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The vitriol was perhaps best听embodied by retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who employed violent rhetoric in lamenting the advances in LGBT equality, particularly in regards to trans people. Boykin is executive vice president at the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council. He is perhaps best known for his anti-Islam statements over the years.

At The Awakening, however, Boykin lambasted non-discrimination ordinances that include sexual orientation and gender identity protections, especially those designed to protect trans people from humiliation and discrimination by allowing them to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. He even听threatened physical violence against anyone using a bathroom that didn鈥檛 align with their assigned sex at birth:

鈥淲here is the Christian world today? Where are the Christians of America today? They should be flocking to people like Kim Davis. They should be flocking to the city council to say, 鈥楴o you're not going to let a man go in my daughters bathroom, just because he feels like a man today.鈥� Boykin said. 鈥淲here are the Christians that are standing up to these kind of evil.鈥�

Boykin continued, 鈥淎nd I鈥檝e already said and somebody will be recording this and this will be on YouTube before it鈥檚 all over with, but I鈥檒l tell you what 鈥撯�� the first man that walks in my daughter鈥檚 bathroom, he ain鈥檛 gonna have to worry about a surgery. That鈥檚 not right. That is not right. It鈥檚 not right. It鈥檚 ungodly, but it鈥檚 also just unnatural.鈥�

Attacks on trans people continued through the afternoon with panels such as 鈥淕ender Confusion: Setting the Record Straight,鈥濃�� a trend of particular concern given that trans people are already a target of discrimination and violence, especially trans women of color, who are one of the most victimized populations in the country. 听

Several speakers also focused on so-called 鈥渆x-gay,鈥� or reparative therapy, a discredited practice that claims to turn gay people heterosexual.

Greg Quinlan, former president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) and ministry leader at Living Free Ministries of New Jersey, insisted repeatedly that it is possible to change sexual orientation despite widespread consensus among medical and psychological authorities that it is not possible.

鈥淗omosexuality is a developmental, gender identity disorder,鈥� Quinlan harped, later adding, "I tell parents and friends who have loved ones in the lifestyle, to pray for relational failure 鈥撯�撎齮hat every relationship they have that is in that lifestyle will fail. And it does eventually because it鈥檚 a bankrupt relationship and it鈥檚 based on false premises.鈥� Ironically, Quinlan, who claims to be a 鈥渇ormer homosexual,鈥� was married to a woman who also claimed to be 鈥渆x-gay.鈥� .

Matt Barber, the editor of the virulently anti-LGBT and host of the Liberty Counsel鈥檚 Faith and Freedom Radio, characterized trans people as suffering from a mental health illness and insisted that trans people suffer from a 鈥渄elusion.鈥�

"We are asked, we are told, demanded under penalty of law 鈥� to embrace and play along in a delusion 鈥撯�� that a man can somehow become a woman and that a woman can somehow become a man,鈥� Barber said.

But Barber suggested a more nefarious explanation for homosexuality and the LGBTQ rights movement: Satan.

The homosexual activist and transgender activist movement have done a masterful job of browbeating people into silence, of silencing dissent by accusing people who want, who have, who speak truth and love on these issues by calling them transphobic, homophobic. You鈥檙e a bigot, you鈥檙e a hater, and there are even within the church, people who are buying into this worldly deception, and that鈥檚 what it is. The enemy loves to, the enemy of the world, the father of lies, is all about deception. And he is going to attack the very nature of humanity, our sexuality, our genders, how God, in the beginning, God created them male and female.鈥澨�

LGBT people weren鈥檛 the only group demonized at the conference.

Pamphlets accusing President Obama of being engaged in 鈥淎 Romance with Islamism,鈥� produced by David Horowitz, were also on display and distributed free of charge. Liberty Council pamphlets warned of 鈥淪haria Law and Its Threat to America鈥� on a pamphlet emblazoned with the Islamic crescent and star in fire and boasting Islamophobic titles such as 鈥溾�楬oly War鈥� the Norm for Islam鈥� and 鈥淟icense to Kill in the Name of Allah.鈥澨�