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.

Civil Rights Groups Call on GOP to Denounce Hate Group Summit

click image to enlarge

The GOP war on gays, women, contraception, non-whites, and religious freedom for all Americans continues unabated even though long term the hate and bigotry that these policies embody are increasingly disavowed by America's changing population.  Picking up on this reality, a group of civil rights and leading LGBT rights organizations have run a full page ad (see the ad above) in the Washington Post calling on the GOP to denounce the upcoming gathering of hate merchants sponsored by Family Research Council, a designated hate group, that disingenuously goes by the name "Values Voter Summit."   The reality is that this summit will be little more than a gathering of white supremacists, religious extremists, homophobes and those who seek to have women subordinated to men.  Here are excerpts from the add:

Dear Mr. Priebus, Fifteen years ago, your predecessor called for party members to shun the Council of Conservative Citizens because of the group’s “racist views.” “A member of the party of Lincoln should not belong to such an organization,” GOP Chairman Jim Nicholson said. His comments had their intended effect: Senior members of Congress distanced themselves from the group. Today, Chairman Priebus, we ask that you take a similar stand and call upon Republican officials to disassociate themselves from the groups behind the upcoming Values Voter Summit.

The reason is simple: These groups engage in repeated, groundless demonization of LGBT people — portraying them as sick, vile, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation. The Family Research Council, the summit’s host, is vigorously opposed to extending equal rights to the LGBT community. Its president, Tony Perkins, has repeatedly claimed that pedophilia is a “homosexual problem." He has called the “It Gets Better” campaign — designed to give LGBT students hope for a better tomorrow — “disgusting” and a “concerted effort” to “recruit” children into the gay “lifestyle.”

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, a summit sponsor, has said the U.S. needs to “be more like Russia,” which enacted a law criminalizing the distribution of LGBT “propaganda.” He has also said, "Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine, and six million dead Jews.” Similarly, Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, another summit sponsor, has compared those who do not denounce same-sex marriage to those who remained silent during the Holocaust.

This kind of extremism should not be legitimized by elected officials, because it is contrary to our nation’s highest ideals. . . .  Yet, as in years past, several prominent members of your party — including U.S. Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — are currently planning to address the Values Voter Summit that begins on Thursday in Washington. So, the question now is: Will you live up to your own words and tell the members of your party to shun groups that demean other people and deny them dignity?

Will the GOP listen?  I'm not holding my breath.  The GOP has become an ugly sectarian party and rank and file Republicans have prostituted themselves to the Christofascist to such an extent that tawdry whores look virtuous in comparison.

Hate, Homophobia and Delusion in Full View at Values Voter Summit

Image via Bilerico Project.  It captures the sex obsessed mindset of the "godly folk" perfectly

In a recent post I highlighted some of the synopsis that Right Wing Watch had compiled concerning the foul hate, homophobia and racism that was the principal take away from the so-called "Values Voter Summit" over last weekend in Washington, D.C.  John Becker, a blogger friend and fellow Bilerico Project contributor attended the Values Voter Summit to report first hand on some of the virulent hate and bigotry (and, yes, unvarnished homophobia) that dominated the gathering of haters.  Here are highlights from his post on The Bilerico Project:

Last weekend the Family Research Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group, held its annual "Values Voter Summit" here in Washington, D.C. The VVS is the nation's largest gathering of conservative activists from the religious right; over 2,200 people (mostly white middle-aged and older evangelicals) registered for the conference this year. Nowhere is the religious right's alliance with the Republican Party more readily visible: literally dozens of that movement's biggest stars turn out, along with senators, representatives, and future GOP presidential hopefuls seeking to burnish their social conservative credentials. 

The Values Voter Summit is also heavily attended by members of the media and progressive activists, both because it's important to keep tabs on one's political and ideological opponents and because the event is a veritable gold mine of insanity.

I went to the Values Voter Summit myself for the first time this year, and let me tell you: it did not disappoint in the batshittery department.

The civil war currently roiling inside the Republican Party between its rabidly extreme Tea Party wing and shrinking crowd of marginally-less-crazy political pragmatists was in full view, with open partisan bickering and speakers taking potshots at other, less conservative Republicans. It was clear right from the beginning whose side these so-called "values voters" were on: the first person to speak after FRC president Tony Perkins delivered his opening remarks was Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, one of the primary architects of the Republican shutdown of the federal government. 

And then came the shutdown's chief proponent and public face: Texas Senator Ted Cruz. . . . Cruz was introduced by Fox News pundit, conservative activist, and Catholic League board member Brent Bozell, who whipped the crowd into a frenzy by repeatedly slamming Sen. John McCain (an outspoken critic of Cruz and his shutdown strategy) as intellectually dishonest, a "whiner," and a "faux conservative." "Will you stand with Ted Cruz?" Bozell asked. The crowd roared its approval.

Cruz fed the crowd the red meat they wanted, rattling off talking points peppered with Biblical references, and nearly every sentence he uttered met with shouts of affirmation. When pro-immigration reform activists from the group United We Dream interrupted him, Cruz didn't miss a beat, suggesting that President Obama had sent "paid political operatives" to derail his speech. At least half a dozen other hecklers interrupted Cruz, but the crowd drowned them out with shouts of "shut up!" and chants of "USA! USA!"

By the time Cruz's speech was finished, it was clear that the religious right had found its new golden boy. If he survives this shutdown fiasco, expect him to be the Michele Bachmann/Rick Santorum crowd's choice for president in 2016.

Perhaps no two speakers personify the delusional world in which the GOP's insurgent right flank operates than Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck. Both spoke at the Values Voter Summit, and both spewed out all kinds of crazy.

[Bachmann's] peech was mostly devoted to attacking health care reform, which she called "Deathcare." She said she was "weeping" the night the Affordable Care Act passed the House, and she wondered if in a future shutdown, our horrible socialist president would stop C-sections and kidney transplants in progress or "place padlocks on a private clinic" like the ones she and her husband Marcus owned.

Did Bachmann's allegations have any factual basis whatsoever? Nope, but as usual, that didn't stop her.

Perhaps the most revealing moment of Beck's 50-minute rant -- and for this listener, certainly the most disgusting -- came when he whipped out a binder full of concentration camp badges from his extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia. (Yes, Glenn Beck has an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia. Let that sink in for a minute.) Beck flipped through page after page of these gruesome artifacts, explaining which group wore which symbol.

He then asked the crowd if anyone knew what group wore purple triangles. (The correct answer is Jehovah's Witnesses.) One member of the audience guessed gays, to which Beck replied that no, gays' concentration camp badges were pink. And how did the crowd of so-called "values voters" respond? With laughter.

The world these Tea Party, religious-right, mostly white, middle-aged and elderly conservatives thought they knew is evolving all around them and rapidly morphing into something they no longer recognize -- and it scares the hell out of them. But instead of challenging their preconceptions and growing along with the rest of America, they've chosen to dig in their heels, wrap themselves in the Gadsden flag, climb up onto crosses of their own making, and fight desperately to cling to their prejudices for as long as possible.

And yes, that includes anti-LGBT bigotry. Stay tuned for my second and final report, where I'll go into detail about homophobia and transphobia at the Values Voter Summit.

Let's be honest.  These are NOT nice or decent people.  They are racists, bigots, homophobes and anti-Semites who wrap themselves in religion as an excuse for their vile evilness.  They deserve no respect and no deference whatsoever.  The majority of Americans need to figure this out and expedite the marginalization of these people from both politics and polite society.

Values Voter Summit - A Study In Batshit Craziness and What's Wrong with the GOP

If one wants to understand what's really wrong with the Republican Party nowadays, all one need do is follow the utter lunacy that has been transpiring at the so-called "Values Voter Summit' orchestrated by anti-gay and white supremacist embracing hate groups.  Right Wing Watch has been documenting much of the utter insanity transpiring and what one needs to remember is that these delusional speakers represent the true face of the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the GOP.  Here's a sampling of some of the craziness via post captions:

At VVS Heritage Predicts 'MassiveUpheaval' and Right-Wing Takeover of GOP

Bomberger:Gays Like Kleptomaniacs, Homophobia A Myth   

Brown:Gay Marriage Deconstructs 'The Very Nature Of What It Means To Be A HumanBeing'  

Santorum: Contraception Mandate Is A'Descendant Of The French Revolution' 

Parker: Gay People And 'Enemies OfGod' Should 'Keep It Private' 

Bachmann: Obama Is Supporting AlQaeda, Proving That We Are In The End Times 

"Bishop" E.W. Jackson: Next To Jesus, America HasBeen 'The Greatest Blessing Given To Mankind

 

Jim Bob Duggar Compares US To Nazi Germany During The Holocaust

  

There's much more which ought to be required reading for Americans so that they would understand the lunacy that has over taken the GOP.  Even just 20 years ago, no sane and self-respecting Republican politician would want to be seen with these crazy people.  Now, the troop through swearing fealty to those perhaps better committed to a mental ward.  And the swamp fever seems to be only intensifying as these bigots and racist become more hysterical in their opposition to modernity and demographic change that is eroding the white privilege these people feel they are losing.  Sane and decent people need to do all they can to stop these people from gaining any more political power and influence.

At VVS Heritage Predicts 'Massive Upheaval' and Right-Wing Takeover of GOP - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/vvs-heritage-predicts-massive-upheaval-and-right-wing-takeover-gop#sthash.5JERotIa.dpuf