Liberty University Law Dean: Marriage Equality Will Turn Everyone Gay

I swear, I truly wonder at times what kind of mental illness afflicts the far right Christian crowd.  At times, their insanity defies belief.  A case in point" Matt Staver, a homophobe extraordinaire who is the dean of Liberty University's law school which is both a blight on Virginia and the legal profession.  Staver as some readers may recall may have been involved - although he claims ignorance - in the international kidnapping scheme that centered on Lisa Miller who claimed she had become "ex-gay." Before her flight to Central America, Miller had found aid and comfort in Lynchburg, Virginia from folks at Liberty University and the late Jerry Falwell's Thomas Street Baptist Church.  Staver's latest batshitery involves his claims that marriage equality may turn everyone gay.  He also resorts to the lie of depicting gays as disease ridden and would be pedophiles.  Meanwhile, of course, it is heterosexual males like Staver who are the most likely pedophiles.   Right Wing Watch looks at Staver's insanity.  Here are highlights:

Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver is warning that with full marriage equality, everyone may decide to marry someone of the same sex and society could “cease to exist” altogether. While speaking to Vic Eliason of VCY America last week, Staver said that if gay marriage becomes legal nationwide then the country could become a childless, disease-ridden dystopia.

If you ultimately promoted same-sex marriage and everyone started to go towards same-sex marriage, what would happen to society? It would just simply cease to exist. Moreover, you’d have rampant increase in diseases. Already, you have rampant increase in diseases among same-sex activities, specifically men having sex with men. Same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships is destructive to individuals and it’s destructive to our very social fabric.

He later claimed that the expansion of gay rights is encouraging pedophilia and that the media “promotes” bestiality by making sex with animals seem like “a funny thing.” “That’s how this whole homosexuality began to happen on TV,” Staver said.

Staver went on to praise India’s Supreme Court for recriminalizing homosexuality and Russian president Vladimir Putin for “defending traditional marriage and criticizing President Obama.”

Of course, Staver is being dishonest: Obama actually canceled a September summit with Putin over the Edward Snowden asylum controversy. Further, Putin isn’t facing criticism because he “believes in marriage as one man and one woman,” but because his government is leading a crackdown on Russia’s gay community and rolling back the free speech rights. 

Staver clearly ranks among those for whom the safest assumption should always be that if his lips are moving, he's lying.   It's frightening that Staver isn't in an asylum much less that he's the dean of a supposed law school.  One has to wonder when Liberty University will open a "medical school" granting degrees in witch doctor cures and remedies.

Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver is warning that with full marriage equality, everyone may decide to marry someone of the same sex and society could “cease to exist” altogether. While speaking to Vic Eliason of VCY America last week, Staver said that if gay marriage becomes legal nationwide then the country could become a childless, disease-ridden dystopia - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/staver-fears-everyone-will-go-gay-under-marriage-equality#sthash.Fl0ZItQT.dpuf

It’s Conservatives Who Want Christ Out of Christmas

Every year we hear the far right whining about the supposed "War on Christmas" as Christofascists seek to obliterate any respect or consideration of the millions of non-Christian Americans.  It is, as always the case with Christofascists, all about them and to Hell with everyone else.  Besides this selfish nastiness, these same "godly folk" push a political agenda that is the antithesis of the Gospel message that is best known for hate, intolerance and a desire to cast the poor and unfortunate onto the trash heap.  A column in The Daily Beast makes the case that it is the Christofascists who are really waging the war on Christmas.  Here are excerpts:

The War on Christmas is on! This epic battle pits the forces on the right who demand that we say “Merry Christmas” to everyone regardless of their faith—or lack thereof—against those who prefer to say “Happy Holidays.”

How fierce has this so-called “war” become? Well, Sarah Palin is travelling across the country alerting people that “angry atheists” want to “abort Christ from Christmas.” Palin is like a modern day Paul Revere—you know, the guy Palin told us warned the British in 1775 that the British were about to attack the colonists.

Bill O’Reilly, the “Father Christmas” of the War on Christmas, recently clamored that there are dastardly people who want to, “banish any mention of Jesus in the public square.”

But here’s the glaring hypocrisy of the right: they want to keep “Christ in Christmas,” but they don’t want to keep Christ’s teachings in the policies they advocate. It’s as if there are two Jesus Christs.  There’s the one in the Bible who advocates helping people in need, especially the poor. And then there’s the Jesus that conservatives worship, whose philosophy is to callously slash programs that help the less fortunate, from food stamps to health insurance to unemployment benefits.

I’m not a religious scholar, but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in religious studies to comprehend the basic teachings of Jesus. The New Testament is filled with passages where Jesus implores his followers to care for the poor.
[T]he same people who demand that we keep Christ in Christmas also support cutting programs advance Jesus’s philosophy. We saw that in September when House Republicans voted to slash $40 billion from the food stamps program. If this had become law, it would’ve result in nearly four million Americans being deprived of these desperately needed benefits. So much for the, “I was hungry and you gave me food.”

Despite Jesus words, “I was sick and you took care of me,” conservatives have waged a war to destroy Obamacare which would provide health insurance to millions of Americans who can’t afford coverage. In fact, 20 States with Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures have refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, making it more challenging if not impossible for the impoverished residents of these States to afford health insurance coverage.

And what would Jesus do about the 1.3 million Americans whose unemployment benefits will end just a few days after Christmas? Well, conservatives apparently believe Jesus would say “no” to any extension. Indeed, Rep. Kevin Cramer recently cited this passage from the Bible as a reason to slash benefits for the poor: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

And not only is supporting these social programs consistent with Jesus’ philosophy, they are good public policy.

We rarely hear about the poor in our nation unless they are being demonized by the right as “lazy” or abusing the system. America’s needy are invisible to most of us- including the 16 million children in this country who live in poverty.

Yet the focus of the right’s outrage is when a public school chooses to sing non-religious Christmas songs and opts for more secular ones. Or when a huge nativity scene can’t be constructed on government property. Why isn’t their outrage directed at those who support policies that cause suffering to our most needy fellow Americans? These are the actions that truly contradict Jesus’s teachings.

Those leading the fight to keep Christ in Christmas need to answer this simple question. What do you think Jesus would care about more: feeding the hungry and caring for the sick or requiring that all Americans say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”? The answer is clear to anyone who has ever read the Bible.

Well said.  The hypocrisy of the godly folk is truly mind numbing and I suspect Christ - if he existed - would be horrified by what is done by his most vocal supposed followers.  The Pharisees were wonderful people compared to today's "godly Christians."

"Christian" Bakery Owners - You Will Know Them By Their Hate and Hypocrisy

Bigot/hypocrite Aaron Klein is one of the owners of Sweet Cakes By Melissa in Gresham, Ore., which refused to serve a lesbian couple who were planning their wedding.

In my view, one of the principal attributes of today's "godly Christian" crowd is the rank hypocrisy almost always on display.   While engaged in self-congratulatory pronouncements of their piety, these "Christians" use their claimed "deeply held religious beliefs" as an excuse for all types of hate and bigotry.   This was recently on display in the Pacific Northwest where bakeries owned by self-styled "devout Christians" refused to bake wedding cakes for same sex couples.  Not only are they facing prosecution now under the state public access/non-discrimination laws, but these bakery owners have been revealed to be hypocrites of the highest order since they seemingly will provide services for literally anyone else other than gays .   Willamette Week looks at some under cover work that showed the very selective religiosity of these bakery owners.  Here are highlights:

Sugar, flour, eggs and water are now munitions in America’s culture war. Or so you’d think from two Oregon bakeries that recently got national attention for declining to make cakes for same-sex weddings.

The first incident, in February, involved Gresham’s Sweet Cakes by Melissa, whose owner told a lesbian couple that “we don’t do same-sex marriages.” Earlier this month, Pam Regentin, who operates Fleur Cakes out of her home in the Hood River area, also refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding.

Both bakeries cited their religious beliefs as the reason they would not make the cakes. Both describe themselves as Christian.

Jesus, of course, never commented on gay people, but did tell his followers to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Instead, the widely cited Bible verse condemning homosexuality comes from Leviticus, a book that also prohibits getting tattooed or eating rabbit.

We wondered what other requests these cakemakers would decline to honor. So last week five WW reporters called these two bakeries anonymously to get price quotes for other occasions frowned upon by some Christians. Surprisingly, the people who answered the phone at each bakery were quite willing to provide baked goods for celebrations of divorces, unmarried parents, stem-cell research, non-kosher barbecues and pagan solstice parties.

We later contacted both bakeries to ask about these inconsistencies. Regentin declined to comment beyond asking whether she had been taped (she had not).

Sweet Cakes owners Melissa and Aaron Klein were upset that we “would even try to entrap a business” and contacted conservative talk-show host Lars Larson.

Baby Out of Wedlock

WW Asks - I’m shopping around for a nice baby shower cake for my friend. It’s her second baby with her boyfriend so I’m not looking for anything too big or fancy—probably enough to serve 15 to 20 people.

Sweet Cake says - “We have a sheet cake that will feed 30, or a 10-inch cake that would feed 30 people. The 10-inch cake is $50 and the sheet cake is $52. Or we have an 8-inch cake that would feed 15 for $40.”

Fleur says - Prices vary based on decoration and frosting, but a basic cake is $3 per serving.

Divorce Party

WW Asks - My friend is getting divorced and we’d like to throw her a little party to mark the start of her new life. Do you ever write messages on those—we’d want it to say “congratulations!”—and how much would it be for a cake that could serve about eight people?

Sweet Cake says - “A 10-inch is $29.99. That should probably do it....We can definitely do something like that.”

Fleur says - “The price for a 10-inch cheesecake is $36 and up. So it’ll be between $36 and $45, but you’re going to have to call in advance because my schedule for June and July is very busy.”

Stem-Cell Success

WW Asks - I was wondering if you could do two little cakes. My friend is a researcher at OHSU and she just got a grant for cloning human stem cells, so I thought I’d get her two identical cakes—basically, two little clone cakes. How much would they cost?

Sweet Cake says - “Ha. All right. When are you looking to do it? It’ll be $25.99 each, so about $50 to start.”

Fleur says - Did not pick up phone or return messages. Acknowledged receiving requests by email but refused to comment.

Non-Kosher Barbecue

WW Asks - I’m looking to get a special cake for a barbecue we’re having next week. Our cow just died of old age and we’re planning to grill some steaks along with lobster and pulled-pork sandwiches—what size would we need for 10 people and how much would it be?

Sweet Cake says - “A 6-inch cake serves about eight to 10 people at $25.99. The apple goes really good with pork, and the caramel will complement the lobster. For a barbecue, it’s all really good.”

Fleur says - Did not pick up phone or return messages. Acknowledged receiving requests by email but refused to comment.

Pagan Solstice Party

WW Asks - I was calling to get a quote on a cake for a midsummer solstice party. My coven is celebrating on Friday, June 21. The decoration would be very simple: just a green pentagram. We’d like to pick it up sometime that afternoon, before the bonfire. It’ll be for about 30 people.

Sweet Cake says - “For 30 poeople we have a couple options... We have two kind of cakes you could have. About the diagram you want on the cake, I’m not sure how much extra that would be.”

Fleur says - Did not pick up phone or return messages. Acknowledged receiving requests by email but refused to comment.

Never fall for the  pretense that these godly folk are nice people.  They are not and the sooner the majority of the American public comes to understand that hate and bigotry are the true hallmarks of today's conservative Christians, the better off the nation and society will be.  These folks are liars, bigots and hate mongers plain and simple.

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Christianity: An Enemy to Moral Progress

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of Bertrand Russell in 1872.   Russell was a great thinker and a champion of logic and reason.  Bob Felton at Civil Commotion has a lengthy piece on Russell and here are a few brief highlights:

[F]ew men did so much as Bertrand Russell to shape the modern world. As a philosopher, his Principia Mathematica re-ordered mathematics as a branch of logic; every math teacher you ever had who said “It’s just logic” is quoting Russell.

It was Russell’s student, Alan Turing, who used Russell’s insights to invent the first modern computer, the one built at Bletchley Park and used to defeat Germany’s Enigma code during the second World War. It was Russell’s student, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who laid the groundwork for Google’s search engine.

His interests eventually turned toward public policy matters, and in his middle and latter years he wrote a steady stream of books, articles, and lectures across a broad range of topics. Most of them remain in print, and his A History of Western Philosophy remains a widely used textbook today, more than 60-years after its initial publication. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, and deserved it; he is among the most graceful essayists that ever lived.

Whether his fortunes waxed or waned, Russell never budged from his uncompromising opposition to unreasoning belief. One of his most famous lectures, Why I Am Not A Christian, was delivered in 1927 and has been in print ever since.

Eighty-six years later, Russell's views on Christianity are more pertinent than ever and my own views grow closer and closer to his all the time, especially as scientific knowledge continues to undercut the Christian mythology and when one witnesses the evil done in the name of religion and Christianity in particular.  A few excerpts from Why I Am Not A Christian follow that are apropos given the Virginia GOP's nomination yesterday of avowed Christofascist to head up the party's 2013 ticket:

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. “What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.”

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.  

Do I still see myself as a Christian?  Perhaps not and the main thing that has driven me away - as it is doing with the under 30 generations - is the "godly Christians" who are best known for their hatred of others, embrace of ignorance and rejection of knowledge, and unlimited hypocrisy.  Why would one want to be a part of such foulness.

Stomping on Jesus and the Myth of Christian Persecution

A post yesterday looked at the legislative effort in Kentucky that would have allowed far right Christians - the real folks behind the bill's introduction - to ignore any law or regulation that conflicted with their allegedly deeply held religious beliefs.  Thankfully, Governor Beshear vetoed the batshitery, but do not expect these types of efforts to cease.  More and more we hear professional Christians and hate group leaders like Tony Perkins, Brian Brown and many others claim that Christians are being persecuted in America.  In reality, they have it all backwards.  It is the Christians who continue to be the persecutors and the Bible has been used to justify countless horrors both in America and elsewhere (the images above from Civil Commotion recall the Bible's uses as a justification for segregation).  What's happening is that finally the victims of their bigotry and hate are simply say that they are not going to stand for it any more and are successfully convincing legislators, courts and the general public that the days of allowing the Christofascists to ride rough shod over everyone else need to end now.  It's this ending of their right to bully and persecute and inflict their toxic religious beliefs on everyone else that has the Christofascists in such an uproar.  Their self-centered nature and utter contempt for the rights of others is increasingly be exposed and they are livid about it.  An example of the Christofascist desire to trample on the rights and beliefs of others while demanding subservience to their beliefs cropped up in a story out of Florida where a self-centered right wing Mormon was suspended from his Intercultural Communications class.  The Miami Herald has these highlights:

A junior at the university’s Davie campus says his professor threw him out of a course for refusing to “stomp on Jesus.”  Ryan Rotela, of Coral Springs, told CBS12 in West Palm Beach that three weeks ago, the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class asked everyone in the class to take out a sheet of paper, write “Jesus” in bold letters and put the piece of paper on the floor.

The instructor, Deandre Poole, then told the class to stomp on the papers.  Rotela refused, and told Poole he was offended by the instruction. 

"Anytime you stomp on something it shows that you believe that something has no value. So if you were to stomp on the word Jesus, it says that the word has no value," Rotela told CBS12. Rotela, who describes himself as a devout Mormon, went to Poole’s supervisor two days later to discuss the incident. He was suspended from the class since the incident. 

It goes without saying, these folks have no problem burning Korans, depriving gays equal civil rights, and seeking to control the ability of women  to make health care decisions affecting their own bodies.  Rotela and those like him won't "stomp on Jesus" but they will happily treat others as disposable trash and/or less than human.    Again, these folks are not the victims of persecution.  They are the ones that seek to persecute others and trample on the rights of anyone and everyone who does not subscribe to their hate and fear based religious beliefs.

Civil Commotion also looks at a book that debunks much of the Christian persecution myth all the way back to the early days of Christianity:

Which brings us to the smartest book I’ve read in a good long while, Candida Moss’ The Myth of Persecution.

Moss demonstrates convincingly that much of what tradition says was Roman persecution of Christians was in fact prosecution for refusing to obey the law. Except for a very brief period of about 2-years, that is, Christians were very rarely singled-out as Christians per se. Rather, they flipped-off the civil authorities and declared that they were beholden to only some other law. 

The early Christian movement was no different than any other; it needed a devil in order to cultivate a shared sense of urgency, and so it invented devils when it was useful — as it does today. The overwrought Pious folk are being played, just as dishonest imams provoked ignorant mobs to outrage and murder over the forbidden Muhammed cartoons a few years ago.

This is an important history, and immensely timely. When we hear moderns complain of religious persecution before ‘ObamaCare,’ and racial integration, and psychiatric care of homosexuals, and the expectation that they learn something of the world outside Podunk, we are reprising a very old dispute driven chiefly by the same careless thinking and intransigent movement-behavior that made the first few centuries such a tumultuous time.

It is far past time that the public learn the truth about the myths and lies disseminated daily by the Christian Right and that the rest of us rise up and say "No" to continued special rights and privileges for those who wrap themselves in religiosity while persecuting and bullying others.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/22/3301023/student-fau-professor-suspended.html#storylink=cpy

Christian Preacher Blames Gays for Hurricane Sandy

It was only a question of time before someone among the self-congratulatory, falsely pious, flat earth believing, modern day Pharisee set blamed Hurricane Sandy on gays.  No doubt with New York City in the storm's cross hairs, gay marriage will be tied into the equation.   I would argue that rather than gays, its the Christofascists themselves who are inviting God's wrath since they embody everything Christ condemned in the Gospels.  In fact, the Biblical Pharisees look like pretty nice folks compared to today's Pharisee set.  Winning the race to be the first knuckle dragging hate merchant to blame Sandy on gay individuals is Internet chaplain John McTernan.  Gaystar News looks at McTernan and his foul bigotry. Here are highlights:

An anti-gay Christian preacher is already blaming Hurricane Sandy on gays.

As the east coast of the United States prepares for the storm, which has already killed 60 people in the Caribbean, author and chaplain John McTernan has decided who is at fault.

On his website Defend Proclaim The Faith, the preacher says the gathering storm must be God’s judgment on gays, and punishing the president Barack Obama for coming out in support of marriage equality.

He believes ever since George Bush Sr signed the Madrid Peace Process to divide the land of Israel in 1991, ‘America has been under God’s judgment since this event.’

McTernan said: ‘Obama is 100% behind the Muslim Brotherhood which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem.

‘Both candidates are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda. America is under political judgment and the church does not know it!’

Frankly, Ternan sounds like he belongs in a mental hospital.  Yet unfortunately he represents the face of today's form of conservative Christianisty.  If one wants a compelling argument as to why not to be a Christian, look no farther than individuals like Ternan, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham (who in his senility is showing his true colors), et al, and the cretins who are their followers.

Quote of the Day: Minnesota Vikings' Chris Kluwe on Gay Marriage

While many in the world of pro-sports seem to sadly still wear homophobia as some type of sick badge of honor.  But thankfully, things are beginning to change and in Minnesota where the Christofascists are seeking to pass an anti-gay marriage amendment the Minnesota Vikings' Chris Kluwe (pictured at right) has been very outspoken in his opposition to the amendment and anti-gay bigotry in general.  He has a wonderful op-ed in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press that rips the Christofascist thoroughly.  Kluwe certainly understands true morality and Christ's message far better than the charlatans in far too many pulpits and bishoprics who have hate and bigotry as their sole stock in trade.  Here are highlights from the op-ed:

I would like to share some of the things I thought were important from the Vote NO Mn gathering I attended this past Friday.

1. Gay people are exactly the same as straight people. They laughed, they yelled, they congratulated me on the Vikings winning, they told me they rooted for the Saints, they spilled beer on the floor and apologized for doing so. They asked for autographs, shook my hand, posed for pictures, and introduced me to their significant others. They talked about how excited they were for the Vikings season this year, how long they’ve been season ticket holders, and if I thought that Ponder kid was going to be any good (I said yes). At no point was I excessively fondled and at no time did a bacchanal riot threaten the chastity of my pant fasteners. In short, it was American citizens doing American activities in a quintessentially American way.

2. Gay people are not treated as American citizens. The amount of individuals who came up and thanked me and Brendon for taking a stand was staggering, and frankly depressing. I use the word depressing because for that many people to thank us for showing basic empathy, to thank us for recognizing that they are human beings just like everyone else, means that so many other people have not. What that says about our society makes me ill. . . .

3. One conversation I had that will stick with me for the rest of my life involved a local high school teacher/coach. He walked up, introduced himself, shook my hand and said these exact words: “I want to thank you for speaking up. What you did will save children’s lives.”   This really hit me, in a primal way I was not expecting. A man who interacts with our youth every day, who sees their struggles, and their triumphs, and their failures, told me that my words meant a child might find hope for the future instead of despair, might dare to believe he or she could be accepted for who they are, not what someone else said they should be.

A child should never think that suicide is the only option, the only solution to the tormenting and bullying and unthinking viciousness adults so unwittingly pass along to the young. A child should never become a casualty in a war of oppression, of bigotry, of petty small mindedness.

Because make no mistake, that child is a casualty. All the hopes, all the dreams, all the wonderful potentialities life has in store are as dust before the scouring winds of intolerance (whether it be racist, sexist, or religious). Every time you propagate the message that being gay is to be less than human, that same sex marriage cannot be as filled with love and laughter and tears as heterosexual marriage, that gays don’t deserve to pass a legacy on to their family, you quicken that howling storm and sweep away a tiny bit more humanity from the world, drive one more child to contemplating the cold razor’s bite, or the yawning abyss of the overdose because they simply cannot deal with the unceasing assault upon their psyche.

Well I, for one, will not stand for it. I will not stand for a world that demeans those it finds ‘different’ or ‘gross’. I will not stand for an ideology that promotes slavish adherence to a single arbitrary standard, that sacrifices children on the altar of oppression and control.

I stand for gay marriage. I stand for the end of segregation. I stand for a woman’s right to vote. I stand for equality under the law, for treating others how I want to be treated, for the fundamental human right to live a happy life free of tyranny.

Values Voter Summit: An All-Inclusive Gathering of Haters

Right Wing Watch has a plethora of videos and links recounting the hate and batshitery that marked this week's misnamed "Values Voter Summit" ("VVS") in Washington, D.C., sponsored by several certified hate groups.  A visit to Right Wing Watch gives an in dept look at the hate, bigotry and efforts to undermine the civil rights of other citizens which now the hallmark of the Christofascist controlled Republican Party.  It goes without saying that (1) LGBT individuals were treated with scorn and worse at this coven of hate merchants, and (2) Republican candidates like Paul Ryan were falling all over themselves in their effort to completely prostitute themselves to the Christianist attendees.  For a quicker review of the nastiness that predominated at VVS, Politicususa has a good overview.  Here are highlights:

Over the weekend in Washington D.C., various Republicans took turns addressing the Values Voters Summit (VVS), and true to its name, participants met to promote their values that have earned some of the Summit’s sponsor’s designation as hate groups. The meeting was hosted by the Family Research Council’s FRCAction, and sponsored by the American Family Association that are both anti-gay groups, and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, certified hate groups. Other anti-gay organizations participating in the VVS were Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, American Values, The Heritage Foundation, and Liberty Counsel that links anti-gay, anti-women, anti-Islam, and anti-Black hate groups to the values embraced by the VVS. The summit is a hate group, and although its featured speaker, Paul Ryan, claimed he took an oath to defend and support the Constitution and not the government, he endorsed the group’s patently unconstitutional agenda of denying all Americans their rights guaranteed in the United States Constitution.

The 14^th amendment says “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Values Voters Summit is predicated on supporting legislation with the intent purpose of depriving women, gays, and non-Christians liberty and equal protection under the law by virtue of their interpretation of the Christian bible. When speakers were not denigrating President Obama for not following their biblical edicts, cowboy diplomacy, and trickle-down economic theory, they demonized African Americans, women, LGBT people, and thanks to an American’s hate-inspired anti-Islam video, Muslims.

Romney endorsing and thanking a hate organization was the culmination of a steady stream of speakers who took turns assailing President Obama for myriad sleights of their imagination. Michele Bachmann attacked the President for being “the most dangerous president we have ever had on American foreign policy,” and claimed he “ceded to the demands of an Islamist organization and the Muslim Brotherhood,” and mandated that all U.S. security agents, including the military and FBI, be “brainwashed in political correctness toward Islam.” Another speaker, Gary Bauer, who accused the President of “forcing gay marriage on this country,” made an overtly racist assertion that “President Obama’s voters are mostly welfare recipients and dead voters in cities with large Black populations.” Eric Cantor said “only traditional marriage allows for the pursuit of happiness,” and another Republican told the audience that “Planned Parenthood is a racist organization.” The only value evident at the VVS besides hate was mendacity based on their incessant lies about President Obama.

The Values Voters Summit was not an expression of American values or a representation of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom and equal rights. It was the Republican vision of a theocracy where only white heterosexual couples adhering to fanatical Christian values and anti-government sentiments were real Americans, and any variation was an abomination before god. 

As a set of consistent values and measures, The Values Voters Summit has more in common with neo-Nazi fascism than it does American values and they are undoubtedly the Republican Party of Willard Romney and Paul Ryan.

If one wants a good reason to walk away from Christianity, spending the weekend witnessing the hate and venom of the "godly Christian" crowd would likely suffice.  These people are a clear and present danger to democracy and constitutional government.  I agree with the articles author that the VVS attendees  have more in common with Nazi doctrine that they do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.