Rebecca Hagelin

One day before the crucial South Carolina primary, Rick Santorum is beginning to win the endorsements of not just Religious Right luminaries but also fringe activists, including some who previously backed the failed presidential campaigns of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Santorum recently won the backing of Religious Right activists such as James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Richard Viguerie, Maggie Gallagher, Penny Nance and most recently, former Perry booster John Stemberger.

Today, Viguerie released the names of additional Religious Right figures that are supporting Santorum, including Paul Pressler, the Southern Baptist leader who hosted the recent Texas meeting of social conservatives.

But other Santorum endorsers are less well-known:

• Cathie Adams of the Texas Eagle Forum, who has likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler, warned that scientists are cloning humans in order to give them diseases and kill them and that the United Nations is trying to “subvert our children’s faith in God by elevating its earth-centered zealotry that would grant the UN dominion over the earth.”

• Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, who has dedicated her career to fighting the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, argued that it would lead to a draft along with “forcible sodomy.”  

• William Estrada of Generation Joshua, the homeschooler activist who hopes that young people will lead the fight against marriage equality.

• Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, the birther movement leader and onetime Bachmann supporter who wants to see Obama “frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue” and an unfailing critic of equal rights for gays and lesbians.

• Michael Geer of the Pennsylvania Family Institute who has crusaded against marriage equality, calling it a “tragedy.” 

• Rebecca Hagelin, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, who derided gays as “bullies” and “power-mongers,” cautioning that gay rights leads to pedophilia and “chaos.”

• Tim LeFever of the Capitol resource Institute, who said that Californians should repeal SB48, which ensures students learn about LGBT historical figures...because it undermines lessons in the Constitution.

• William Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition, who ironically was a fierce opponent of the construction of the Park 51 Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero, and suggested that a train crash happened because the negligent engineer was gay.

• Preston Noell III of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, Property, a pseudo-military, extremist, anti-gay group linked to Brazilian neo-fascists.

• Pam Olsen of the Florida Prayer Network and the International House of Prayer’s Tallahassee branch, is a former Perry campaign activist who advocates Seven Mountain dominionism, plans to raise people from the dead, and believes that gay rights cause natural disasters:
  

All in all, about the people you would expect to endorse Rick Santorum.

Today on Family Talk James Dobson spoke with conservative author and columnist Rebecca Hagelin, a past vice president of the Heritage Foundation, about how the Occupy Wall Street is the un-American heir of the 1960s anti-war and feminist movements. Kyle noted earlier today that Dobson argued that Occupy Wall Street is “Marxist in tone and implementation,” and he said on today’s broadcast that the economic justice movement shared the “chaos” and “godless” features of protests from the 1960s.

Hagelin contended that Van Jones orchestrated Occupy Wall Street, calling him “one of the most radical individuals in American culture today, whose purpose is to overthrow timeless values and our American system of a republic and a democracy.” Hagelin added that Occupy Wall Street is “as dangerous as we think it is” because its goal is “the complete overthrow of the United States constitution.”

Dobson: There is kind of a linkage between the Occupy movement, Occupy Wall Street and Oakland and other places, and what was going on then, where there just was chaos and it was also godless.

Hagelin: That’s right, it’s the same worldview that was behind the women in the 1960s demanding the ability to abort their children and burning their bras and saying they want to abolish the institution of marriage, it’s the same worldview as behind the Occupy Wall Street movement today and a lot of the same people, quite frankly. One of the key players behind this movement is Van Jones, who we know is a socialist, who we know is one of the most radical individuals in American culture today, whose purpose is to overthrow timeless values and our American system of a republic and a democracy.

Dobson: Is that as dangerous as it looks to those of us who are out there trying to earn a living and to follow some rules, the rule of law?

Hagelin: It is absolutely as dangerous as we think it is, because the end result could be nothing less than the complete overthrow of the United States constitution.

Some on the Right voiced criticism of radio host Don Imus, whose slur against the Rutgers women’s basketball team led to his firing from CBS radio and MSNBC. Jerry Falwell, who was frequently mocked on the show, called Imus’s comments “the most demeaning thing possible.” “He has built his career on saying outrageous, indecent, racist, even blasphemous things,” wrote Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, adding that Imus also targeted Focus founder Dobson. Michael Steele, the former Senate candidate and new chairman of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, said Imus should be fired and criticized John McCain for supporting the talker.

But many right-wing commentators defended Imus or used the controversy to push their own agendas. Quite a few decided to attack Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as “race hucksters” (columnist David Limbaugh) or “nappy-headed demagogues” (Yale Kramer for the American Spectator). Mychal Massie, a spokesman for the right-wing Project 21, described the firing of Imus as a “lynching” and accused Jackson, Sharpton, and other Imus critics as “race-baiters” who “are today fomenting unrest and belching racial bile.”

Others used the opportunity to change the subject to their own issues and suggested that Imus critics are hypocritical for not making the same connections. John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute charged that “Imus’s insensitive remarks pale especially in comparison to disparaging comments and cruel recommendations made time and again by leaders of environmental groups.” Alveda King, director of African-American outreach for Frank Pavone’s Priests for Life and a frequent religious-right speaker, declared in a press release, “Yes, Don Imus's apologies are necessary. But I demand the same from every public figure who has ever said that babies in the womb are not persons.”

And a few commentators and activists have suggested that critics of Imus are ignoring “anti-Christian” references in the media. Catholic League President Bill Donohue complained about the lack of interest in his campaign against a Manhattan boutique hotel’s display of a “chocolate Jesus” sculpture and concluded, “In other words, Catholic bashing is humorous and an exercise in liberty. Racism is awful. Bigotry, then, is neither good nor bad—it just depends who the target is.” Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas also decried a supposed “double standard”:

Why aren't these keepers of the First Amendment flame coming to the defense of Don Imus? It's because they have a double standard. Evangelical Christians, practicing Roman Catholics, politically conservative Republicans, home-schoolers and others not in favor among the liberal elite are frequent targets for the left. Anything may be said about them, and frequently is. But if someone insults the left's "protected classes," be they African-Americans, homosexuals or to a lesser extent, adherents to the religion of "global warming," they must be silenced and punished.

According to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, “The message of the ongoing Imus scandal is simple: verbal offenses against anyone other than conservatives or Christians or Jews, will be treated as crimes, and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the judge and jury.” And Star Parker, author of “Uncle Sam’s Plantation,” warned that Congress is considering extending violent-hate-crimes protections to gays and wrote, “With the passage of this so-called hate-crime bill, pastors will be intimidated to condemn homosexual behavior from their pulpits. Is this the freedom we want?”

Finally, a few right-wing commentators tried to make Imus a symbol of white-male victimhood. MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan decried the “Imus Lynch Party,” writing, “The issue here is not the word Imus used. The issue is who Imus is -- a white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity.” In a Human Events column, Mac Johnson declared that “Apologizing to Al Sharpton Was Imus’s True Racist Act” and speculated,

Now think about how stupid and racist all this is. Were Chris Rock, in the heat of a comedic diatribe, to call someone, say, a “limp-haired slut” what would he do next? Would he ask to go on David Duke’s radio show so that Duke could accept an apology on behalf of all “white people” and then issue a suitable penance? (“Donate to my charity, Chris! You don’t look sorry enough yet.”) Somehow, I don’t think so.

And Rebecca Hagelin, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, attacked “the tentacles of radical feminist thought” that she claims are “poisoning the image” of white males through the media and Title IX sports programs. “The white, Anglo-Saxon male, the young teenage guy, is probably the most discriminated against kid on the face of the earth right now,” she declared on “The O’Reilly Factor.”

See comments on the Imus controversy by People For the American Way Foundation staff and by founder Norman Lear here.