For the last few days, Pam has been covering the marriage amendment rally in North Carolina that was held yesterday where, as the News and Observer put it, a thousand people to showed up to demand that state legislators give them a chance to vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

In her post today, Pam also highlights this new argument for the need for such an amendment:

Two well-known conservative Christian commentators who spoke at the rally described a breakdown of society should gay couples be allowed to marry -- including a rise in single-parent households and in the number of dependents wanting Social Security and health insurance benefits.

David Gibbs III, a lawyer who in 2005 fought to keep brain-damaged Terri Schiavo on life support, told rally participants gay marriage would "open the door to unusual marriage in North Carolina.

"Why not polygamy, or three or four spouses?" Gibbs asked. "Maybe people will want to marry their pets or robots.”

Frankly, I think Gibbs has been watching too much Futurama:

It should be noted as well that pseudo-historian David Barton was also a featured speaker:

The rally was sponsored by Return America of Davidson County and by NC4Marriage, a new nonprofit group set up to fight for a constitutional amendment. Many participants were already wearing bumper stickers and buttons made for the campaign, reading, "Let the people vote," or "One Man, One Woman, That's Marriage."

At least a half-dozen state legislators attended the rally under sunny skies and 31-degree temperatures. Each speaker asked that people not leave before visiting with their legislators and asking them to support legislation allowing a referendum. And though many people eager to escape the cold jumped into church vans immediately after the hourlong rally, others flooded the legislative offices.

"Don't just call today, call them once a week," said David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a ministry devoted to educating Americans about the nation's religious foundation. "Let them feel the heat until they see the light."

Back in 2006, the University of Minnesota released a poll showing that atheists were the most distrusted minority group in America: 

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

That finding was backed up by a Gallup poll in 2007 that showed that a majority of Americans were unwilling to elect an atheist whereas a majority said they would be willing to elect someone who was gay.  

Apparently Elizabeth Dole’s re-election campaign was aware of this bias, which is why they have decided to play their “scary atheism” card at the last minute.  Having already gone after her opponent, Kay Hagan, on the issue of gays getting married, the Dole campaign has released a new add linking Hagan to the Godless America PAC and accusing her of taking “Godless money,” whatever that is:

The ad claims that the “leader of the Godless Americans PAC recently held a secret fundraiser in Kay Hagan's honor” which, as the Huffington Post points out, is bogus – it was actually a “fundraiser co-hosted by 40 people, including a representative of the Godless America PAC.”

Hagan, for her part, is understandably upset:

A new television ad by Republican U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s re-election campaign that ties her rival, state Sen. Kay Hagan, to an atheist group has provoked a threat of legal action from the Greensboro Democrat.

“I can’t tell you how upset I am that Elizabeth Dole is attacking my strong Christian faith,” Hagan said late Tuesday.

Hagan, who is an elder at First Presbyterian Church, said she is incensed by the ad because at the end it shows her picture with a female voice saying, “There is no God.”

Her campaign will hold a news conference in Greensboro today to push back against the ad, and Hagan said lawyers for the campaign are preparing to send a cease-and-desist order demanding that Dole stop the ad.

But the Dole camp is unapologetic:

“The ad is 100 percent accurate,” Dole spokesman Dan McLagan said. “If the truth hurts, that’s their problem.”

As I noted in my last post on Dole’s campaign tactics, until recently she had never really been the type to engage in this sort of wedge-issue, right-wing scaremongering, which makes her descent into it all the more pathetic. If she keeps this up, I’m going to have to add her to my regular monitoring rotation since she seems to be turning into a regular fountain of wing-nuttery.

Focus on the Family is getting involved in House and Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas, sending out scorecards in which Republican candidates are praised for their “consistently pro-life and pro-family records” and the Democrats are blasted for having “taken audaciously liberal positions – particularly on life and marriage.” 

The text of all the mailers are more or less the same, with the exception of the paragraphs about the specific candidates – here is the text of the one targeting the Minnesota Senate Race [PDF]:

It’s not every day that individuals find themselves in a position to significantly impact the direction of an entire nation, but that’s exactly where you are today. As a Minnesota voter, you are right in the middle of one of the most important and closely watched Senate races in the country.

The stakes in this contest could not be higher. If Barack Obama wins the White House—a very real possibility—the U.S. Senate will be the last defense against his liberal agenda on abortion and marriage. Sen. Obama has already promised to support the Freedom of Choice Act, which would overturn every pro-life law on abortion in the nation. He has also pledged to abolish the Defense of Marriage Act and to allow open homosexuality in our military. The only hope of stopping this radical onslaught will be a strong showing of commonsense conservatives in the Senate.

A conservative Senate will be no less important under a McCain presidency. If John McCain should emerge victorious in November, he’ll need every Senate vote he can get to confirm Supreme Court judges who will uphold the Constitution and restore sanity to our courts.

That’s why Minnesota’s Senate race is so critical. The contrast between the candidates is sharp. Norm Coleman has maintained a stellar pro-life record and a generally pro-family record in the U.S. Senate. Al Franken, on the other hand, has not only taken strikingly liberal positions since returning to Minnesota, but his comedic record in New York is an embarrassment to those who
care about family values.

Please take a careful look at the issue checklist to the right. It contains details regarding the candidates’ stands on life, marriage and the judiciary, as well as insights on other issues that are important to families—such as gas prices and the threat of higher taxes.

Furthermore, Focus has also customized each mailing … seemingly using backdrops leftover from the 1970’s:

Gay-friendly churches “turn [them]selves in” following new policy excluding churches with gay members.