Betsy DeVos officially celebrated Father’s Day at the Education Department by inviting two notorious anti-LGBT Christian hate groups to a “Fathers and Family” event.

BuzzFeed News reports:

The Education Department Quietly Invited Anti-LGBT Groups To A Father’s Day Event

Noting:

The move prompted the National Parent Teacher Association to pull out of the daylong “Engaging Fathers and Families” event.

Think Progress reports:

The Education Department included anti-LGBTQ groups in a conference on family engagement on Thursday, which caused the National Parent Teacher Association to pull out of the event.

Politico reports the Education Department’s “Fathers and Family” event held Thursday was a daylong conference to “convene a range of education, community and faith-based organizations to discuss family engagement. Representatives from the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are among the speakers listed for the event, which is being held ahead of Father’s Day on Sunday.”

LGBTQ Nation also reports on the story, and offers some background on the two Christian hate groups invited to attend the official Education Department event:

… the Family Research Council, founded by notorious homophobe Tony Perkins and flagged as an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Focus on the Family, which is a proponent of “ex-gay,” or conversion therapy — a controversial practice that claims to change a gay or transgender person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and one that is banned in nine states and three cities. The Focus on the Family group also promotes creationism, school prayer and traditional male/female gender roles…

Both groups are hideous. Previously, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins was publicly shamed on CBS when Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer correctly identified Perkins as the leader of “an anti-gay hate group.”

And last year, during the height of the transgender bathroom hysteria, James Dobson, Focus on the Family founder, said that transgender people using public restrooms should be shot.

However, the fact that DeVos is happy to welcome Christian hate groups to an official Education Department function celebrating Father’s Day should come as no surprise. A billionaire with a love for Jesus, DeVos has made it clear that she is willing to destroy public education and use taxpayer dollars to support private religious schools in order to promote her dreams of a Christian theocracy.

Case in point: The new education budget from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would drastically cut public education while funneling hundreds of millions of tax dollars into private religious schools.

In fact, Betsy DeVos is a radical Christian extremist who wants to use American schools to advance “God’s kingdom.” She wants to destroy public education and use taxpayer money to fund private Christian schools, and she has no problem with private schools using taxpayer money to discriminate against gays and anyone else who offends the sensibilities of conservative Christians.

Bottom line: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has no interest in supporting or protecting LGBT students. In fact, she is happy to support and give voice to Christian hate groups that would discriminate against and harm LGBT students if given the chance.