LGBTQ Nation: MAGA candidate spoke at Christian conference alongside child rapist & hate pastors
CHICAGO, IL — LGBTQ Nation reported that Darren Bailey spoke at the Signs & Wonders Christian conference, sharing a lineup with anti-LGBTQ individuals, MAGA extremists, and a sex offender.
Darren Bailey has a track record of hateful, anti-LGBTQ positions, including opposing marriage equality, saying that AIDS results from “immoral choices,” and founding a school with a curriculum that teaches that “gay people have no more claims to special rights than child molesters and rapists.”
Darren Bailey’s anti-LGBTQ record and willingness to stand with homophobes and sex offenders goes against Illinois values.
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LGBTQ Nation: MAGA candidate spoke at Christian conference alongside child rapist & hate pastors
- Anti-LGBTQ+ and MAGA Illinois gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey (R) spoke at the recent Signs & Wonders Christian conference alongside homophobic pastors and a self-described ex-gay man who raped two 15-year-old boys.
- Bailey — who said in a 2025 interview that schoolchildren should only be taught that marriage is between a man and a woman, previously said that AIDS results from “immoral choices,” and runs a Christian private school that uses curriculum that states “Gay people have no more claims to special rights than child molesters and rapists” — spoke at the conference alongside MAGA pastor and self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries.
- Bailey also spoke at the conference alongside Richard Jones, a registered child sex offender who was charged with two counts of sexual assault against 15-year-old male victims in 1990 and 1997, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. In 1997, a court sentenced him to be imprisoned for six years over the charge.
- The conference also features Stephen Strader, a pastor who defended President Donald Trump’s June 1, 2020 photograph in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., where he stood and held up a Bible after the area was cleared of protestors with tear gas and other riot control measures. The incident was criticized for the alleged use of excessive force.
- Bailey himself has refused to say whether he supports Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him by an unprecedented national vote rigging conspiracy. Trump and Republicans filed 60 court cases making such allegations in an attempt to overturn the election’s results. Still, all of the cases were thrown out (some by judges whom Trump appointed) due to lack of evidence or lack of legal standing.
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