Senate Republicans confirmed anti-LGBTQ+ Missouri Deputy Solicitor General Joshua Divine to a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri on Tuesday.

Divine’s appointment was opposed by Senate Democrats and progressive organizations due to his extreme conservative record on abortion and voting rights, HuffPost noted. But Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who usually caucuses with Democrats, joined with Republicans to push Divine’s nomination over the line. King, who supports both reproductive rights and voting rights, did not indicate why he ultimately sided with Republicans on Divine’s appointment.

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Last month, progressive outlet Balls and Strikes described Divine’s record as “standard-issue conservative legal movement stuff” and said his time as Missouri’s deputy solicitor general allowed him “to put the finishing touches on the exact sort of record that gets ambitious Republican lawyers noticed by the White House these days.”

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In a tip sheet on Divine, progressive judicial advocacy group Alliance for Justice said that he “has built a legal career advancing hardline conservative positions that threaten to significantly undermine core constitutional protections related to civil rights, reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ equality, environmental protections, and immigrant rights.”

As Alliance for Justice notes, Divine defended Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and has published articles opposing the right to same-sex marriage. As a college newspaper columnist, Divine reportedly compared homosexuality to bestiality and “any form of sex that goes against the biological design of procreation and the nurturing of a family.” He argued that conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage do so not out of hate but because they are “opposed to a group receiving extra benefits.” In one 2010 column, he argued that conservative Christians are “obliged ethically to impose their beliefs on others.”

He has also virulently opposed reproductive freedom, defending Missouri’s near-total ban on abortion and representing the state in ongoing litigation opposing the FDA’s authority to regulate mifepristone, according to both Alliance for Justice and Reproductive Freedom for All.

The 35-year-old will now hold a lifetime seat on the court, potentially imposing his far-right agenda for decades to come.

Progressive and reproductive rights groups greeted Divine’s appointment and King’s vote with outrage on Tuesday.

“To say Senator King’s vote on the nomination of Joshua Divine is a shock would be a massive understatement,” Demand Justice interim director Maggie Jo Buchanan said in a statement. “Any person who believes in the critical importance of reproductive rights would not vote to put an anti-abortion extremist in a lifetime position on the federal bench. The Senator owes his constituents an explanation – whatever that may be.”

In a separate statement, Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju blasted Divine’s confirmation, arguing that it proves that Trump lied to voters when he claimed during his campaign that he would leave decisions about abortion access to the states. Trump, Timmaraju said, “is actively working to eliminate abortion access nationwide.

“Federal courts are a critical line of defense to preserve reproductive health care,” Timmaraju said, adding that Divine’s appointment, as well as that of anti-abortion judge Whitney Hermandorfer to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, “are a dangerous sign of what’s to come.”

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