Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. In 2019, he expressed strong opposition to the Equality Act, a bill that would protect LGBT people against discrimination. School shootings On December 16, 2012, two days after the Sandy Hook shootings, Gohmert appeared on Fox News Sunday and suggested that the tragedy would have never happened had the teachers been armed. He told host Chris Wallace: "I wish to God that she [principal Dawn L. Hochsprung] had an M4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids." He claimed that the 20 victims who had been killed with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle had "defensive wounds". After the 2022 Uvalde school massacre, Gohmert said, "Maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God's name in vain, we wouldn't have the mass killings like we didn't have before prayer was eliminated from schools." Scientific research funding On March 22, 2016, Gohmert was one of four representatives to vote against H.R. 4742 (383 voted for it), a bill to authorize the National Science Foundation to support entrepreneurial programs for women. He said the following in defense of his position: he acknowledged the bill was "well-intentioned" but said "this program is designed to discriminate against that young, poverty-stricken boy and to encourage the girl. Forget the boy. Encourage the girl." Hate crimes On February 26, 2020, Gohmert voted against making lynching a federal hate crime. He said the 10-year sentence for lynching in the act was "ridiculous" and that crimes such as lynching should be prosecuted through state murder statutes, which is punishable up to death in Texas. Gohmert opposes federal hate crime legislation, saying that some hate crime legislation is unnecessary because assault and murder are already crimes. COVID-19 Although there is no evidence of its effectiveness, Gohmert strongly supports the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, as he told Sean Hannity of Fox News in July 2020. He urged the Food and Drug Administration in April 2020 to approve the drug as an official treatment. In April 2020, Gohmert was criticized after falsely claiming that Germany had invented a "mist" that killed the coronavirus. Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19 on July 29, 2020, a day after he attended a House Judiciary Committee