Prop 8

Save California’s Randy Thomason on Friday appeared on Istook Live, the Heritage Foundation radio program hosted by former Republican congressman Ernest Istook, to discuss the Supreme Court case on Proposition 8.

He accused the California state officials who refused to defend Prop 8 of “dissing God” and went on to warn that “usurpers of the United States Constitution” have methodically and stealthily “infiltrated” the government and the courts in order to launch another civil war.

This not the characteristic of a Republic when there are sworn public servants, they have raised their right hand and they have pledged to defend the state constitution, to do their duty, to implement the law, they have made a public pledge before God and now they are dissing God, they are dissing the United States and the state constitutions and the people who elected them. An uninformed public that allows this to happen is just as bad when they vote foolishly or they vote wickedly. We have evidence abounding that there is a civil war occurring in the United States of America, it’s not being done with guns or knives, but it’s being done by usurpers of the United States Constitution and they have positioned themselves in power, they have infiltrated the constitutional land of the United States, they have gotten there with the help of ignorant people or wicked people and then they have implemented their own will.

Thomasson later said that President Obama is using lies and deception to bring about gay rights laws.

He has finally in an election year, last year, decided that he needed money from wealthy homosexual businesspersons and their supporters and he came out with the truth. He really is a supporter of everything homosexual, bisexual, transsexual; he has imposed it on the military, he’s imposing it on marriage, he’s imposing it on our culture.

…

There are professional liars and there are professional double-talkers, and I’m not sure what you have here but you do have someone that is giving multiple messages. He already gave his message, he gave his message last year, in an interview he said that he supports homosexual marriages being legal, and that means everywhere. So it doesn’t matter what he says now. I guess he is working on a legacy; well the legacy is that America is really going down, down. Not simply because of foolish voters who don’t check out the real policies or real positions of the candidates or don’t even check out what’s best for children, but they listen to the lies and the myths and statements of candidates themselves and they just vote on image or they vote on feeling. That’s really self-idolatry.

In reading through the amicus briefs submitted by anti-gay groups to the Supreme Court, we’ve been generally impressed by the relative restraint of their legal arguments compared to their day-to-day anti-gay tirades. But not so with the two briefs submitted last week by a hodgepodge coalition of conservative groups.

Citizens United’s National Committee for Family, Faith and Prayer filed two no-holds-barred amicus briefs last week, one in defense of Prop 8 [pdf] and one in defense of DOMA [pdf]. They were joined in both by the anti-immigrant groups Declaration Alliance and English First; WorldNetDaily affiliate the Western Center for Journalism; the Institute for Constitutional Values (founded by white supremacist ally Michael Peroutka, who also argues that the solution to school violence is to abolish schools); Gun Owners Foundation (the research wing of Gun Owners of America); the extremely and occasionally comically anti-gay Public Advocate; the birther group U.S. Justice Foundation; Protect Marriage Maryland and others. Far-right Virginia Del. Bob Marshall and Sen. Dick Black joined the DOMA brief. Both are signed by Michael Boos, general counsel of Citizens United, and by Herb Titus, an attorney with a sideline as a birther advocate.

So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the filings contain passages like this one, in the Prop 8 brief, arguing that laws against homosexuality affirm rather than deny the humanity of gay people:

Second, while the discrimination against Blacks in America denied them their rightful status as a member of the human race vis-à-vis their white counterparts, the discrimination against homosexuals affirmed their status as full and equal members of the human race. Indeed, the very definition of the “crime against nature,” was employed to emphasize that the sexual behavior condemned was contrary to the law of human nature. Homosexual behavior, then, while unnatural did not mean that those guilty of it were any less human.

Or this one from the DOMA brief arguing that gays and lesbians have not historically faced discrimination because some criminal sodomy laws also “extended to opposite sex unnatural couplings”:

As a class, homosexuals have not been discriminated against in the way that the court of appeals has so “easily” assumed. The appellate panel below concluded that “the most telling proof of animus and discrimination is that, for many years and in many states, homosexual conduct was criminal.” Yet historically, even the crime of sodomy was not so targeted. Rather, it was defined as “carnal copulation against the order of nature by man with man; or in the same unnatural manner with woman; or by man or woman in any manner with a beast.” Thus, the crime of sodomy was “known in the common law by the convertible and equivalent name [] of ‘crime against nature,” the offense not only extended to opposite sex unnatural couplings, but was one of several sexual offenses that fit under the broad category of “offenses against the public health, safety, comfort and morals.” Among these sexual offenses were bigamy, adultery, fornication, lewdness and illicit cohabitation, incest, miscegenation, and seduction, all of which could be committed by persons of the opposite sex. Rather than a narrow negative purpose, these laws reflect a perceived concern for the public health, safety, comfort, and morals of certain sexual behaviors.

Or that the groups oh-so-cleverly invoke the court’s Obamacare decision to argue that the extra taxes same-sex spouses pay under DOMA are an acceptable way of “deterring certain activities”:

Additionally, this Court has consistently ruled that Congress’s power to tax is not limited to the purpose of raising revenue. Thus, this Court found that it is permissible for Congress to adopt a taxing policy for the purpose of deterring certain activities by the levying of a tax on them, as well as for the purpose of collecting revenue. Therefore, according to precedent, it is a constitutionally permissible exercise of Congress to adopt a tax policy for the purpose of nurturing traditional marriage as the ideal family structure for raising children, just as this Court has recently observed, that it is perfectly permissible for Congress to impose a tax “to encourage people to quit smoking” or “to shape decisions about whether to buy health insurance.”…It is not for the courts to second-guess whether Congress should promote a traditional family policy in the exercise of its taxing powers.

But what is truly remarkable about the Citizens United coalition’s legal arguments is their eagerness to burn all bridges and declare everything they come across unconstitutional. While the Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel, presumably trying to appeal to Justice Anthony Kennedy, hold their noses and accept Kennedy’s pro-gay rights opinions in Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans as law, Citizens United et al have no such scruples. Not only should Lawrence and Romer be overturned, this group argues, but so should Bolling v. Sharpe, the 1954 Brown v. Board companion case that desegregated the District of Columbia’s public schools. Bolling was the first decision in which the Supreme Court explicitly found an equal protection component in the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, thus setting the stage for six decades of prohibitions on discrimination by the federal government – all of which the coalition would like to see go.

But these groups don’t just go after decades of legal precedent. They also personally attack two judges who ruled against Prop 8 before it reached the Supreme Court, in particular district court judge Vaughn Walker, who is openly gay:

With the understanding of Judge Walker’s personal interest in the outcome of the case, it becomes much easier to understand his finding every fact for the plaintiffs and his willingness to impute ill will to the proponents of Proposition 8. For example, having in his personal life rejected 6,000 years of moral and religious teaching, we can see how Judge Walker could readily determine that California voters were motivated solely by “moral and religious views…that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples [and] these interests do not provide a rational basis for supporting Proposition 8.” The same is true for Judge Walker’s conclusion that supporters’ motivations were: “fear,” “unarticulated dislike,” not “rational,” based on “animus toward gays and lesbians,” “irrational,” “without reason,” and “born of animus.” Petitioners were entitled to have their case heard by an impartial judge – not one who was leading a secret life engaging in behaviors which he appeared to believe were being unfairly judged and criticized by the proponents of Proposition 8.

(Citations omitted in block quotes)
 

Back in 2010, when a federal district court in California heard the first legal challenge to the anti-gay Proposition 8, the judge asked the attorney defending Prop 8 how marriage equality would hurt the ability of straight couples to bear and raise children. The attorney sputtered and answered, “I don’t know.” A key witness for Prop 8’s supporters had the same answer, and later changed his mind to support marriage equality.

Four years later, the case is coming before the Supreme Court, and marriage equality opponents are still struggling to answer that question. In an amicus brief [pdf] filed with the court last week, the anti-gay Liberty Counsel took a shot at it. If marriage equality is achieved, Liberty Counsel argues, “Many boys will grow up without any positive male influence in their lives to show them what it means to be a man, and many girls will grow up without any female influence to show them what it means to be a lady.”

Not only does Proposition 8 further the state’s interest in steering childrearing into the husband-wife marriage model, but it furthers the important interest in providing male and female role models in the family. Male gender identity and female gender identity are each uniquely important to a child’s development. As a result, one very significant justification for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is because children need a mother and a father. We live in a world demarcated by two genders, male and female. There is no third or intermediate category. Sex is binary. By striking down Proposition 8, this Court will be making a powerful statement: our government no longer believes children deserve mothers and fathers. In effect, it would be saying: “Two fathers or two mothers are not only just as good as a mother and a father, they are just the same.”

The government promotion of this idea will likely have some effect even on people who are currently married, who have been raised in a particular culture of marriage. But this new idea of marriage, sanctioned by law and government, will certainly have a dramatic effect as the next generation’s attitudes toward marriage, childbearing, and the importance of mothers and fathers are formed. By destroying the traditional definition of marriage, the family structure will be dramatically transformed. Many boys will grow up without any positive male influence in their lives to show them what it means to be a man, and many girls will grow up without any female influence to show them what it means to be a lady.

The repercussions of this are incalculable and will reshape the culture in which we live. Many children learn appropriate gender roles by having interaction with both their mother and their father and by seeing their mother and their father interact together with one another. By redefining marriage to state that this is not a family structure that the state wants to foster and encourage, this Court will be overturning centuries of historical understandings of family and the home.

To give you an idea of the kind of parenting that Liberty Counsel supports, its lawyers Mat Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen, who are named on its brief, are also representing a woman accused of kidnapping her daughter rather than let her have contact with her other mother (the woman’s former same-sex partner).
 

The Family Research Council submitted two amicus briefs to the Supreme Court yesterday urging it to reject challenges to DOMA and to California’s Proposition 8. The briefs lay out some of the same arguments that we’ve heard many times from the FRC. But we were curious if the FRC would jettison one of its favorite talking points– the success of discriminatory measures at the ballot box –in light of last year’s resounding marriage equality victories in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.

The answer was yes and no.

In its brief on Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Prop 8 case, the FRC goes back to the old talking point, ignoring the events of last November, to argue that “there is no ‘emerging awareness’ that the right to marry extends to same-sex couples.”

This Court has never stated or even implied that the federal right to marry extends to same-sex couples.  And, with the exception of the district court’s decision below, which was affirmed on other grounds by the court of appeals, no state or federal court has held that the fundamental right to marry extends to same-sex couples.  In sharp contrast to the “emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex,” Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 572, which, in turn, was based upon an examination of “our laws and traditions in the past half century, id. at 571, “[t]he history and tradition of the last fifty years have not shown the definition of marriage to include a union of two people regardless of their sex.”  If anything, the fact that thirty States have amended their constitutions to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples strongly suggests that there is no “emerging awareness” that the right to marry extends to same-sex couples.

But when the FRC wants to argue that gays and lesbians are not a “politically powerless” group deserving protection from discrimination, they flaunt the 2012 election results and point to how close previous anti-gay votes on state ballots were. This is from the brief on U.S. v. Windsor, the DOMA case:

Any lingering doubt that gays and lesbians are able to influence public policy, particularly with respect to the issue of same-sex marriage, should have been laid to rest by the results of the last election.  Three States – Maine, Maryland and Washington, by popular vote, approved laws allowing same-sex marriage, and in a fourth State – Minnesota – voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution that would have prohibited same-sex marriage.  Even in States where such amendments have been approved, the margin of victory has often been narrow, in some cases barely passing (as in California in 2008 and South Dakota in 2006), indicating that homosexuals, who comprise no more than one to two percent of the population, have succeeded in enlisting many heterosexuals to support their cause for same-sex marriage.  In such a dynamic social and cultural environment, the belief that homosexuals are “politically powerless in the sense that they have no ability to attract the attention of the lawmakers,”  strains credulity. 

So when voters reject gay rights at the ballot box, they are reflecting public opinion. But when they vote in favor of gay rights, they have been “enlisted” to the cause by powerful gay rights lobbyists.

• PFAW: Pressure Begins to Yield Results as Senate Takes Steps to Confirm 10 Judicial Nominees.

• Tim Murphy @ Mother Jones: The Most Radical Anti-Abortion Measure in America.

• Arisha Michelle Hatch @ Prop 8 Trial Tracker: What happened at Rev. Lou Sheldon’s press conference opposing the FAIR Education Act.

• David @ Crooks and Liars: Bachmann Warns of Hezbollah 'Missile Sites' in Cuba.

• Dan @ TFN Insider: The Politics of ‘Reclaiming Texas for Christ.’

• Matthew Yglesias: Rick Perry’s Revisionist Take On The Original Tea Party.

• Towleroad: Anti-Gay Activists Using Child Molestation to Fool People Into Signing Petition Against California LGBT History Bill.

• Mary Tuma @ Washington Independent: ‘Reclusive’ evangelical organizer David Lane bemoans the rise of secular judges, media.

• Travis Waldron @ Think Progress LGBT: Tony Perkins Says Christie’s Anti-Bullying Position Will Be Problem For GOP.

• Dallas Voice: Group says FW teacher was harassed by student he punished for saying homosexuality is wrong.

Updated 8/5/2011

On August 6, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will host The Response, a “prayer rally” in Houston, along with the extremist American Family Association and a cohort of Religious Right leaders with far-right political ties. While the rally’s leaders label it a "a non-denominational, apolitical Christian prayer meeting," the history of the groups behind it suggests otherwise. The Response is powered by politically active Religious Right individuals and groups who are dedicated to bringing far-right religious view, including degrading views of gays and lesbians and non-Christians, into American politics.

In fact, a spokesman for The Response has said that while non-Christians will be welcomed at the rally, they will be urged to “seek out the living Christ.” Allan Parker, a right-wing activist who participated in an organizing conference call for the event, declared in an email bearing the official Response logo that including non-Christians in the event "would be idolatry of the worst sort."

Perry told James Dobson that the rally was necessary because Americans have “turned away from God.”

The following is an introduction to the groups and individuals who Gov. Perry has allied himself with in planning this event.

The American Family Association

The American Family Association is the driving force behind The Response. Founded by the Rev. Don Wildmon in 1977, the organization is based is best known for its various boycott campaigns, promotion of art censorship, and political advocacy against women’s rights and LGBT equality. The organization also controls the vast American Family Radio and an online news service, in addition to sponsoring various conferences frequented by Republican leaders, including the Values Voter Summit and Rediscovering God in America. The AFA today is led by Tim Wildmon, Don’s son, and its chief spokesperson is Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for Government and Public Policy and host of its flagship radio show Focal Point.

Fischer routinely expresses support for some of the most bigoted and shocking ideas found in the Religious Right today. He has:

• held gays responsible for the Holocaust and likened them to domestic terrorists and Nazis who are intent on committing “virtual genocide” against the military, and asserts that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office”;
• said “we have feminized the Medal of Honor” by awarding it to a soldier who saved his fellow combatants rather than killing enemies;
• demanded all immigrants “convert to Christianity” and renounce their religions;
• asserted that Muslims have “no fundamental First Amendment claims” and should be banned from building mosques and deported from the US, adding that Muslims are inherently stupid as a result of inbreeding;
• claimed African American women “rut like rabbits” due to welfare and that Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from living in America because they didn’t convert to Christianity and were consequently cursed by God with alcoholism and poverty;
• said that the anti-Muslim manifesto of the right-wing Christian terrorist who killed dozens in Norway was “accurate.”

Other AFA leaders and activists are just as radical:

• AFA President Tim Wildmon claims that by repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell President Obama shows he “doesn’t give a rip about the Marines or the Army” and “just wants to force homosexuality into every place that he can.”
• AFA Vice President Buddy Smith, who is on the leadership council of The Response, said that gays and lesbians are “in the clasp of Satan.”
• The head of the AFA’s women’s group led a boycott against Glee because she accused it of indoctrinating children in homosexuality and idolatry.The editor of AFA Journal Ed Vitagliano said that gay pride months are an affront to the Founding Fathers and will usher in “a return to pagan sexuality.”
• A columnist for the AFA demanded Christians stop practicing yoga because it was inspired by the “evil” religions of Buddhism and Hinduism.

International House of Prayer

The Response’s leadership team includes five senior staff members of the International House of Prayer (IHOP), a large, highly political Pentecostal organization built on preparing participants for the return of Jesus Christ. In a recent video, IHOP encouraged supporters to pray for Jews to convert to Christianity in order to bring about the Second Coming. IHOP is closely associated with Lou Engle, a Religious Right leader whose anti-gay, anti-choice extremism hasn’t stopped him from hobnobbing with Republican leaders including Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee. Engle is the founder of The Call, day-long rallies against abortion rights and gay marriage, which Engle says are meant to break Satan’s control over the U.S. government. One recent Call event featured “prophet” Cindy Jacobs calling for repentance for the “girl-on-girl kissing” of Britney Spears and Madonna. Perry's The Response event is clearly built upon Engle's The Call model.

Engle has a long history of pushing extreme right-wing views and advocating for a conservative theocracy in America. Engle:

• is a proponent of “Seven Mountains” dominionism, a movement that seeks to have Christians take control of all aspects of American life, including government, business, entertainment and the media;supports the criminalization of homosexuality;
• claimed that universities with LGBT anti-discrimination measures are teaching students to “accept the mark of the beast”;
• is waging a “spiritual war” on the Supreme Court to get abortion outlawed in America;
• prayed that Ellen Degeneres will be “converted” from homosexuality.
• led a prayer rally in Jerusalem to lead one of the "greatest awakenings in the earth" to bring the Jews of Israel to Christianity.
• claimed that the devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri was God’s judgment for abortion.

IHOP’s founder and executive director, Mike Bickle, who is an official endorser of The Response, like Engle pushes radical End Times prophesies. In one sermon, he declared that Oprah Winfrey is a precursor to the Antichrist.

The International House of Prayer, incidentally, remains locked in a copyright infringement lawsuit with the International House of Pancakes.

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, is a co-chairman of The Response. At the FRC, Perkins has been a vocal opponent of LGBT equality, often relying on false claims about gay people to push his agenda. He:

• called gay rights activists “intolerant,” “hateful,” “vile,” “spiteful” and “pawns” of Satan;
• denied that there was a correlation between anti-gay bullying and depression and suicide, saying instead that gay and lesbian teens know they are “abnormal” and “have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict";
• wrote that Senators would have "the blood of innocent soldiers on their hands" if they vote to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and allow gays to serve openly in the military;
• likened President Obama to a Middle East dictator when the president refused to defend the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act in court;
• said “I don’t know if the country can survive” another Obama term;
• said that armies that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly – including several U.S. allies in Iraq and Afghanistan –“participate in parades, they don’t fight wars to keep the world free.”

Jim Garlow

One of the most prominent members of The Response’s leadership team is pastor Jim Garlow. The pastor for a San Diego megachurch, Garlow has been intimately involved in political battles, especially the campaign to pass Proposition 8. Garlow invited and housed Lou Engle to lead The Call rallies around California for six months to sway voters to support Proposition 8, which would repeal the right of gay and lesbian couples to get married. He claims Satan is behind the “attack on marriage” and credits the prayer rallies for the passage of Prop 8. He said that during a massive The Call rally in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium “something had snapped in the Heavenlies” and “God had moved” to deliver Prop 8 to victory.

Most importantly, Garlow is a close spiritual adviser to presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and leads Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership (ReAL). Garlow is a principal advocate of Seven Mountains Dominionism, and wants to “bring armies of people” to bring Religious Right leaders into public office and defeat their political opponents.

Garlow has a long record of extreme rhetoric. He:

• when Prop 8 passed in California, claimed that African Americans “saved us from the bondage and enslavement that would come upon us if gay marriage actually passed in a state” and alleged marriage equality supporters are going to “totally destroy the definition of the family”;
• likened homosexuality to bestiality, saying that if marriage equality is upheld “the next court case could conceivably say that if three people wanted to marry or four people or five people or if someone wanted to marry their dog or their horse”;
• compared gay adoption to children losing their parents in the September 11th attacks and said that supporters of gay rights are “almost like an Antichrist spirit”;
• told conservative activists that “your land has cancer” and believes that the “lethal ideological ‘radiation’” of progressives “is killing our nation” and “poisoning us and our children”;
• argued that legal abortion is responsible for unemployment.

John Hagee

While Senator John McCain rejected John Hagee’s endorsement during the 2008 presidential campaign for his “deeply offensive and indefensible” remarks, Perry invited Hagee to join The Response. Hagee leads a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, and is a purveyor of End Times prophesies. Like members of the International House of Prayer, Hagee utilizes language of spiritual warfare and says he is part of “the army of the living God.” He runs the prominent group Christians United For Israel, which believes that eventually a cataclysmic war in the Middle East will bring about the Rapture.

John McCain was forced to disavow Hagee for a reason as the Texas pastor:

• claimed that God sent Hitler to be a “hunter” of Jews to usher in the establishment of Israel and “do God’s work,” lamenting that Jews are no longer “spiritually alive.”
• referred to the Catholic Church as ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’
• believes that Hurricane Katrina “looked like the curse of God” and ravaged New Orleans in order to stop a “homosexual rally” and punish the city’s high “level of sin.”
• said that if gay marriage becomes legal “you can kiss this country goodbye,” alleged that the US is “rebirthing Sodom and Gomorrah,” and demanded that the government stop funding AIDS research and treatment to stop benefiting a “sinful lifestyle.”
• demands that “wives submit yourselves to your husbands” and said that the “husband has a God-given role as leader of your home.”
• said that God won’t allow the United States to win wars anymore because “we have allowed the worship of Satanism in the U.S. military.”

James Dobson

James Dobson, an official endorser of The Response, is one of the most prominent figures in the Religious Right. Founder of both Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council , Dobson has been instrumental in bringing the priorities of the Religious Right to Republican politics, including campaigning hard for President George W. Bush. But many of the views that Dobson pushes are hardly mainstream. Dobson:

• is no fan of the women’s movement, writing that women are just “waiting for their husbands to assume leadership” ;
• claims that marriage equality will “destroy the Earth”;
• insists that the Religious Right’s fight against Planned Parenthood is “very similar” to that of abolitionists who fought against the slave trade.
• Asked if God had withdrawn his hand from America after 9/11, Dobson responded: “Christians have made arguments on both sides of this question. I certainly believe that God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality. However, rather than trying to forge a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the terrorist attacks and America's abandonment of biblical principles, which I think is wrong, we need to accept the truth that this nation will suffer in many ways for departing from the principles of righteousness. "The wages of sin is death," as it says in Romans 6, both for individuals and for entire cultures.”

David Barton

David Barton, an official endorser of The Response, is a self-proclaimed historian known for his twisting of American History and the Bible to justify right-wing political positions. Barton’s strategy is twofold: he first works to find Biblical bases for right-wing policy initiatives, and then argues that the Founding Fathers wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, so obviously wanted whatever policy he has just found a flimsy Biblical basis for. Barton, “documenting” the divine origins of his interpretations of the Constitution gives him and his political allies a potent weapon. Opponents who disagree about tax policy or the powers of Congress are not only wrong, they are un-American and anti-religious, enemies of America and of God.

Barton uses his shoddy historical and biblical scholarship to push a right-wing political agenda, including:

• Biblical Capitalism: Barton’s “scholarship” helps to form the basis for far-right economic policies. He claims that “Jesus was against the minimum wage,” that the Bible “absolutely condemned” the estate tax,” and opposed the progressive income tax.
• Revising Racial History: Barton has traveled the country peddling a documentary he made blaming the Democratic Party for slavery, lynching and Jim Crow…while ignoring more recent history.
• Opposing Gay Rights: Barton believes the government should regulate gay sex and maintains that countries which “rejected sexual regulation” inevitably collapse.

Other Allies

Among the other far-right figures who have signed on to work with Gov. Perry on The Response are:

• Rob Schenk, an anti-choice extremist who was once arrested for throwing a fetus in the face of President Clinton, and who allegedly had ties with the murderer of abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian.
• Loren Cunningham, who is working to mobilize support for the rally is a co-founder of the radical “Seven Mountains Dominionist” ideology. Cunningham says that he received the “seven mountains” idea, which holds that evangelical Christians must take hold of all aspects of society in order to pave the way for the Second Coming, in a message directly from God.
• Doug Stringer, The Response's National Church and Ministry Mobilization Coordinator, who blamed American secularism and the increased acceptance of homosexuality for the 9/11 attacks, saying “It was our choice to ask God not to be in our every day lives and not to be present in our land.”
• Cindy Jacobs, self-proclaimed “prophet” and endorser of The Response, who famously insisted that birds were dying in Arkansas earlier this year because of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
• C. Peter Wagner, an official endorser of The Response, is one of the most prominent leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, a controversial movement whose followers believe they are prophets and apostles on par with Christ himself (other adherents include Engle, Jacobs and Anh). Wagner has advocated burning Catholic, Mormon and non-Christian religious objects. He blamed the Japanese stock market crash and later the devastating earthquake and tsunami in the country on a traditional ritual in which the emperor supposedly has “sexual intercourse” with the pagan Sun Goddess.
• Che Ahn, a mentor of John Hagee and official endorser of The Response, who endorses “Seven Mountains” dominionism and compares the fight against gay rights to the fight against slavery.
• John Benefiel, a self-proclaimed "apostle" and official endorser of The Response, who claims the Statue of Liberty is a "demonic idol" and that homosexuality is a plot cooked up by the Illuminati to control the world's population, and that he renamed the District of Columbia the “District of Christ” because he has “more authority than the U.S. Congress does.”
• James “Jay” Swallow, official endorser of the rally, who calls himself a “spiritual warrior” and hosts “Strategic Warriors At Training (SWAT): A Christian Military Training Camp for the purpose of dealing with the occult and territorial enemy strong holds in America.”
• Alice Smith, who advocates "spiritual housecleaning" because demons "sneak into" homes through everyday objects.
• Willie Wooten, a self-proclaimed “apostle” who claims that God is punishing the African American community for supporting gay rights, reproductive freedom and the Democratic Party.
• Pastor Stephen Broden – Broden, an endorser of The Response, has repeatedly insisted that a violent overthrow of the U.S. government must remain “on the table.”
• Timothy F. Johnson – Johnson, a former vice-chairman of the North Carolina GOP, was elected to that post despite two domestic violence convictions and still unresolved questions about his military service and educational record.
  
• Alice Patterson – Patterson, a member of The Response's leadership team, insists that the Democratic Party is controlled by a "demonic structure."

• The San Antonio Express-News reports that "when it comes time to giving, [Governor Rick Perry] doesn't come close to the biblical guidance of tithing."
• CNN gives Tony Perkins space to explain what the Religious Right wants in a Republican presidential nominee.
• David Barton has endorsed Ted Cruz.
• Gary Cass claims that Prop 8 would have passed by even more but that "Attorney General Jerry Brown intentionally described Proposition 8 on the ballot in a misleading way."
• I am pretty sure that President Obama is going to refuse the offer to come together and pray with Wiley Drake.
• Finally, Janet Porter warns you to beware that Lamb you are eating; it was probably "offered first to idols, in this case to the false god of Islam."

Jim Garlow was one of the, if not the, key Religious Right leaders helming the fight to pass Proposition 8 in California.  And the reason he did so is because those who seek marriage equality are driven by "an Antichrist spirit" as part of an effort by Satan to "destroy the definition of marriage" so that people will fall away from God.

Garlow is close friends with Newt Gingrich, who carried on an affair with the woman who would become his second wife while he was still married to his first ... and then proceeded to do the very same thing to his second wife with the woman who would become his third.   And since Gingrich is so very, very sorry for his past indiscretions, he has been forgiven and so his presidential aspirations now have Garlow's approval:

Jim Garlow, the pastor of Skyline Church, a congregation in a San Diego suburb, called Gingrich "the strongest possible candidate" for the GOP nomination. Garlow led the effort in 2008 to pass Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

Last year, Garlow agreed to serve as chairman of Gingrich's faith-based nonprofit, for which he receives what he called a "small stipend." Since then, he has provided Gingrich with entree to evangelical circles nationwide.

...

Garlow agreed to head ReAL after a private meeting at which Gingrich acknowledged his past marital failings and began to weep as he spoke of his love for his two daughters.

"In my bleakest days when I was doing wrong, I knew it was wrong," Garlow quoted Gingrich as saying. "There was no attempt to justify his actions."

As Garlow explained several months ago in a video recorded for Cindy Jacobs' "Reformation Day" election prayer event, he supports Gingrich because Gingrich wakes up every day and asks "what can I do today to save Western Civilization?":

Over the holiday break, I started reading "What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America" by Peggy Pascoe and it is absolutely fascinating - I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and read it, but for now I want to highlight a few passages from the introduction:

When societies decide who can and who can't legally marry, they determine who is and isn't really a part of the family. These inclusions and exclusions take place at such an intimate level that they shape what seems natural and, in turn, what is stigmatized as unnatural.

...

From the 1860s through the 1960s, the American legal system elevated the notion that interracial marriage was unnatural to commonsense status and made it the law of the land. During this period, miscegenation law channeled property, propriety, personal choice, and legitimate procreation into one very particular kind of monogamous marital pair: couples that were made of up one White man and one White woman, whose sameness of race was required by law and whose difference in sex was taken entirely for granted. The more Whites believe that interracial marriage was unnatural, the more they assumed that the marriage of one White man to one White woman was the only kind of marriage worthy of the name - and the more they saw their own marriages as the fortunate result of individual romantic preference rather than the obligatory outcome of a legal system steeped in gendered assumptions about race and heterosexuality.

...

The constitutional fiction of miscegenation law held that laws punishing both partners in an interracial relationship were racially equal rather than racially discriminatory. This, for example, was the position the Alabama Supreme Court put forth in 1881 in Pace v. State, a case involving a White woman and a Black man, when it ruled:

The fact that a different punishment is affixed to the offense of adultery when committed between a negro and a white person, and when committed between two white people or two negroes, does not constitute a discrimination against or in favor of either race. The discrimination is not directed against the person of any particular color or race, but against the offense, the nature of which is determined by the opposite color of the cohabiting parties. The punishment of each offending party, white or black, is precisely the same. There is obviously no difference or discrimination in the punishment. The evil tendency of the crime of living in adultery or fornication is greater when it is committed between persons of the two races than between persons of the same race.

The was also the position the Oregon Supreme Court maintained a half century later when it ruled that its miscegenation law did not discriminate against Indians because it "applies alike to all persons, either white, negroes, Chinese, Kanaka, or Indians."

And let's just compare that to Bryan Fischer's response to the Prop 8 ruling:

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling in the Prop. 8 case is that he claimed to give homosexuals something they in fact already have: full marriage equality.

Homosexuals right now, as you are reading these words, have full marriage equality in America. There is no place in the United States where they don't.

They have exactly, precisely the same right to get married that every other American has: to a non-relative adult of the opposite sex.

Don't let homosexual apologists fool you here. They already have full marriage equality. Nobody anywhere has deprived of them of their right to marry. Period. They have exactly the same right to marry that you and I do, no more, no less.

What they want is not equal rights, but special rights. They want a special exemption carved out for them so that their sexually aberrant relationships can be recognized as marriages, an exemption we don't grant to folks who want to marry a son or a daughter, or a mother or a father, an uncle or an aunt, or a child.

All of those represent sexually aberrant relationships, with all their attendant physical and psychological dangers, and for that reason public policy does not permit such marriages.

So when we say two homosexuals cannot marry, we're not depriving them of marital rights any more than when we say the same thing to a pedophile. A pedophile has the same right to marry that every homosexual does — the right to marry a non-relative adult member of the opposite sex.

So let's end this nonsense that somehow we aren't being fair to homosexuals. You can't get any more fair than seeing to it that the same rules apply to everybody.