Jim DeMint

Sen. Jim DeMint appeared on Janet Porter's radio program yesterday where, in response to a caller's request for a comment from him on the issue of marriage equality in Wisconsin, he stated that the government has no power to change the definition of marriage because it is strictly a religious institution:

Anytime the people get a chance to vote on it, even if it is in California or Maine, they want to maintain traditional marriage because people realize how foundational it is to our country, our freedoms, our prosperity and the government has no business redefining marriage.  It's a religious institution.  I think we need to make a constitutional case of it. The federal government and our courts have no business redefining marriage and even at the state level, the courts have no business  telling us what marriage means. So we need to fight this, because this is not about equal rights. This is about the government legitimizing and promoting behavior that culturally we have always considered wrong.  And this is not something that we should give up on.

If marriage is strictly a "religious institution," then what business do governments have in creating policies designed to encourage marriage or in passing constitutional amendments denying marriage equality or in refusing to recognize those marriages conducted by religious groups that do recognize marriage equality?

In fact, what business does the government have at all in protecting "traditional marriage" if that concept is purely a "religious institution"?  Should the government get involved in protecting "traditional baptism" or "traditional communion" as well? 

And where exactly does DeMint plan on fighting this by making a "constitutional case of it"?  In the courts?  Via a constitutional amendment? Wouldn't that require involving the "government," which DeMint says has no business interfering with this religious institution in the first place?

From The New York Times:

Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who predicted that President Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system would become his “Waterloo,” is doing his best to make that happen.

Taking questions from a friendly crowd of 500 people here the other day, Mr. DeMint did little to correct their misimpressions about health care legislation but rather reinforced their worst fears.

When one man said the major House bill would give the government electronic access to bank accounts, Mr. DeMint told him the bill was never about health care. “This is about more government control,” he declared. “If it was about health care, we could get it done in a couple of weeks.”

And why does he keep lying about it? Because it is good for his politics:

More recently, in mid-July, he crystallized what Democrats said was the Republicans’ true goal in the health care debate.

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo,” he said in a conference call with conservative activists, according to Politico.com. “It will break him.”

Now, with Congress set to return to Washington on Sept. 8, polls show that support for health care legislation has indeed eroded, and Mr. DeMint takes partial credit.

“We’ve definitely got him on the run,” he said in an interview.

He said that stopping the overhaul “has the potential of changing the whole political dynamic in this country,” both by halting other Obama policies, like the cap-and-trade approach to limiting emissions of the heat-trapping gases that cause global warming, and by reviving the Republicans in next year’s elections.

...

But Mr. DeMint distances himself from both parties. As he put it, “None of us wants the people who ran cash for clunkers or who cleaned up after Katrina to be between us and our doctors.”

During the Roberts and Alito confirmation battles, I seem to recall GOP senators claiming that when someone was nominated to a seat on the federal judiciary, especially to the Supreme Court, it was unacceptable for Senators to ask them about specific issues, legislation, or cases that might come before them once they are on the court.  Furthermore, if such questions were asked, it was incumbent upon the nominee to refrain from answering such questions, less they appear to be pre-judging potential cases.

Apparently, Sen. Jim DeMint doesn't care much for that tradition because, when he met with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor earlier this month, he tried to grill her about the pending hate crimes legislation and then got miffed when she refused to answer:

When meeting with President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, DeMint says she dodged his question about the bill.

"One of those questions I asked is if my children were assaulted, should the penalty for the person who did that be less than if a [sic] African-American or Hispanic or someone with a different worldview was assaulted? And she said, 'Of course not.' But then when I began to question her about hate crimes legislation and what it meant, she really avoided giving me any answer," he points out.

DeMint says the first time around, Sotomayor gave him what she thought was the right answer, but the second time she gave him a purely political response.

Aside from the impropriety of this question, DeMint's intentionally obtuse misrepresentation of the issue is especially galling since if his children were assaulted because of their race, the perpetrator would almost certainly be charged with a hate crime, the same as if an African-American or Hispanic were assaulted because of their race.

At first, I thought that DeMint was incessantly lying about hate crimes legislation because that was the only way he could justify his opposition, but now I am starting to think that he just has no idea what he is talking about.

It seems that every time the Religious Right needs someone in Congress to take up their latest bogus crusade, they can inevitably rely on Sen. Jim DeMint.

Earlier this year, DeMint took up the Right's nonsense claim that the stimulus legislation was somehow "anti-Christian" and forced a vote on it on the Senate floor ... and now he is vowing to the Right that he will take the lead in opposing hate crimes legislation, even leading a filibuster if necessary:

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., today confirmed he will fight the "hate crimes" legislation pending in the U.S. Senate and, if necessary, will launch a filibuster against the plan that critics have dubbed the "Pedophile Protection Act."

His Washington office confirmed to WND his position today, shortly after several Christian activists who have been rallying opposition to the proposal said they had received word he would help.

...

Rick Scarborough of Vision America told WND DeMint had assured him he understood the issue and would use every delay tactic available to him as a senator.

"And if it gets to the floor," Scarborough said, "If it's necessary, he would filibuster. He said he would do that as a last resort."

"He told me, 'Rick, I'm used to being beaten up by the Left,'" Scarborough said.

Scarborough also said James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, also has agreed to work against the "hate crimes" plan, with possibly a radio program on it soon. Scarborough said the campaign will contact pastors in coming days, asking them to preach about the possible loss of their right to preach on biblical truths and what that would mean.

The endorsement by DeMint is a huge turnaround for the campaign against "hate crimes," which before today had not seen a single senator stand up and announce a formal opposition to the plan.

"Everyone else that we talked to either said or implied that it is a lost cause," Scarborough said.

But he noted the Old Testament story of King David, while still a youth, taking on the Philistines' champion Goliath.

"For every other warrior, the battle against the Philistines was unwinnable," he said. "David dropped what he was doing and when he did the whole nation got its courage."

"Jim DeMint is going to give a lot of courage to other senators out there," Scarborough said.

As we've explained a number of times before, just about every objection the Right has to hate crimes legislation is based on lies and misinformation.

But so was the "controversy" over the stimulus legislation and that didn't stop DeMint from echoing their claims then, and so it's unlikely that the falsity of their attacks will bother him this time around either.