American Family Association of Michigan

When Gary Glenn, the head of American Family Association’s Michigan affiliate, announced his run for U.S. Senate, Kyle wondered “how long it will be before Glenn receives Mike Huckabee's endorsement given that Huckabee believes that ‘if we had leaders like Gary Glenn across America, our work wouldn't be so hard.’”

Well, today Huckabee made it official, endorsing Glenn and saying he “will be a Senator that will take his values with him to Washington”:

I am very happy to endorse and support Gary Glenn for the United States Senate in Michigan. Gary is a person whose clarity of conviction is refreshing. He has boldly led on issues of life, traditional marriage, and the Fair Tax. When I needed help in Michigan in 2008, Gary didn't wait until it was convenient or popular, he stood with me out of sheer courage of his views. Gary Glenn won't take a poll to find out where he needs to stand. He will be a Senator that will take his values with him to Washington. I hope you will join me in getting behind Gary with your prayers, your generous and sacrificial contributions, and your vote.

Glenn faces a competitive primary against former congressman Pete Hoekstra and charter school activist Clark Durant and, if he wins the nomination, an uphill climb against Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

While leading the AFA’s state chapter, Glenn has amassed a tremendous anti-gay record. He not only led the successful campaign to enshrine a ban on marriage equality for gays and lesbians in the state constitution, but also targeted openly gay candidates and was a plaintiff in the unsuccessful lawsuit to block the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expands hate crimes laws to protect people targeted because of their sexual orientation.

Glenn supports the criminalization of homosexuality and joined anti-gay radio host and Mission America head Linda Harvey to warn companies against hiring gay and lesbian employees, saying, “What ridiculous folly to suggest that only those individuals who engage in homosexual behavior given all of its severe medical consequences constitute the best and the brightest.” During an interview with anti-gay extremist Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, Glenn said that anti-bullying programs were a “Trojan Horse” of “homosexual activists” and said that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell “defies reason,” predicting repeal will lead to more “sexual assaults” and “security,” “moral,” and “medical” risks.

But for Huckabee, Glenn’s “clarity of conviction is refreshing.”

Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan is one of the most rabidly anti-gay Religious Right activists operating today.  Just the other day he and Linda Harvey were ranting about how the "severe medical consequences" of being gay make gays an "employment risk."

So, of course, he is contemplating running for the US Senate:

Gary Glenn is exploring a possible jump into the U.S. Senate race as a Republican challenger to incumbent Debbie Stabenow.

Glenn, 53, of Midland served as GOP Michigan delegate for a decade, is a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserves and has a pro-life stance. He has spoken at a dozen Tea Party events, including the 2009 Midland County Tea Party rally, and has served as the president of the American Family Association.

Although several people have been mentioned in political circles as a GOP challenger to Stabenow, a Democrat, only Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner John P. McCulloch has officially declared his candidacy.

Glenn, in an e-mail released this morning, said the country's founding values are under assault.

"Our nation's economy, security, liberties, moral foundation and founding principles — all that's made America and Americans exceptional in the history of the world — are under attack from within," Glenn said.

Linda Harvey of Mission America interviewed Gary Glenn, the head of the American Family Association’s Michigan chapter, during her radio show on how the Religious Right should respond to gay rights victories. Glenn, a prominent activist that Mike Huckabee calls his “very special friend,” warned that companies should be wary of hiring lesbian and gay employees because of what Glenn calls the “severe medical consequences” of being gay. Approvingly, Harvey argued that employers should take note that gays lives unstable lives and added, “I would not think of a homosexual person as a good employment risk”:

Glenn: Herman Miller, which is a major employer and corporation in Holland [Michigan], a furniture company, supported this so-called gay rights ordinance on the claim that it allowed them to attract the best and brightest.

Harvey: Here we go, yeah we heard that before.

Glenn: What ridiculous folly to suggest that only those individuals who engage in homosexual behavior given all of its severe medical consequences constitute the best and the brightest. It’s not really bright to engage in behavior that puts you at dramatically higher risk of mental illness and substance abuse and AIDS and cancer and hepatitis, and according to various sources, premature death. So to suggest that engaging in that type of behavior defines someone as the best and brightest, which seems to be the line coming out of corporate America, is just ridiculous.

Harvey: You’re right. And higher rates of domestic violence and unstable relationships. I would not think of a homosexual person as a good employment risk, I just wouldn’t.

Peter LaBarbera and Gary Glenn, head of the American Family Association of Michigan and a longtime ally of Mike Huckabee, came together to condemn homosexuality. Much like Lou Engle, who prayed for Ellen DeGeneres to be “converted” and use her influence to condemn homosexuality, LaBarbera began the program stating that Oprah Winfrey “will have to answer to her Creator” over her support for gay-rights:

I believe that someday Oprah will have to answer to her Creator about what you did with your influence. She’s a woman of incredible talent and influence, not just in America but the whole world. And yet here she is, using it to promote a lifestyle that God has declared sinful.

Glenn and LaBarbera later criticized Congress over the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and Glenn described the “security,” “moral,” and “medical,” reasons for banning gays from serving in the military, baselessly claiming that the “preponderance of sexual assaults [are] committed by individuals who are secretly in the military and involved in homosexual activity”:

Glenn: This Don’t Ask Don’t Tell moniker was not federal law; the federal law actually prohibits individuals who openly identify themselves as involved in the homosexual lifestyle from serving in the United States military. Because of security concerns for example, the openly homosexual intelligent officer at the Pentagon who’s responsible for all the WikiLeaks that have been in the news recently.

LaBarbera: That’s Bradley Manning right.

Glenn: Bradley Manning.

LaBarbera: Funny how the media didn’t report that much, Gary?

Glenn: Because of the dramatically, certainly from a per capita standpoint, preponderance of sexual assaults committed by individuals who are secretly in the military and involved in homosexual activity.

I mean to compel a more conservative segment of American society, which is the definition of those who volunteer to serve in the United States military typically tend to be people of traditional values, to be forced to share showers and barracks and latrines and foxholes and battlefield conditions with people openly involved in the homosexual lifestyle. Not only from a moral standpoint but from a medical standpoint, because of the severe medical consequences associated with that behavior, and battlefield blood transfusions. It simply defies reason or rationale that anyone would institute a public policy that put our men and women in the armed services especially on the battlefield at increased risk of being injured or infected on the battlefield through battlefield blood transfusions.

Then, Glenn says Martin Luther King Jr. would be standing with LaBarbera and himself if he was here today:

I mean, Dr. King having been a conservative, southern, with a small ‘s,’ southern Baptist pastor in the 50’s and 60’s, whose view from a biblical standpoint on the question of homosexual behavior would’ve been unquestionable that he would have opposed it. And yet homosexual activists today use the legacy of Dr. King and the civil rights movement to suggest that someone’s sexual behavior, two men engaging in sex with each other, is somehow comparable to the color of skin, which someone happens to be born.

Listen: