senate

After passing the Ohio State House, Janet Porter’s ‘heartbeat bill’ is now poised to have a vote in the Republican-controlled State Senate. Porter, an avowed dominionist who thinks supporters of President Obama are destined to Hell and that legal abortion is responsible for tornadoes, has been leading the fight to pass the ‘heartbeat bill,’ a patently unconstitutional measure that would “ban abortion as early as 18 to 24 days after conception.” She told James Dobson yesterday on his program Family Talk that she thinks her bill will eventually lead to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. “We are so close that I can see the end of abortion from here, that’s how close we are,” Porter said, “everything we have prayed is happening…God has been in this from the beginning.”

Porter has lost some allies along the way, as the Ohio Right to Life Society opposes her extreme bill and one of its chief proponents, State Rep. Jarrod Martin, who called for the bill’s passage to help the U.S. compete with Chinese children, currently faces charges of drunk driving and child endangerment.

But she has picked up one major endorsement: Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He joins other presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Roy Moore in backing Porter’s extreme legislation. According to the statement from Porter’s group Faith 2 Action, Perry announced his support at his meeting with Religious Right leaders at James Leininger’s ranch in Texas where he spoke “before a group of 250 pro-life and pro-family leaders”:

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who recently announced that he will seek the Republican nomination for President, has announced his support for the Heartbeat Bill. He joins three other Presidential candidates in support of the bill: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

“We’re grateful to Governor Perry for his strong support of the Heartbeat Bill. I don’t think there’s a bill in America with more support,” declares Faith2Action President Janet (Folger) Porter. She adds, “Come to the Statehouse Atrium on September 20 and get a glimpse of the statewide support for the Heartbeat Bill!”

At a meeting in Texas, Governor Perry announced his support before a group of 250 pro-life and pro-family leaders. His response of support to a question about the Heartbeat Bill received an extended standing ovation.

Following Michele Bachmann’s triumph in the Ames Straw Poll, she was immediately crowned the frontrunner in the Iowa Caucus. While winning the Ames Straw Poll does not guarantee a victory at the Iowa Caucus (just ask Mitt Romney), it does show the strength of a candidate’s campaign operation and popular support. But most importantly, victory at Ames does not make a candidate a mainstream political figure. As Tim Murphy writes today in Mother Jones and consistently chronicled on RWW, Bachmann throughout her entire political career has seen herself and acted as an ultraconservative, Religious Right fanatic, and her victory at Ames makes her no more mainstream or less radical.

For example, Pat Robertson won the 1987 Ames Straw Poll, topping both George Bush and Bob Dole, who went on to win the Iowa Caucus. But defeating the Vice President and the Senate Republican Leader did not make Robertson a mainstream politician, in the same way Bachmann is still a right-wing extremist even after her straw poll victory. Their victories in Ames show the endurance and growth of the Religious Right base of the Republican Party.

Need a reminder of how out of the mainstream Robertson is? Just today on The 700 Club, for instance, Robertson explained how he performed an exorcism on a girl and “cast this demon out of her” before she tried to kill her mother:

So if Pat Robertson can win in Ames, is it any surprise that Michele Bachmann could too?

Today on WallBuilders Live, David Barton and co-host Rick Green had the National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher as a guest to discuss NOM’s efforts to defeat senators that voted for the marriage equality law in New York, especially the law’s four Republican supporters. Following Gallagher’s interview, Barton lauded NOM’s campaign and warned that unless those Republicans are defeated, “Ken Mehlman,” the former head of the Republican National Committee and Bush campaign chief who recently came out as gay, “and his kind [will] come in and start rewarding these guys for going against pro-family stuff.” Barton went on to say that “this is where you hang a bloody scalp over the gallery rail,” to intimidate other Republicans who consider supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians:

Barton: If you allow the Ken Mehlman kind of Republicans to come in, and Melhman’s the guy who ran the Republican National Convention, he’s the guy who came out, who’s openly homosexual, trained with Karl Rove and was an understudy to Karl, if you allow those guys to be able to facilitate the Republicans to turn on these issues and other squishy Republicans across the country will say, ‘hey I can take on these pro-family people,’ they’ll start doing the same thing. Then you’ll lose your opportunity to have at least one party that still has the ability to allow people to talk about biblical, moral issues. You just cannot let this happen. Here I sit in Texas, I’ll contribute to the campaign to take these guys out, I’ll send money from Texas to New York.

Green: It’s kind of like the Iowa deal, going after judges up there and the necessity to defeat them.

Barton: Hey, you think that didn’t scare a bunch of judges straight in other states? You bet it did. And I want to see pro-family guys scared straight that are squishy on this issue, and if we can’t take out these four Republicans and the Majority Leader in New York, we will have opened a huge door for Melhman and his kind to come in and start rewarding these guys for going against pro-family stuff, and you just can’t let that happen.

…

Barton: No disrespect to our Native American friends, but this is where you hang a bloody scalp over the gallery rail. You hang these four Republican scalps over the Senate rail and every other Republican senator looks up and sees those scalps and says, ‘my gosh, I’ll be hanging up there beside them if I don’t stay with this pro-family stuff.’ And that’s exactly what has to happen.

Last month we took note of reports that anti-gay activist Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan was considering running as a Republican challenger to incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow. 

Now Glenn has made it official that he will seeking the GOP nomination:

The Michigan leader of the conservative American Family Association announced Tuesday that he is running for the Republican nomination in the race to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, while another prominent GOP figure withdrew his name from consideration.

Gary Glenn, the association's state president, said federal election law requires him to file a formal declaration of candidacy this week because he has raised more than $5,000 and launched a campaign website. The Tupelo, Miss.-based association is a strong force on the Christian right and has been active in fighting gay marriage, adoption by gay couples and individuals, and sexually oriented material.

You can see Glenn's campaign website here.

I wonder 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."

Last month, J. Paul Oetken won Senate confirmation by a vote of 80-13, making him the first openly gay man to be confirmed as a federal judge.

Peter LaBarbera has long demanded a sexual orientation test for judges, asserting that all nominees must declare if they have a history of "practicing immoral homosexual behavior" or "consider yourself homosexual."

So needless to say, the milestone of Oetken's confirmation is not sitting well with him:

"Homosexual activists are quite clear that their so-called 'rights' trump our religious liberty, our freedom to act on our beliefs to oppose sexual immorality," he explains. "So we certainly can't trust open homosexual activists to give us fairness and to defend religious liberty and our First Amendment freedom to live by our faith."

LaBarbera adds that it is because homosexual activists strive to convince people, and force them by judicial fiat, to accept the homosexual lifestyle as somehow equal to heterosexuality.

"This is dangerous territory where we are seeing homosexual activists trying to get on the bench," says the spokesman. "The Democratic Party is advancing their cause and it's not going to help justice. In fact, I predict this will undermine religious liberty in this country."

Says LaBarbera: "We have a big fight ahead of us."

I wonder what LaBarbera's response would be if people were to demand that an openly Christian judicial nominee be kept off the bench because everyone knows that the Religious Right cannot be trusted to "give us fairness" on equality issues? 

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) told the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow today that the public is behind the GOP’s effort to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because “85 percent of Americans” oppose marriage equality. Discussing a Senate bill that would repeal DOMA, Huelskamp said: “Eight-five [sic] percent of Americans say, ‘We support traditional marriage,’ and the Senate does the opposite.” Polls show that the majority of Americans support equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians and believe that DOMA should be repealed. Huelskamp did not cite which survey he was referring to. The congressman also claimed that the Obama administration was promoting a “really radical agenda,” pointing to a proposal that would have allowed Navy chaplains to perform same-sex marriages in states with marriage equality.:

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved two amendments to the Defense Appropriations Bill that affirm congressional support for traditional marriage and religious liberty. Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) offered one measure Thursday night that would prohibit the reemergence of a recently rescinded Navy directive that would allow Navy chaplains to perform same-sex "wedding" ceremonies. "We need to protect the rights of our pastors from this really radical agenda that's coming out of this White House," he contends.

The Navy chief of chaplains announced earlier this year that military chaplains who desire to perform weddings for same-sex couples would be allowed to do so following the repeal of the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell." The directive says chaplains could perform such ceremonies in states where homosexual "marriage" is legal.

Huelskamp believes President Obama continues to stand in the way of traditional marriage initiatives.

"Democrat leadership has decided to take on the Defense of Marriage Act again," he notes. "Seventy-five to 80 percent of Americans say, 'Hey, balance your budget.' The Democrats will not do that. Eight-five percent of Americans say, 'We support traditional marriage,' and the Senate does the opposite as well," the Kansas congressman laments. "So that's the latest there. The president continues to...refuse to defend DOMA, [as does] the attorney general.... We've been fighting them on that, and Congress is standing up for traditional marriage."

On Washington Watch today, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins criticized Democratic efforts to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which discriminates against gay and lesbian couples, and accused gays and lesbians of “thrust[ing] their bedrooms into the public square.” Perkins went on to say that opponents of gay rights should be proud that they “have compassion and love for those who are bound up in that destructive lifestyle of homosexuality”:

Look, we’re not in people’s bedrooms. What they have done is they have thrust their bedrooms into the public square and are forcing a redefinition of marriage, and forcing Americans to condone their behavior. But even the Democrats see this, that there is no support across America to redefine marriage. Folks, I just want to encourage you to continue to stand up for traditional morality, for natural marriage. Yes, we have compassion and love for those who are bound up in that destructive lifestyle of homosexuality. But we do not have to shrink back in silence and allow them to redefine marriage and to reshape our culture.

• PFAW: PFAW Applauds Senate Confirmation of Paul Oetken.
• Tim Murphy @  Mother Jones: Michele Bachmann's Child Army.
• Igor Volsky @ Think Progress LGBT: FAMiLY LEADER’s Bob Vander Plaats Erupts In Laughter At Faggot Joke: ‘That’s Pretty Good.’
• Adele Stan @ AlterNet: The Scary Religious Ideology Behind Michele Bachmann's Anti-Gay Crusade.
• Susan Crabtree @ TPM: Obama Officially Backs Measure To Repeal DOMA.

Right-wing activist and former California legislator Steve Baldwin has organized an open letter to “Conservative, Catholic and Evangelical Leaders” asking them to refuse support for Mitt Romney’s campaign for president. Already a number of activists including failed US Senate candidate and Tea Party hero Joe Miller; Rick Scarborough of Vision America; Brian Camenker of MassResistance; Linda Harvey of Mission America; Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association; Ted Beahr of WND and Movieguide; Gary Glenn of American Family Association-Michigan, Kelly Shackleford of the Liberty Institute; Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation; Floyd Brown of WND; Dick and Richard Bott of Bott Family Radio, and the leaders of a number of anti-choice groups have signed the letter.

The letter says that “a Romney candidacy would be disastrous for the conservative movement and for the country,” writing that he is insincere in his conservative beliefs and “continues to support many aspects of the homosexual agenda even today.” The activists claim that “the flatly illegal charade of ‘gay’ marriage exists solely in Massachusetts due to Governor Romney’s illegal actions,” and lists numerous other issues including abortion rights and health care reform where Romney has reversed himself: “Romney has also been both in favor and against minimum wage legislation, capital gains taxes, gun control, amnesty for illegal aliens, campaign finance reform, the Kyoto agreement, gambling, gun control, and many other issues.”

They conclude by warning that nominating Romney “would be a disastrous mistake”:

Most disturbing is the key role Mitt Romney played in accelerating two of the greatest threats to our Judeo-Christian culture and free enterprise system: Homosexual marriage and government control of health care. In both instances, the actions Romney took – or didn’t take – on homosexual marriage and RomneyCare have done lasting damage to our country. Romney’s aggressive efforts to implement the unconstitutional Goodridge decision set a precedent which inspired pro-homosexual marriage activity nationwide, and his RomneyCare bill served as the model for ObamaCare, the biggest lurch toward socialism since the New Deal.

As such, Romney has done more damage to America in his four years as Governor than any Democrat officeholder we can think of. But Romney, to this day, defends his actions on both fronts and sincerely believes he has done nothing wrong, an attitude which only raises additional questions about his fitness for national office. We must question his worldview, his sincerity, and his judgment. We believe the election of Mitt Romney would be a disastrous mistake for the conservative movement and for the country.