Local residents said he has little chance of winning but are still in shock
David Paszkiewicz is running for City Council in Kearny, NJ to the shock of many of his neighbors. As a pastor and a local teacher, he has been sharing his anti-LGBTQ views for many years locally and on Facebook.
“There seems to be a fixation on my views on the LGBTQ+ community,” he said in a video. He said he represents the biblical position that residents in Kearny have known for many years.
“When did it become lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, queer, and now they’ve added a plus sign,” Paszkiewicz said in another video on facebook. “What does the plus stand for? What will the next letter be? Will it be R for rapist, P for pedophile, will it be H for human trafficking, will it be B for bestiality?”
This past summer, Paszkiewicz was at school board meetings, where he spoke out against transgender policies, which he said deprive parents of their rights.
“I understand that people have a right to their own lifestyle and whatnot,” he told the Kearny School Board on June 13, 2022. “But I’m extremely uncomfortable fomenting the illusion that there are more than two genders.”
After a Kearny High School history student recorded him teaching about creationism, Noah’s Ark and a Christian heaven back in 2006 he was reprimanded by the school board.
This week Paszkiewicz told FOX 5 NY that he stands by everything he said.
“He’s a government employee — there’s a separation of church and state,” said a Kearny resident on FOX 5 NY. Her grandson is enrolled in Paszkiewicz’s history class. “And he shouldn’t have an opinion on LGBTQ.”
But beyond Facebook, the classroom, and the pulpit, he is now running for City Council. The campaign has made local LGBTQ citizens nervous. Online there has been a stir say some Kearny residents.
“I think this is a very liberal city, so I don’t know how far he’s going to get,” said a local resident to a Fox 5 NY reporter. Another Kearny resident said that Paszkiewicz’s candidacy would go nowhere, as he lives in a “very liberal town.”
Nonetheless, the resident rebuked Paszkiewicz for continuing to push his beliefs onto students. Saying to Fox 5 NY, “He’s a government employee — there’s a separation between church and state.”
This story is a compilation courtesy of Fox 5 NY and Local Today reporter Irene Garcia
