David Daleiden and other pro-life undercover investigators, and banning prayer at local school board meetings.

“At this point, it’s virtually impossible in the 9th Circuit to draw a panel with two Republican-appointed judges. It’s possible, but it’s tough,” South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman explained in March. “This might make it more possible to draw a panel [of two Republican appointed judges] every now and then."

Trump’s pro-life record has largely pleased conservatives, but his record on LGBT issues is more mixed. In addition to the transgender troop ban, he has supported religious liberty, rejected “pride month,” and staffed his administration with pro-family leaders such as Mike Pompeo and Howard Nielson, Jr.

On the other hand, Trump has nominated a variety of pro-homosexual officials to various government posts and continued a number of Obama-era pro-LGBT policies, such as an executive order on “gender identity nondiscrimination” and U.S. support for international recognition of homosexual relations at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

He publicly praised the pro-LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans in January, and declared after the election that the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling forcing all fifty states to recognize same-sex “marriage” was “settled law.”

The conservative Federalist Society plays a significant advisory role in the administration’s selection of judicial nominees, a relationship started during Trump’s campaign to reassure skeptical Republicans about the formerly liberal businessman’s reliability.