Rally in Missouri Compares Fight Against Stem Cell Research to Civil Rights Struggle, Nazis

Dallas-based right-wing organizer Rick Scarborough and former presidential candidate and talk-show host Alan Keyes “kicked off a church-based campaign” yesterday to defeat a Missouri ballot initiative on embryonic stem-cell research, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Scarborough, a figure instrumental in building a network of “Patriot Pastors” in Texas willing to mobilize their churches around far-right causes and candidates, is using the stem-cell issue to recruit a similar network of “Patriot Pastors” in Missouri. Scarborough is promoting the controversial Keyes as the keynote speaker in these “Patriot Pastor” rallies in much the same way that Keyes was featured in Scarborough’s “War on Christians” conference earlier this year.

Yesterday’s rally at a Baptist church in Jefferson City was described by the Post-Dispatch as the first shot in a “three-month holy war” planned by Scarborough — the first of at least five church rallies.

Scarborough and Keyes didn’t pull any punches before the “capacity crowd,” as the newspaper reports:

Keyes equated the effort to protect embryonic cells with the struggle for equality among African-Americans. And he likened the movement in favor of embryonic stem cell research to the Nazi effort to preach the inferiority of certain forms of humans.

“We have sacrificed blood and treasure to bring (that thinking) to an end,” he said. “Shall we now vote to legalize it in Missouri?”