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At least four gay speakers who declared their strong support for President Donald Trump were cheered loudly while other speakers praised the group Gays for Trump during a March4Trump rally on Sunday, March 4, on the grounds of the Washington Monument in D.C.

The gathering of several hundred Trump supporters at the Washington Monument, who later marched to the White House, was one of more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies and marches held on the same day in cities around the country.

“We’re marching for a lot of things out here,” said Gays for Trump President Peter Boykin in a speech in Lafayette Park across from the White House, which followed an earlier speech he gave at the rally by the Washington Monument.

“We’re marching for love and peace,” he said. “We’re marching for people. Personally for me as president of Gays for Trump, I’m marching for the freedom of speech.”

Boykin said he participated in and played a lead role in helping to organize the March4Trump event because he wanted to show his support for Trump at a time when the new president has been under attack by “fake news” created by a biased, left-wing media and Democratic Party leaders who he said seek to undermine Trump’s legitimacy as president.

Boykin and several other speakers at the Washington Monument rally also called on a small group of anti-Trump protesters who showed up at the rally to respect Trump backers’ right to be heard and express their views.

About a dozen protesters identifying themselves as members of a group called the Anti-Fascist Resistance, or AntiFa, shouted anti-Trump slogans at the participants of the Washington Monument rally. The Trump supporters responded by chanting “U.S.A, U.S.A…” which largely drowned out the protesters’ shouts.

U.S. Park Police officers, several of whom were mounted on horses, separated the protesters from the Trump supporters, although members of both groups could be seen shouting at one another. A Park Police spokesperson, Sgt. Anna Rose, said there were no arrests made or violent clashes between the protesters and the Trump supporters at the D.C. rally.

Scuffles and fights between protesters and Trump supporters resulting in arrests broke out in several cities on Sunday where Trump rallies were held, including St. Paul, Minn. and Berkeley, Calif., according to the Associated Press.

Other gay speakers at the rally at the Washington Monument included Andre Soriano, a fashion clothing designer who made news for the ‘Make America Great Again’ gown he designed for singer and songwriter Joy Villa, who wore the gown to the Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles last month.

Villa, who was designated the keynote speaker at the Washington Monument rally, told the gathering she would work to help the Trump administration bring love and peace to a troubled world.

Also speaking was a gay man who identified himself only by the name Ajax.

“I’m here in my fair city,” he said. “This is my city – a native Washingtonian right here. And I supported Trump and I’m supporting him again,” he told the cheering crowd.

“I’m so excited to be here and I’m so excited to see all you guys. Peter Boykin is awesome,” he said. “The March4Trump is awesome. The Gays for Trump organization is awesome. I love it. And you’re probably looking at me and – wow – what is this gay black guy doing out here with a sleeveless shirt,” he told the gathering.

“Let me tell you, I love my country. I love our president,” he said. “So I just want to tell all of you and our critics that that’s not a bad thing. We love our immigrant brothers. We love our Islamic brothers and sisters but we’ve got to take care of us first,” he said. “And that’s not a bad thing to say, all right?”

Also receiving loud applause was gay college student Andrew Logan Lawrence, 21, of Savannah, Ga., who describes himself as an “LGBT millennial” who supports Trump.

“I’m a university student and I’m a pretty right-wing conservative but I also identify with the LGBT movement and I’m also Jewish,” Lawrence told the Washington Blade after the rally. “So it surprises a lot of people that I identify with the conservative side of the political spectrum,” he said.

“Conservatives are a dying breed among millennials and I felt it was important to come and make kind of a community of people heard who really don’t make their voices heard or feel like they’re being suppressed on the public university campuses of the United States,” Lawrence said.

In his speeches at the Washington Monument and at Lafayette Park, Boykin said he was also marching against what he called the “character assassination” of gay conservative commentator and activist Milo Yiannopoulos by the news media and by conservative leaders after a video surfaced in which Yiannopoulos appeared to be defending a sexual encounter between a 13-year-old boy and adult men or women.

Yiannopoulos apologized for what he said may have been a poor choice of words in a discussion about youth sexuality. But he denounced critics for claiming he had endorsed pedophilia, saying he had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child and he condemns sexual exploitation of children.

“He was basically destroyed by the media with social fake news,” Boykin said in discussing Yiannopoulos’s plight during the past few weeks. “And that goes to what’s going on now with Donald Trump,” Boykin said.

“It’s becoming obvious to the American people that the Democratic Party in conjunction with the Clintons and/or the Obamas is organized and their strategy is to subvert our government members who were duly elected by the people,” Boykin said.

He called on Congress to initiate “a full and independent investigation” into the Democratic National Committee and the leading Democratic critics of Trump, including “Hillary Rotten Clinton” and “Barack Hussein Obama.”

They and others, Boykin said, “wheeled out and organized a well-funded attempt at a coup, acting against the integrity of the U.S. Constitution and our sitting president of the United States.”

Added Boykin, “We have to fight against what I call gay zombies and the far left liberals. Liberalism – extreme liberalism – is a mental disorder, period.”