Planting Peace
– Artist’s Website –
A billboard depicting Donald Trump and Ted Cruz kissing each other has gone up in Cleveland, Ohio, where the Republican National Convention is set to take place throughout next week. The image appears alongside a caption that reads “Love Trumps Hate. End Homophobia.”
The billboard was sponsored by LGBT rights group Planting Peace, the same non-profit organization responsible for The Equality House, a rainbow-colored house sitting across the street from Westboro Baptist Church.
President of Planting Peace Aaron Jackson says the sign is created as a direct challenge to the Republican Party and its anti-LGBT agenda.
“What Donald, Ted and the Republican party either fail to realize, or realize and just don’t seem to care about, is that their words and actions toward our LGBT family―especially LGBT children―have meaning and impact,” Jackson said to The Huffington Post. “LGBT children hear these messages telling them they are nothing but second-class citizens and are left feeling broken or ‘less than.’”
The soon-to-be ratified GOP platform is the most anti-LGBT in history, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of LGBT conservatives. The platform calls for the reversal of same-sex marriage, forcing transgender citizens to use inappropriate bathrooms, and endorses long-debunked “pray the gay away” conversion therapy.
“When children are dying because of negative messages, then it’s time to change the message,” Jackson said. “Planting Peace calls for the immediate change in the Republican party platform with regard to our LGBT family and LGBT rights. Never again shall a negative, hateful message be uttered in the name of ‘religious freedom.’ We are calling for action that brings full, fundamental rights to the LGBT community, and a narrative that empowers LGBT people to live and love freely.”
In the past, Planting Peace has also been responsible for other high profile billboards calling out anti-LGBT bigotry, such as in North Carolina for it’s anti-LGBT House Bill 2, in Mississippi to combat the state’s “religious liberty” legislation allowing businesses to refuse homosexual customers, and in anti-same sex marriage clerk Kim Davis’ hometown of Morehead, Kentucky.