Ohio Republican Author Of Anti-Trans Law Compares Trans People To "Lucifer"

Representative Gary Click has previously asserted that there was no religious motivation to his gender affirming care ban law.

Ohio State Rep. Gary Click has been a prominent figure in the national push to legislate against transgender rights. As the lead author of Ohio’s gender-affirming care ban, Click sparked one of the state’s most high-profile political battles when Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the measure, triggering a legislative showdown. Beyond Ohio, Click has convened strategy sessions with lawmakers from other states, advising them on how to advance similar anti-trans bills. A pastor by profession, he has repeatedly insisted his legislative efforts are not religiously motivated. But a Twitter post he made yesterday—likening transgender people to the devil—is the latest to cast serious doubt on that claim.

“Trans Jesus? He’s been around for a while. His name is Lucifer. He “identified” as the Most High. FYI, it didn’t work out,” Click posted, followed by a paragraph from the bible about the fall of Lucifer.

Rep. Click’s latest remarks are part of a well-documented pattern of religiously charged attacks on transgender people. Earlier in 2024, videos surfaced showing him promoting faith-based conversion therapy to his congregation, claiming he has “counseled” LGBTQ+ individuals and “helped them overcome that before.” In the same recordings, he describes transgender people as “straying from God’s plan” and frames their existence as evidence of a “crumbling of society” brought on by “Satan.” Despite the overtly religious nature of these statements, Click continues to insist that his legislative agenda is not motivated by religious animus toward transgender people.

Rep. Gary Click has become a central architect of the anti-transgender legislative movement. In 2024, he authored House Bill 68, which not only banned gender-affirming care for trans youth but also barred transgender athletes from competing in sports—legislation that triggered a political standoff with Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. When DeWine vetoed the bill, Click rallied GOP lawmakers to override the decision and enact it into law. Not long after, in a strategy call with state legislators across the country, Click laid out the long-term Republican agenda: ending gender-affirming care for everyone. When one lawmaker asked how to achieve the “endgame” of banning such care even for adults, Click replied, “We have to take one bite at a time, do it incrementally.

Anti-transgender rhetoric this extreme has backfired on Republican lawmakers before. In Florida, one state representative likened transgender people to “demons, mutants, and imps”—language that helped sink the state’s ban in federal court temporarily. In his ruling, the judge found the law was rooted in religious animus, writing: “There has long been, and still is, substantial bigotry directed at transgender individuals. Common experience confirms this, as does a Florida legislator’s remarkable reference to transgender witnesses at a committee hearing as ‘mutants’ and ‘demons.’” Typically, lawmakers behind these bills take pains to downplay or obscure such religious motivations—aware that overt bigotry can undermine their legal defenses.

The wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation sweeping the United States is not rooted in science or public health—it is driven by a well-funded network of religious fundamentalists seeking to impose Christian nationalist ideals on public policy. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nationalist legal organization founded by televangelists and radio preachers in the 1990s, has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into advancing anti-trans legislation across the country. In Ohio, members of the American College of Pediatricians—a far-right, Christian splinter group from the mainstream American Academy of Pediatrics—played a key role in backing Rep. Click’s bill. What’s clear is that these attacks on transgender rights are less about evidence and more about reshaping the country in the image of an extreme, exclusionary strain of Christianity.

Far-right lawmakers and fundamentalist groups often go to great lengths to cloak their anti-transgender agenda in the language of science and policy. But every so often, the mask slips. On Tuesday, Rep. Gary Click once again revealed the true nature of the movement he represents. Behind the carefully worded legislation and talking points lies a worldview rooted in religious dogma—a belief that transgender people defy divine order and must be erased from public life. The goal has never been regulation or debate; it has always been erasure, sanctified not by evidence but by ideology.