NJ town council candidate rails against LGBTQ community

KEARNY, N.J. - A candidate running for public office in Hudson County is under fire for comments he made about the LGBTQ community. 

David Paszkiewicz is a coach, pastor, teacher and now a candidate for Town Hall in Kearny. He shares his views on Facebook to the shock of some of his neighbors.

"There seems to be a fixation on my views concerning the LGBTQ+ community," he said in one video. 

Paszkiewicz said he is taking the biblical position, which residents have been aware of for years.

"When did it become lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, queer, and now they added a plus sign to it," Paszkiewicz said in another video. "What is the plus 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 summer, parents could find Paszkiewicz at school board meetings, lobbying against transgender policies that he believes strip parents of their rights.

"I understand that people are entitled to their own lifestyles et cetera," he told the Kearny School Board on June 13, 2022. "But I feel extremely uncomfortable facilitating the delusion that there are more than two genders."

In 2006, he was reprimanded after a Kearny High School history student recorded him teaching about creationism, Noah's Ark, and a Christian heaven.

Paszkiewicz told FOX 5 NY on Tuesday he stands by everything he said.

"He's a government employee — there's a separation between church and state," said a Kearny resident, whose grandson is enrolled in Paszkiewicz's history class. "And he shouldn't be giving an opinion on LGBTQ anything."

But beyond the classroom and the pulpit, he now has his hopes set on Town Hall. The campaign is causing a stir online among exasperated Kearny residents. 

"I think this is a very liberal town, so I don't know how far he'll get," the resident said.