Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 4:20 pm
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant today appeared on American Family Radio’s Today’s Issues with American Family Association president Tim Wildmon and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins where he defended a new Mississippi law that could close the state’s one abortion clinic. As noted in a People For the American Way report, “The War on Women,” Bryant signed a TRAP bill, or targeted regulations of abortion providers, that is meant to impose “unnecessary and burdensome regulations on physicians who perform abortion services” and shut down the only abortion clinic in the state by making it more difficult for the clinic to employ doctors who live outside the state:
The state’s Republican lieutenant governor, Tate Reeves, boasted that the TRAP bill would “effectively close the only abortion clinic in Mississippi” by preventing the clinic from relying on out-of-state physicians. The clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, depends on out-of-state physicians because many doctors who live in Mississippi face constant harassment and threats of violence.
He defended the law in the interview by arguing that “Barack Obama and all those on the left” are hypocrites for opposing it, demonstrating that “their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb.” After knocking “fly-in abortionists,” Perkins agreed and said that abortion providers are simply driven by profit.
Bryant: You would think that Barack Obama and all those on the left that love so much to talk about women’s health care would rush to support this bill, would just say, ‘absolutely we want the strongest health care, we want admissions privileges, we want that women that is going through that abortion for her life and safety to be paramount,’ well it should be the paramount of the child.
Even if you believe in abortion, the hypocrisy of the left that now tried to kill this bill, that says that I should have never signed it, the true hypocrisy is that their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb. It doesn’t really matter, they don’t care if the mother’s life is in jeopardy, that if something goes wrong that a doctor can’t admit them to a local hospital, that he’s not even board certified. We passed that bill and I think you’ll see other states follow and when that happens at least these fly-in abortionists are going to be regulated under the state laws of the Medical Procedures Act here in the state of Mississippi as they should be across the nation.
Perkins: Well the driving factor is profit for many of them.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 1:55 pm
During the Awakening 2012’s panel on the “LGBT Agenda,” right-wing activist Ryan Sorba said that homosexuality is a hobby akin to playing basketball and surfing, as part of his argument that conservatives should “stop using the word gay” since it may lead people to believe that “they’re born gay.” In fact, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber kindly provided us the headline for this post!
Sorba: The other issue is, a lot of people lose their confidence when they talk about this issue, because the other side is so good at putting you into a corner with their terms, which is why this panel is so important, because he who defines the terms controls the debate. Stop using the word gay, because implicit in the notion of a gay identity is the fact that they’re born gay and that it should be a fundamental human right, but fundamental human rights are based on human nature not on capricious desires. If fundamental human rights are based on capricious desires, guess what, we’d have every group on this planet with a different hobby arguing for fundamental rights and benefits based on the fact that they play hockey, based on the fact that they play basketball or surf, or anything that they’re interested in.
Barber: Did you catch that, Brian? I can see the Right Wing Watch headline now, ‘Sorba Calls Homosexuality a Hobby.’ I just gave it to you, go ahead and use that.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 1:49 pm
Last week, we unveiled a campaign featuring a website, web ad, and report exposing Mitt Romney’s dangerous agenda for America’s courts, as demonstrated by the fact that Robert Bork has been tapped to lead Romney's constitutional and judicial advisory team.
As the report noted, Romney's choice of judicial advisors "spells serious trouble for the American people" ... and it is no surprise that it is also music to the ear of the Religious Right.
On today's episode of "WallBuilders Live," David Barton and Rick Green invited Jordan Sekulow, who worked for Romney back in 2008, to make the case as to why the Religious Right can and should support Romney. While Green was skeptical at first, Barton needed no convincing because Jay Sekulow (Jordan's father) was going to be involved in picking Romney's judges and that was all he needed to hear:
This has not been a hard thing for evangelicals to get over and support Romney and it shouldn't be a hard thing. When Romney ran four years ago, he wasn't my first choice but the reason I never got really worried about Romney was Jay Sekulow. And I tell you he has been very intimately involved in helping get folks like Alito and Roberts on the court. And four years ago, I heard that Sekulow is the guy that Romney has tapped to choose his judges and I said "that's it." I don't have any trouble with Romney because Isaiah 1:26 tells me the righteousness of nation is determined, not by the legislature, but by its judges. And if Romney's got folks like Sekulow picking his judges, I can live with that in a heartbeat.
When Jordan Sekulow joined the program, he made the case that conservatives should support Romney because he has pledged to nominate judges like Samuel Alito and John Roberts and has filled his campaign with people who are going to keep his feet to the fire:
Green: How important is it for us to recognize that if Romney is president, who has his ear? Who are the people that will consider those judges versus another four years of Obama if he gets another quarter of the judiciary appointed?
Sekulow: You've already got people who are long-time Romney supporters like my dad, who has argued thirteen cases before the Supreme Court and was very involved with President Bush - he was one of four people that were involved in the nomination process in the Bush White House - and so if you like Alito and Roberts, these are the kind of people. You have Judge Bork, who was filibustered by the Senate, voted down by the Senate actually, and he is on the Romney committee.
...
You want Kagan and Sotomayor, and I was at the Supreme Court during the 'Obamacare' oral arguments, you probably don't want more of that, or do you want more Alito and Roberts? And he's made those pledges; I think we need to come to the campaign say "alright, you made these pledges, we're going to keep you honest to them and keep your feet to the fire."
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 12:25 pm
American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer went on CNN today to debate R. Clarke Cooper of the Log Cabin Republicans over the Romney campaigns’ hiring of Richard Grenell, who is openly gay. Fischer, who believes that gays and lesbians should be “disqualified from public office,” repeatedhisclaims that Grenell’s hiring is an attack on the “pro-family community” because “the homosexual agenda represents the single greatest threat to religious liberty in America today” and is a “big gain for the homosexual lobby.” Later, Fischer and Cooper debated whether sexual orientation is a choice, and Cooper compared Fischer to segregationist George Wallace who will be “left in the dustbin of history”:
Romney is campaigning on a firmly anti-gay agenda, but Fischer won’t be happy until Romney adopts a “straights only” policy for his presidential campaign and eventually the federal government.
Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 12:00 pm
A major theme at the Freedom Federation’s Awakening conference last weekend was the need for more effective outreach to Hispanic Christians. Religious Right leaders who are trying to bring more Latinos into the conservative political movement know they are swimming upstream against the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the GOP primaries and the Tea Party, the impact of anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama, and the hostility of GOP elected officials to the DREAM Act. They fear that the well-earned antipathy of Latino voters toward the GOP could prevent them from defeating Barack Obama, which they believe is necessary to prevent the country’s slide into socialist, secularist tyranny.
Several strategies for repairing the breach were on display.
To GOP leaders and the conservatives attending the Awakening, organizers and speakers delivered a surprisingly blunt denunciation of the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has led to the disastrously low polling numbers for Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. At Saturday’s panel on immigration, if you closed your eyes you could almost imagine that you were at a La Raza-sponsored gathering. All the panelists talked about the need for multifaceted “comprehensive immigration reform,” a term that has been vilified by right-wing activists and Republicans as code for “amnesty.”
The Southern Baptists’ Richard Land said it was “absurd” to deport teens whose parents had brought them to the US as children. “I was depressed and angered by the response that Rick Perry got at the debate when he was defending the in-state tuition for the children of undocumented workers in Texas,” said Land, who decried those who “would condemn them to the margins of society and waste a precious national recourse.” During the presidential primary, Land lamented, “the Republican party has painted itself into a corner, and then having surveyed the damage, applied a second coat.” He said many people think Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would be the best possible running mate for Romney, because his support for a “conservative DREAM Act” (which falls far short of the real thing) would be a step toward improving a “dismal and indefensible policy by the Republican Party and the Republican candidates.”
Robert Gittelson, a businessman and co-founder of Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, called strategies to push immigrants to “self-deport” by making their lives miserable – Romney’s stated approach -- “unbiblical” and “cruel.” Barrett Duke, Vice President for Public Policy and Research and Director of the Research Institute of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, talked about a paper he has co-written with Land for Regent University’s law journal, which reviews Bible verses about treatment of strangers. He criticized an “offended citizen” or “law and order” approach to illegal immigration, urging conservatives to take a love-thy-neighbor perspective. “I am not a citizen of the United States first,” he said, “I am a Christian first.”
Panelists even opposed Arizona’s wildly-popular-among-conservatives SB 1070. Regent University president Carlos Campo said the law was “impractical” and made it “almost impossible” for law enforcement not to engage in ethnic profiling. Gittelson worried that if the law is upheld by the Supreme Court, 21 to 23 states would pass similar laws within a year.
And Regent University’s Campo even cautioned against putting too much emphasis on “assimilation,” saying that the “melting pot can burn off some important things.” Land added that the US had been enriched in its culture, cuisine, and music by waves of immigration, though all agreed on the importance of English remaining a common language in the US.
Friday night’s opening session was devoted to Hispanic outreach. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, was scheduled to give the keynote, but he was kept away by a basketball injury so organizers showed his speech from a previous gathering. Rodriguez tries to sell conservatives on bringing Latino evangelicals into the movement; he gets a warm reception by preaching a Religious Right-Tea Party view of government, saying the big-government “Pharaoh” wants to silence Christians and make people dependent on the government.
But Rodriguez and others are also pushing an even bolder strategy for convincing white evangelicals to take a friendlier view of undocumented immigrants – one that was picked up on by other speakers at the Awakening. You could call it the Hispanic Exceptionalism corollary to the theory of divinely inspired American Exceptionalism that is a constant refrain at these gatherings. According to this Hispanic Exceptionalism theory, illegal Hispanic immigrants have actually sent by God to save America from itself.
Self-proclaimed “apostle” Cindy Jacobs told Awakening attendees that God has gathered Latino people to the United States and given them a special emphasis on families and children. As RWW has reported, Rodriguez recently made the same pitch on evangelist James Robison’s TV show. “Now, why has God permitted these Hispanics to arrive in America in the 21st Century? I think it’s a prophetic purpose, and that is to redeem Christianity or we will end up even worse than post-modern Europe.” Rodriguez said the Hispanic community “can once again help make the gospel of Jesus Christ, the church, the most influential institution in America” and he warned that “when we talk about deporting, we are deporting Christianity in America in the 21st century.”
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 11:45 am
Glenn Beck appeared alongside James Robison, Jay Richards and Jim Garlow at Garlow’s Skyline Church in San Diego, California, where he warned that America is like a “child being choked to death” because the “scary left” has been “uncorked” and given “free rein.” While holding up a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, he said the left seeks to burn America “down to the ground.” Later in the talk, Beck said that the left wants to eliminate sexual mores to turn people into slaves and have government “rule over us.”
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 4/24/2012 10:00 am
Yesterday, we noted that Bryan Fischer has launched a full-scale war against Mitt Romney for having hired an openly gay man to serve as his campaign's foreign policy and national security spokesman.
On his radio program yesterday, Fischer revealed that he does not intend to limit his crusade to the Romney camp, but intends to drag the entire Republican Party into it by demanding that the RNC publicly declare where it stands on this issue:
That raises the question about where the Republican Party is at. We need to get some clarification. I called the RNC this morning, had my producer Jan Bryan call the offices of the Republican National Committee, we need some clarification on this. Where is the Republican Party on the issue of homosexual behavior. Do they consider homosexual behavior something that's healthy or harmful? What is their position on Governor Romney hiring somebody who is a homosexual activist to a prominent spokes position? We need to get some answers from the RNC. And, predictably, the Republican National Committee has not called me back.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 4/23/2012 5:15 pm
As we noted earlier today, Bryan Fischer is positively livid that Mitt Romney's campaign hired Richard Grenell to serve as its foreign policy and national security spokesman because Grenell is openly gay.
So it was no surprise that Fischer dedicated a segment to discussing the issue today on his radio program, where he began by asserting that most gay men have hundreds, if not thousands, of "random, frequent, and anonymous sexual encounters and that becomes a significant issue when we're talking about appointing somebody to a post as sensitive as a spokesman for national security and foreign policy":
Later Fischer brought up the fact that the LDS Church opposes homosexuality and demanded to know whether Romney agreed with that position and, if so, explain why he would appoint an openly gay man to serve on his campaign. If Romney said he didn't agree with that position, then Fischer said there would be no reason for social conservatives to vote for him:
