Evangelical Leaders Want Senate to Ignore Kavanaugh Assault Charges

A triumvirate of moral bankruptcy. 

Remember when holier than thou evangelicals claimed that "character matters" and railed that Bill Clinton was unfit for office due to his affair with Monica Lewinsky?  Based on their support for Brett Kavanaugh despite credible allegations of attempted molestation, we now know that such claims were just plain lies motivated by a political agenda rather than any shred of a moral compass. It seems that with each passing day evangelicals and the so-called leaders become increasingly reprehensible and despicable. It is they, not those they malign who are morally bankrupt.  Thankfully, younger generations increasingly see them for what they truly are and are walking away from religion.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the push to confirm Kavanaugh without a pause to hear Christine Blasey Ford's testimony.  Here are excerpts:

We are at a sensitive point in the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh where he has been charged with (and by no means cleared of) the sort of crime that should horrify conservative religious folk: the attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl. You’d think the Evangelical leaders who style themselves as spiritual counselors of Donald Trump and the Republican Party would be urging their allies to prayerfully consider the evidence and act as conscious moral agents before providing a lifetime appointment to the nation’s top court.

But as the New York Times reports, that’s not how they roll:

“One of the political costs of failing to confirm Brett Kavanaugh is likely the loss of the United States Senate,” said Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition who is in frequent contact with the White House.

The evangelist Franklin Graham, one of Mr. Trump’s most unwavering defenders, told the Christian Broadcasting Network this week, “I hope the Senate is smarter than this, and they’re not going to let this stop the process from moving forward and confirming this man.”

It’s no secret, of course, that Christian right leaders like Reed and Graham want a Supreme Court majority that will overturn Roe v. Wade and establish a “religious liberty” constitutional privilege to discriminate against ungodly LGBTQ people. Indeed, that is the basis of their highly transactional relationship with Donald J. Trump. They aren’t going to let a little thing like rape allegations stand in the way of cashing in.

[T]his attitude represents a strange moral myopia in which the determination to destroy or limit reproductive rights for women or gay rights generally justifies ignoring the grossest sins. It’s the same point of stunted view that enabled conservative Evangelicals to back Judge Roy Moore to the hilt in his 2017 Senate race despite credible evidence that he had a bad habit of hitting on teenage girls.Graham and his colleagues want their SCOTUS majority right now.

And at one of their favorite venues, the Values Voters Summit in Washington this weekend, Mitch McConnell is assuring them they’ll get their wish:  “Judge Kavanaugh "will be on the United States Supreme Court" despite what you're seeing with the ongoing fight over his confirmation”

At the same confab, another Christian right warhorse, Gary Bauer, said he is praying for Christine Blasey Ford. But he doesn’t favor doing anything to offer her justice. That’s for great men like future Justice Kavanaugh.

The Moral Bankruptcy of Evangelical "Leaders"

This week saw the observance of "National Coming Out Day."  Ironically, it was in October, 2001, that I began my coming out journey, being clueless at the time on a host of LGBT issues, but struggling to deal with the Catholic religious brainwashing that I had been subjected to over my childhood and teen years. Thankfully, coming out is becoming easier for younger generations, although we are far from reaching the point where being gay is a non-issue. In my own case, the process was made easier by the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal that exploded in 2002 as recounted in the Academy Award winning movie Spotlight.  Suddenly, I realized that the bitter men at the Vatican and in bishoprics across the globe were not only hypocrites when it came to preaching about sexual morals, but were in many cases criminal conspirators who care absolutely nothing for children and youths.  

Now, in the age of Donald Trump, when even some Republican elected officials who generally show few limits to their willing to self-prostitute themselves for votes are stepping away from Trump, many of the so-called evangelical Christian "leaders" - most of who are stridently anti-LGBT - are holding fast to their support of Trump.  These individuals, mostly men, are now revealing themselves to be just as morally bankrupt as the Catholic Church hierarchy.  Instead of turning away from Trump as decent moral individuals should do, they are justifying their continued allegiance through various disingenuous statements, all of which ultimately come down to their lust for power and whatever deals Trump has promised to them at secret meetings shielded from public view.  Bob Felton has put together a short summary of these homophobic, modern day Pharisees.  Here are highlights:

Those of you wondering how evangelical leaders can rally to the support of Donald Trump after his latest remarks about women … The Pious are sick, deformed people with a corrupt concept of the ‘good,’ and we need to drive them out of our public life.

James Dobson:
And James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and now host of the show Family Talk, stood by his Trump endorsement on Monday.[ … ]“The comments Mr. Trump made 11 years ago were deplorable and I condemn them entirely,” he said. “I also find Hillary Clinton’s support of partial birth abortion criminal and her opinion of evangelicals to be bigoted. There really is only one difference between the two. Mr. Trump promises to support religious liberty and the dignity of the unborn. Mrs. Clinton promises she will not.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr.:
“We’re never going to have a perfect candidate unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot,” he said. “I’ve got a wife and a daughter, and nobody wants to hear their women talked about in that manner.”[. . . ]I don’t think the American people want this country to go down the toilet because Donald Trump made some dumb comments on a videotape 11 years ago.”

Robert Jeffress:
Well, let me be very clear about this. These statements were lewd, offensive, and indefensible, but they’re not enough to make me vote for Hillary Clinton. Last week, I was in Trump Tower. I moderated a meeting between Mr. Trump and religious leaders, and I said, with Trump seated to my left, I said, “look, I might not choose this man to be a Sunday school teacher in my church, but that’s not what this election is about.” It’s about choosing the best leader to reverse the downward spiral of the nation.

Franklin Graham:
 Evangelist Franklin Graham condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his 2005 remarks about women, but said the real estate magnate’s comments are as indefensible as “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” and that the Democratic candidate would prove to be more harmful for America’s future.

Ralph Reed:
Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a member of Trump’s religious advisory board, has also said he’s still with the Republican candidate.Reed told NPR in an interview Saturday, adding that Trump has apologized. “I think given the stakes in this election and those and other critical issues, I just don’t think an audiotape of an 11-year-old private conversation with an entertainment talk show host on a tour bus, for which the candidate has apologized profusely, is likely to rank high on the hierarchy of concerns of those faith-based voters.”

LGBT citizens continue to be openly condemned and stigmatized by these individuals even though every legitimate medical and mental health association in the nation (and most of the advanced world) holds that homosexuality is a normal phenomenon.  Yet these people continue to support a man who brags about his aggression against women and who has now been accused of sexual harassment by more and more women.  I sincerely hope young LGBT individuals and their parents and friends will ignore these "men of god" and that soon being a "evangelical Christian" will hold far more stigma than being LGBT.

Donald Trump and the Self-Prostitution of Evangelical Leaders

I had noted in a recent post how James Dobson had made the ludicrous statement that Donald Trump is a the equivalent of a "baby Christian" as part of the rationale for his decision - along with other evangelical extremists - to support Trump in the 2016 presidential election.  Once one stops either vomiting or laughing at the concept of Trump being even remotely a  Bible believe Christian, Dobson remarks reveal just how morally bankrupt the Christofascists have become and just how willing they are to prostitute themselves to someone like Trump in their never ending quest for power.  A piece in Salon looks at the moral sell out of Dobson, et al, and their true lover affair with access and power. Here are article highlights:

I’ve written quite a bit about Donald Trump’s unexpectedly successful wooing of the religious right in this presidential campaign. After all, we’ve been told for more than three decades now that conservative Christians require that America’s political leaders have the highest personal moral standards and adhere to a strict commitment to traditional values so he wasn’t expected to do well with them. Recall the stirring words of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson back in 1998 during the impeachment scandal:

As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible 

We are facing a profound moral crisis — not only because one man has disgraced us — but because our people no longer recognize the nature of evil. And when a nation reaches that state of depravity — judgment is a certainty.

There was Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition and current leader of the Faith and Family: 

”Character matters, and the American people are hungry for that message. We care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.”

It’s fair to say that Donald Trump misses the mark on these requirements by a thousand miles.  With his three marriages, his history of public bragging about his sexual exploits and the size of his penis in the national media, and his obvious lack of even rudimentary knowledge of the Bible or any religious teachings, Christian or otherwise, he would seem to be the last person that people of strong faith would find acceptable.

But in the primaries, it became clear that he was drawing many of the voters Ted Cruz had counted on being in his corner. It’s not that Cruz didn’t get evangelical voters, it’s that he was only getting the ones who actually attended church.  . . . . it turns out that for a lot of people “evangelical” is itself just another cultural signifier like those boots and those pork rinds, a tribal designation rather than a serious adherence to Christian teachings.

That’s not to say that this particular group of self-identified evangelicals don’t believe in anything. They undoubtedly go to church from time to time and think of themselves as Christians. It’s just that they don’t actually live their lives in accordance to the Bible as Christian Right leaders have spent years indoctrinating the public to believe. They’re conservatives the way Donald Trump is conservative — authoritarian, intolerant and often cruel. 

A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.

But then the Christian Right has long been a political operation rather than a religious movement, hasn’t it?
 
This brings us to Trump’s most recent “outreach” to the religious right which took place last week in New York when Trump met with a large group of Christian leaders to set their minds at ease about his candidacy. . . . . he also sold himself as someone who would protect “religious liberty”—  the latest social conservative buzzword — with his Supreme Court picks which seemed to thrill the assembled church leaders.  

At the end of the meeting, Trump released a long list of religious right leaders as his “Evangelical advisory committee” including Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, a man who has been scathing in his criticism of Trump. (He torturously explained that he would agree to serve Hillary Clinton too because that’s what Jesus would do.)

Not everyone is buying it. This evangelical scholar suggests that the real believing evangelicals are being played:

What happened on Tuesday in New York was the theo-political equivalent of money laundering.  Dobson and his gang are making Trump clean so that he is worthy of evangelical votes.

So, all those white working class types who identify as evangelical but don’t go to church are being seduced by Trump’s crude nationalism and nativism, largely as result of religious leaders politicizing religion and turning it into a vehicle for their own secular power.  Now, after years of lectures about morality and personal rectitude in public life, they’ve sunk so low that they’re actually trying to convince the truly devout weekly church goers that this depraved demagogue is someone they should support.

 These people are making the spineless establishment Republicans look like saints by comparison.

When I look at Christian Right figures like James Dobson and Ralph Reed -  I met Reed years ago and he struck me as a conflicted closeted gay  and made my gaydar alarm go off the charts - it reinforces my desire to no longer call myself a Christian.  These foul people have become the face of Christianity and the so-called "good Christians" remain sitting on their hands doing little or noting to silence these hate merchants thus becoming by default complicit in the horrors they do and the harm they cause to so many. 

Is The GOP Evangelical Base Splintering?

One of the foulest influences on the Republican Party over the last 25+ years has been the rise of evangelical Christians - the Christofascists as I call them - who have worked to merge their ugly religious beliefs into the nation's civil laws.  Along the way, they have made the embrace of ignorance and denial of science a prerequisite for any candidate who wants to win a GOP primary at almost every level.  These knuckle draggers cannot countenance anything that challenges their myth and fantasy world based beliefs.  That Ted Cruz, even as insane as he is, chose to announce his candidacy at Liberty University shows how strong the strangle hold on the GOP has become.  There are some, however, who conjecture that the evangelical base may be splintering, which could be a good thing for the GOP and America over the longer term,  Here are excerpts from a piece in Salon:

In a new profile of supposed evangelical kingmaker David Lane, the New York Times’ Jason Horowitz describes Lane as “emblematic of a new generation of evangelical leaders who draw local support or exert influence through niche issues or their own networks.”

“New” generation is a bit misleading; Lane, after all, has been around working the room since the 1990s. The “new” moniker is meant to distinguish him from the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell generation, although it’s really less of a generational difference than an organizational one.

[T]he key distinction between Lane’s efforts and the Moral Majority or Christian Coalition models is not local versus national: it’s a function of evangelical base splintering in different directions. Lane represents the pander-by-praying and extolling-the-Christian-nation wing. The other wing, as I reported last week, has tired of that routine. They’d rather hear the candidates talk about religious freedom, not offer overwrought displays of piety blended with patriotism.

[Lane] He’s certainly a player, and perhaps even more so because of the support he has received from the American Family Association, which was behind Lane-inspired efforts like The Response (hosted by then-Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2011, and this year by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal). . . . . The AFA is known for its virulently anti-gay and anti-immigrant stances, and not just because its ongoing affiliation with the execrable Bryan Fischer. Former employees have recounted appalling conduct within the organization. On the other hand, as I reported last week, a growing number of evangelicals support immigration reform, including a path to citizenship. And many realize the futility of continuing to talk about opposition to marriage equality, hence the shift to talking about religious freedom instead. They still share opposition to same-sex marriage with the AFA. But they’ve adopted a different frame: advocating for what they claim are endangered religious freedom rights in the face of the new marriage equality reality.

No matter how dubious one might find those religious freedom claims—notably, claims for exemptions from serving same-sex marriage celebrations, and, in other contexts, covering reproductive health care in a company insurance plan—it’s a mistake to ignore how that conversation is driving the evangelical world. Will Lane’s single-minded Christian nation demagoguery carry the day with evangelical voters? Or will they be looking toward a candidate who has thus far avoided making Lane appearances but can nonetheless satisfy their religious and political concerns?

While there are a multitude of reasons why Huckabee and Perry didn’t get their party’s nomination in 2008 and 2012, Lane’s evangelical voter mobilization certainly didn’t deliver what was necessary to win.  If that pattern repeats in 2016, we’ll likely see some of the candidates (say, Perry, Huckabee, Jindal, Ted Cruz) scrambling to get in front of Lane’s vaunted audiences of pastors. But that doesn’t mean one of those candidates will get the nomination. The next step to watch: will the candidates who thus far have tied their fortunes to Lane feel compelled to do so, or will they be confident they can win over evangelicals without him?

The more divided the Christofascists become and the more its leading demagogues fight among themselves for power and control, the better.  It will make it easier for Republicans to ignore that demographic and perhaps begin a drift back to sanity.  It will not happen over night, but I hope the infighting among the "godly folk" intensifies. 

Far Right Christians Continue False Cry of "War on Christianity"

No one is doing more to kill the Christian brand than the Christofascists and the" professional Christian" set such as hate group leaders Tony Perkins, Brian Brow, Linda Harvey, et al.   With the "battle for marriage" seemingly lost - note the prior posts on NOM's huge March for Marriage fail - except in the minds of the unhinged Christofascists and those who shill for money peddling anti-gay animus, the "godly folk" desperately need a new storyline to keep the contributions that support their comfortable lifestyle flowing in.   As a piece in The Raw Story reports, the "War on Christianity" is the new favored shtick for fleecing the gullible and ignorant.  Here are some excerpts:

Hundreds of conservative Republicans who gathered for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference this week in Washington see a conflict raging across the United States pitting their faith and family values against liberal encroachment fueled by President Barack Obama.

Marriage sanctity has been a pillar of that platform, but five months before mid-term elections and 18 months before the 2016 presidential campaign, many Christian conservatives are looking beyond gay marriage to the next battlefronts in a sociopolitical struggle they hope to win at the ballot box.

The far-right movement, whose torch is carried in Congress by the likes of Senator Ted Cruz and on America’s backroads by 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum, has failed to stem the tide of same-sex marriage rights that has now reached 19 of the 50 US states.

Whatever approach they choose, grassroots conservatives will be courted by Republican 2016 White House contenders, and several potential candidates, including Cruz, Santorum and Senator Rand Paul converged on the convention to firm up their far-right credibility.

“There’s a war on Christianity going on and sometimes you’re being asked to pay for it,” Paul told the crowd Friday, referring to US aid to Pakistan and violent extremists in Syria who have killed or threatened violence against Christians.

But some conceded Obama’s prediction that opposing same-sex marriage no longer ensures political victory.  “They are winning the war” over gay marriage, Religious Freedom Coalition chairman William Murray said of the Democrats.

“It’s just not an issue that politically can be done anymore,” the 68-year-old told AFP, adding that US courts will take the next key steps.  “It’s become a Hollywood issue, and I don’t know what Hollywood will promote next,” he sneered: “polygamy or sex with dogs.”

Monica Crowley, a talk-radio host and former Nixon administration aide, opened the conference by blasting Democrats for their “24/7 war” against religious freedom and economic liberty.

“Leftists are at war with America, with the American Constitution, with American free-market economics, with American values,” she said. “That fundamental transformation is nearly complete.”

As far right Christianity becomes increasingly irrelevant to - if not openly despised by- most Americans,  I predict the Christofascists will become even more shrill and more of an ugly caricature thereby driving even more people away from their toxic form of religion.  All of which, will be a good thing in the long run.

Maher Challenges Ralph Reed to Explain Bible Support for Slavery, Etc.

The Christofascists love to cite the Bible as being "the inspired word of God" and as being inerrant, especially as they loudly attack gays and others whom they don't like.  The problem with this course of action, however,is that the Bible contains a lot of truly foul stuff: support for slavery, subjugation of women, murder and violence, etc. Recently, closeted Christofacist Ralph Reed appeared on Bill Maher's show - one has to wonder WTF Reed was thinking - where Maher confronted Reed on the Christofascists very selective interpretation of the Bible as being inerrant and "the inspired word of God."  The Raw Story has details.  Here are highlights:

Real Time host Bill Maher clashed with Christian political activist Ralph Reed over the nature of the Christian faith on Friday, saying that a religion based on a text advocating for stoning women who had sex before marriage and for slavery was inherently flawed.

“If the Bible’s a perfect book written by a perfect guy, why is this in there?” Maher asked Reed. “Why did Jesus need to come along to correct his dad? I don’t get it.”

“But I’m asking you about the Bible,” Maher said, pressing his point. “People think that the Bible should be literally taken [as] true. And these are the literal words in the Bible from God.”

“But Bill, you’re ignoring the New Testament,” Reed responded. “Not one of those verses occurs in the New Testament. You’re ignoring the new covenant.”

“So the Old Testament — the Jew God — he’s bad,” Maher said.  “I didn’t say that,” Reed answered, laughing. “Bill, Jesus was a Jew.”

Reed's problem is that the Bible isn't "the inspired word of God" and it was authored by ignorant men who had no modern knowledge of science and medical/mental health knowledge.  Increasingly, conservative Christianity is the religion of the ignorant and, in my view, the psychologically disturbed. As for Reed, I view him as a self-loathing closeted gay man - when we met in the past, Reed made my gaydar go off the charts - who has sold his soul as a Christian huckster.

Pundit Fact: Ralph Reed is a Liar When It Comes to Gay Parenting

As some readers will recall, Ralph Reed's version of an Easter message of love was to appear on ABC’s Easter Sunday edition of This Week proceed to lie about gays and gay parenting.  Reed - who I suspect is a self-loathing closet case based on our meeting years ago when I was active in the GOP - among other things stated "Social science is irrefutable" that children are better off being raised by a mom and a dad.  Like so much else that comes out of the mouths of the "godly Christian" crowd, Reed's statement was patently untrue.  Thankfully, Pundit fact has taken Reed to task.  Here's the take down via Politifact.com:

Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed told Raddatz he doesn’t support gay couples raising adopted children.

"This is about what's best for children here in the United States. And the social science is irrefutable," Reed said. "And it is that a child who grows up in a home without the mother and father present and they both play very unique procreative, nurturing and socializing role, they're nine times more likely to end up dropping out of high school. They're five times more likely to end up in poverty. And they're three times more likely to end up addicted to drugs and alcohol."

PunditFact wanted to know what social science has to say about the effects gay parents have on children compared to straight parents.

The social science statistics Reed called "irrefutable" actually have nothing to do with gay couples raising kids. Instead, they’re focused on the effects of children who grow up without a father in a one-parent household. Put another way, the studies focus on the quantity of parents and not their gender.

We decided not to investigate further the specific stats Reed cited once we realized they weren’t measuring what he said they were.

Comparisons like Reed’s are "a complete misuse of the research," said Judith Stacey, a New York University sociologist.

We did find one study funded by conservative organizations as showing gay parents are worse than straight ones, but it’s been denounced by the American Sociological Association, the researcher’s own university and many reputable sociologists. In conducting the study, Mark Regnerus loosely defined same-sex couples and, in doing so, only spoke with two children who were actually raised by gay parents.

Our ruling
Reed said there’s "irrefutable" social science to show that children are better off being parented by a mother and father. That’s not right. What studies really show is that children are better off with two parents. Those studies do not focus on gender.

All reputable research so far indicates that children brought up by gay parents are just well off as those brought up by straight parents.  We rate Reed’s statement False.

With mouth pieces like Reed knowingly telling lies it is little wonder that the under 30 generations hold Christianity in such low regard.  In some ways, I hope Reed and his hate merchant allies continue to lie - they are killing the Christian brand and personally, I look forward to the day when self-identifying Christians are a minority in America. 

Christofascist - Positions on Social Issues Are Alienating the Public

As noted before on this blog, members of the Millennial generation are leaving organized religion in record numbers and the exodus shows no signs of relenting.  Among the main reasons cited are (i) the hypocrisy and meanness of conservative Christians and (ii) the anti-gay agenda of the "godly folk."  Amazingly, living as they do in their alternate universe, the Christofascists seem incapable of recognizing the fact that is they themselves who are killing the Christian brand.  As a result, they go on repeating the same tired lies and demonstrating for all who will watch and listen that today's conservative Christians are at best a reincarnation of the biblical Pharisees whom Christ condemned without mercy.  Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Franklin Graham - who would be a nobody but for his famous father - and Ralph Reed - who set my gaydar off when we met years ago - engaged in the usual Christofascist denunciation of gays, gay parenting and gay adoption.  Thankfully, as Mediate reports Cokie Roberts let them have it:

A comment by Reverend Franklin Graham, in which he alleged gay parents are “recruiting” when they adopt children and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was right to prohibit same-sex adoption, sent a panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos going, with Cokie Roberts asking Ralph Reed whether he thought leaving children in orphanages was better than moving them into same-sex households.

" . . .the social science is also irrefutable that a child raised in an orphanage is in much worse shape than a child raised in a home,” Roberts objected. “And the fact that people are willing to take these children and raise them, and raise them in a loving way, is clearly better for these children.”

“Would you agree with that?” host Martha Raddatz asked. “Would you rather have a child sitting in an orphanage than have gay parents?”

[N]obody on the panel agreed with Graham’s assessment of Putin.

I believe that it is telling when the Christofascists are aligning themselves with a corrupt and brutal Russian dictator.  It shows their true colors and underscores their desire to force their beliefs on others and to trample on the rights of other Americans.  There are few people more self-centered and selfish than today's "godly Christians."

Ralph Reed: Federal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment is a Dead Issue

With state bans on same sex marriage falling like dominoes some on the far right and in Christofascist camps are again calling for a federal constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.  These Kool-Aid drinking elements do not grasp that the train left the station on that issue quite some time ago.  Not only is it unlikely that such an amendment could clear Congress, but it is even more unlikely that the measure could win approval of the requisite number of states.  While most Christofascists remain in utter la la land on the issue, surprisingly Ralph Reed is taking the position that such a federal constitutional amendment is a dead issue.  I met Reed years ago during my GOP activist days when he still headed up the Christian Coalitio and while I don't like his politics, I would never view the man as dumb or unintelligent.  I'd also put him in the closeted Republican category - he was very attractive in person and he made my gaydar go literally off the charts. :)   Here are some highlights from Huffington Post:

Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, now head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, conceded in an interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday that a federal marriage amendment that would ban gay marriage in the U.S. Constitution is a dead issue for GOP presidential candidates. Mitt Romney vowed to push for an amendment banning gay marriage in 2012, and George W. Bush announced his support for an amendment in 2004 and made it a big part of his re-election campaign.

Reed, who in his speech at CPAC attacked "left-wing bullies" whom he said forced Gov. Jan Brewer to veto an anti-gay bill in Arizona and railed against the Obama administration for fomenting a "war on religion," said in an interview with me on SiriusXM Progress that he doesn't "know of anyone [among possible GOP contenders] who plans to run for president in 2016" who supports gay marriage.

However, agreeing that no potential GOP 2016 candidate has yet to come out in favor of a federal marriage amendment, Reed conceded that it would be "trying to put the genie back in the bottle."

"Even if you passed a federal marriage amendment," he said, "I would assume it would grandfather in anyone who's been married, so I don't know. It was always a very difficult option. I don't think we ever got 50 votes in the U.S. Senate for that amendment. So, we always knew that the amendment was going to be very difficult to pass."

GOP Hopefuls Strive to See Who Can Most Prostitute Themselves to the Christofascists

In the grand scheme of things "Duck Dynasty" and the grossly bigoted and racist Phil Robertson do not add up to much.  However, the scramble of the potential 2016 Republican candidate field to support Robertson's hate filled and bigoted comments underscores just how sick today's Republican Party has become.  These individuals - Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, etc. - might just as well have a tattoo saying "I'm a whore" emblazoned across their foreheads.  And its all about winning over the fetid swamp that is now the GOP base where racism, religious extremism, rampant homophobia and attacks on anyone deemed "other" are the guiding principles.  My Republican fore-bearers, all of whom valued knowledge and intellect, must be rolling over in their graves.  Note how the usual hate group leaders are also rushing to Robertson's defense.  The Washington Post looks at this race to go as low as conceivably possible.  Here are story highlights:

Few could have predicted that the story lines of the hit A&E reality show “Duck Dynasty” and the 2016 presidential contest would converge.

But that unexpected mash-up played out Thursday as conservative politicians rushed to defend Phil Robertson, the shaggy-bearded, homespun star of the breakout series, who was suspended by the cable network after his published comments about gays stirred a storm of controversy.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), a likely White House contender whose state is home to the show about a family that runs a duck-hunting gear enterprise, called Robertson and his family “great citizens.” 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another probable 2016 candidate, chimed in on Facebook, writing: “If you believe in free speech or religious liberty, you should be deeply dismayed over the treatment of Phil Robertson.” 

Their embrace of Robertson — who in an interview with GQ described “homosexual behavior” as sinful and compared it to bestiality and infidelity — underscored how gay rights remain a potent political issue for many religious voters on the right. 

Conservative Christians “feel like they’re under siege in a culture that is increasingly intolerant and discriminatory toward their views, and they don’t feel represented,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, who noted that Robertson paraphrased from the Bible’s Book of Corinthians in his interview. “I did not get any impression at all that there was animus expressed,” Reed said.   By jumping into the “Duck Dynasty” maelstrom, conservative leaders such as Jindal and Cruz sent a clear message to evangelical voters: We’re on your side.

Fred Sainz, spokesman for the gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said that “the days of making gay a wedge issue are dated.”  “I think they are outliers,” he said of Jindal, Cruz and Palin, adding that he believes they jumped into the “Duck Dynasty” controversy to appeal to “a niche base.”  But that base remains a powerful force in the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to presidential primaries in states such as Iowa and South Carolina.

[T]he Faith & Freedom Coalition called on its members to launch an e-mail and phone campaign to let A&E know they will boycott the network until Robertson is reinstated.

Fundamental evangelical Christianity is a cancer on American society.  Any good works that might be done are far outweighed by the hate, bigotry and division that are its principle fruits.  That the GOP continues to prostitute itself to this putrid element of society underscores that the GOP is engaged in a slow form of political suicide. 

 

Meet The Press 6/30/13 - The Disingenuous Lies of Gay Marriage Opponents

Watching Meet the Press this morning where a discussion of this week's SCOTUS rulings on gay marriage took place, there were times when I wanted to throw something at the television as Ralph Reed (who I met years ago at a political event and who candidly sent my Gaydar into overdrive), Jim DeMint and other Christofascist puppets spouted the usually anti-gay lies and untruths.  They likewise made it clear that they believe that minorities should have no rights unless and until the majority deems to allow them to have them.   

The irony, of course, is filled with examples of where the majority was wrong, especially morally, in the way that minorities have been persecuted and deprived of rights: slavery, segregation, the treatment of women as chattel, hatred towards Jews,, etc.  The list is too long to enumerate, although I will point out two things.  First, in 1938, despite knowledge that atrocities against and the persecution of Jews was occurring in Germany, a Fortune poll found that two-thirds of the American public favored barring Jewish refugees from coming to America.  And when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Loving v. Virgina, interracial marriage had a lower approval level with the American public than gay marriage enjoys today.  Rather than being right, the majority is all too often wrong.  Dead wrong in the case of opposing entrance of Jewish refugees in the 1930;s.

The other thing that became abundantly clear from the interviews is that religious based animus towards gays and our families is the primary motivation of the "godly Christian" crowd.  Ralph Reed tried to float the canard that gay couples make inferior parents and without naming it by name relied on the fraudulent Christian Right funded Regnerus "study."  When confronted by David Gregory with he fact that the study only had relevance on broken homes, Reed refused to answer.  The same thing happened when Rachel Madow asked Jim DeMint to explain how same sex marriage harmed heterosexual marriage.  He could not give one concrete response and only reverted back to the usual blather about children needing a mother and father.

The sad reality is that these "godly folks" truly care nothing about the lives they damage or ruin.  When it comes to divorce, no one has a higher divorce rate than Evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt.   And banning gay marriage does nothing to (i) reduce the heterosexual divorce rate, or (ii) make gay and lesbian headed families miraculously disappear.  All it does is harm our children and deprive us of rights and benefits so that assholes like DeMint and Reed can feel superior.  It's sickening and it is diametrically opposed to the Gospel message.

Pat Robertson Legal Group Fires Senior Attorney for Possibly Being Gay

As a number of news outlets are reporting, Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice fired James Henderson on September 25, 2012, apparently because of Internet rumors that Henderson might be gay and having some type of relationships with younger men.  Having met Robertson - who is regarded by many in Hampton Roads as a major embarrassment to the region - and his then minion, Ralph Reed, in person several times years ago during my GOP activist days I have to laugh.  Ralph Reed set my gaydar off into the dangerous overdrive zone.  While Reed isn't as nellie as "Marcia" Bachmann, in my opinion, if the man is straight, then I'm Queen Victoria!!   But that apparently was fine with Robertson so long as Reed was helping to wage the culture wars.   The Advocate reports on this bizarre story.  Here are highlights:

A senior attorney has been fired from the conservative American Center for Law and Justice for reportedly having multiple relationships with younger men.

Metro Weekly reports that James Henderson was fired September 25, one day after two blogs, Exposed Politics and The Patriot-Ombudsman, posted reports that Henderson may be gay. The reports showed that Henderson created a Facebook account solely to communicate with at least two men he was involved with.

While it is unclear whether the men are at the age of consent or old enough to consume alcohol, it appears that Henderson provided them with alcohol and marijuana. One of the reports alleges that one of the men was 17 when he began communicating with Henderson in 2010.
Henderson is married with eight children.

The American Center for Law and Justice was founded in 1990 by Pat Robertson as a counter to the American Civil Liberties Union. Representatives of the organization confirmed to Metro Weekly that Henderson had been fired but would not make any further comments. His attorney, Christopher Zampogna, told Metro Weekly that he would not comment on Henderson's termination, but also confirmed that he was fired.

Henderson previously taught undergraduate religious studies at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., also founded by Pat Robertson.

Kool-Drinkers Want Romney to Channel Santorum

Let's hope the Romney campaign follows the delusional advise of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed (who set my gaydar off big time when I met him years ago) and the religious extremism of Rick Santorum becomes part of the Romney game plan. According to Reed, Santorum "previewed the ideological trajectory" of the Republican Party and by extension, America. If that's the case, perhaps the GOP will go the way of the Dodo and the Whigs. Reed has an op-ed in the Washington Post. Here are highlights:

Santorum has been denounced as a sore loser, a religious extremist, a crank. MSNBC host Martin Bashir referred to him as a theocratic version of Stalin. One columnist alleged in the Daily Beast that Santorum would use the power of the presidency to impose “his ideal of a Christian America” on the nation. The New Yorker compared him to Islamic extremists who seek to execute their opponents, adding that we need separation of church and state so that “Santorum and his party can’t impose dominion of one narrow, sectarian, Bible-based idea of the public good.”

But Santorum and his supporters may have the last laugh. From John C. Fremont to William Jennings Bryan in the 19th century to Barry Goldwater, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Ronald Reagan in our time, losing presidential candidates have previewed the ideological trajectory of their parties — and often of the nation.

Romney would be wise to remember this in his general-election campaign. Of course he can’t neglect independents, or women, or Hispanics, or other nontraditional Republican constituencies. But his immediate task is to consolidate conservative support and unify the party. The best way to do that is to appropriate the best parts of Santorum’s message. Santorum follows the trailblazing evangelical candidates Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee, who personified the rise and the maturation of social conservatives as a critical component of the Republican coalition.

In the primaries, Santorum outperformed Romney among two key demographic groups, one religious and cultural, the other socioeconomic — and Romney needs both to win in November. The first group was evangelicals and tea party voters; there is remarkable overlap between them. According to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s analysis of network exit polls, more than half of voters who cast a ballot in a Republican presidential primary or caucus through mid-March were self-identified evangelicals.

The second group with which Santorum performed extremely well was voters who did not graduate from college and who earn less than $100,000 a year. Working-class voters in battleground states such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa will be a key vulnerability for Obama in the general election. Romney needs them

Others without Reed's Christofascist agenda see things differently as evidenced by a piece in The Atlantic which argues that Santorum may have permanently damaged Romney who will find himself in the run up to November faced with many poisonous video clips of things he said to out pander Santorum. Here are some excerpts:

Santorum's staunch social conservatism, by contrast, will probably cast a more enduring shadow. . . . . He stoked his socially conservative base with a stream of vehement pronouncements -- pledging to expose "the dangers of contraception"; insisting that states should be allowed to ban birth control (while declaring that he himself would vote against such a ban); accusing President Obama of practicing a "phony theology"; and asserting that John F. Kennedy's famous speech on the separation of church and state made him "throw up." Santorum's unrelenting ardor shifted the race's focus from the economic issues that Romney preferred to cultural confrontations, a movement reinforced by a series of concurrent events that included the GOP backlash against Obama's rule requiring religiously based employers to fund contraception in health insurance and Rush Limbaugh's denunciation of a young woman supporting Obama as a "slut."

Romney didn't match the vitriol from Santorum (or Limbaugh), but he never renounced it either. And Romney embraced comparable positions, proposing to terminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, to end federal family-planning money for low-income women, and to allow employers to deny contraceptive coverage if it violated their moral beliefs. "Romney has inextricably identified himself with that current in Republican thinking," insists Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. "And women have noticed that."

[A]an ABC News/Washington Post poll this week, echoing other recent surveys, showed an unprecedented 60 percent of these women backing the president against Romney. If Obama can stay close to that number, he can lose about two-thirds of all other whites and still win reelection (so long as he remains strong among minorities, as seems likely).

Romney began trying to dig out this week by hitting Obama's economic record for women. But the White House believes that many upscale women are feeling secure enough about the economy to vote on their cultural liberalism. If that equation holds through November, Romney may rue his decision not to paddle against the surging conservative current on social issues that Santorum unleashed with his unlikely ascent.

Ralph Reed's "Christian Coalition 2.0" Hits Florida

The Advocate has a story about Ralph Reed, former leader of the Christian Coalition once based out of local nutcase Pat Robertson, CBN University complex, opening a Florida branch of his new Faith and Freedom Coalition to energize social conservatives and financing Republican state campaigns in Florida (and I'm sure make Ralph a nice buck or two along the way).

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The irony to me , of course is that Reed - who I meet several times back in my GOP days - is in my view a self-hating closet case. Each time I met him and was in close proximity to him my gaydar went off the charts (I will concede that he was cute in person back in the day). Thus, I classify him with Robert Knight and a few other bete noire figures of the Christian Right who are a wee bit too frantically hysterical about the issue of homosexuality unless they them selves have some issues about their sexual orientation. Here are some story highlights:

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Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, formalized plans last week to open an affiliate of his new Faith and Freedom Coalition in Florida, with the goal of energizing social conservatives and financing Republican state campaigns. The new coalition, which was created last weekend, plans to organize conservative voters and pour cash into high-profile races such as the Republican senate primary between Governor Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio, former speaker of the Florida house of representatives, according to the News Service of Florida .

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“Florida is the largest of a half-dozen states where the Faith and Freedom Coalition now has chapters, which some have dubbed a 2.0 version of the Christian Coalition, intended to draw younger, Internet-savvy social conservatives,” reported the News Service of Florida.

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Reed was hired by Pat Robertson two decades ago to serve as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition. He later became a lobbyist, and was connected to the Jack Abramoff scandal.

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Like a bad penny, some of the fixtures of the Christianist camp just keep reappearing - making money off the sheeple and grasping for power and influence are just too much for them to pass up. Ralph is definitely once such bad penny.

Bob McDonnell Aide Has Christianist Ties

In what should be no surprise to anyone who has followed GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell's political career, a story has hit the news that McDonnell's campaign manager, Philip Cox, has ties to Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist later sent to prison on multiple fraud charges, and an outfit called the Faith and Family Alliance. The reality is that despite his campaign ads which seek to depict him as a moderate, Bob McDonnell is a creature of the Christian Right and in the event he were to be elected to the Governor's mansion in November, it's virtually guaranteed that he would appoint far right extremists to numerous state appointments. It would likely mean that Regent University and Liberty University operatives would be placed in positions to negatively influence state policies - much as happened under the Chimperator (e.g., think Monica Goodling). Do we really want Pat Robertson and Jerry Walwell, Jr., and James Dobson running Virginia? Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

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An episode from the political history of the man running Bob McDonnell's campaign for governor is raising concerns among some Republicans that he may hurt the GOP's chances of ending an eight-year Democratic hold on the governor's mansion.

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McDonnell's campaign manager, Philip Cox, had a key role in a political advocacy group that put out a last-minute mailing during a 2000 congressional campaign attacking a candidate for not paying taxes. The same group, known as the Faith and Family Alliance, also served as a funding conduit between evangelical leader Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist later sent to prison on multiple fraud charges.

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Cox has never been charged with any wrongdoing related to the alliance. Nonetheless, the controversy "sets the table for the Democrats to go after McDonnell," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

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In his campaign for governor, McDonnell is positioning himself as a moderate Republican. "One of the underlying concerns that many thoughtful Virginians have about McDonnell are his ties to the Christian right," Sabato said. "I can't tell you how many times senior people have asked, 'Who will Bob McDonnell appoint to the 4,000 appointments he gets?' 'Who will run the college boards of visitors and the state agencies?' "The reasons these questions matter to the people asking them is they fear it will be the far right and the Christian conservatives," he said.

Newsweek Draws Fire on Gay Marriage; Bush: Bible Not Literal

As predicted, the regular Christianist loud mouths are in a frenzy hyperventilating over the Newsweek story on the Biblical basis for gay marriage that I talked about just yesterday. The always homophobic blowhards Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council make the same old disingenuous anti-gay arguments and Ralph Reed - who I met in person at a political meeting some years back where he sent my gaydar into overdrive - chimes in too, apparently seeking attention after his ill-fated political run in Georgia. What strikes me most is that without the pretext of always working to "protect marriage," these guys would all be basically out of jobs In other news, the Chimperator made comments that will likely cause James Dobson wet himself. First, here are highlights from Politico concerning the shrieking against Newsweek (btw, remember that Perkins has NO theological credentials of his own):

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Leading social conservatives blasted Newsweek for its current cover story, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," which they said misinterprets both biblical scripture and their own political movement. “It doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus,” said Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.”

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Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, agreed, calling Newsweek’s cover story “yet another attack on orthodox Christianity.” “I hardly think that Newsweek is a credible venue for theological discussion,” said Perkins. “I mean, I thought it was just full of holes.”

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In addition to contesting Newsweek’s specific scriptural arguments, some social conservatives took issue with the basic premise of the magazine’s story: that conservative opposition to same-sex marriage is based on specific biblical instructions. “I see it as an attempt to caricature and reduce to a cartoon the social conservative belief in the efficacy of traditional marriage, and try to reduce it to some formulaic, scriptural literalism,” said Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition.

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In an e-mail to Politico, Maggie Gallagher, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, took a similar line, calling marriage “the one necessary adult relation in society – the way we bring together male and female to bring the next generation to life in a way that connects those children in love to their own mother and father.”

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On a somewhat related note, during an interview, the Chimperator said what can only be considered as heresy by the most unhinged Christianists. Namely, that the Bible is not to be construed literally and that the theory of evolution is not incompatible with the Bible. Here are some highlights from Raw Story:

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US President George W. Bush said in an interview Monday that the Bible is "probably not" literally true and that a belief that God created the world is compatible with the theory of evolution. "I think you can have both," Bush, who leaves office January 20, told ABC television, adding "You're getting me way out of my lane here.

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"I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution," he told ABC television. Asked whether the Bible was literally true, Bush replied: "Probably not. No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it."