union

We are not quite sure what it is that Gary Bauer actually does these days.  We know that he has been involved in the Emergency Committee For Israel that he founded with Bill Kristol, but mostly he just seems to send out daily emails to activists through his American Values organization.

And yesterday's update contained a couple of real head-scratchers, as Bauer oddly tried to tie the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords earlier this year to the Occupy Wall Street protests: 

As it turns out, the assassin, Jared Loughner, was an apolitical radical who would fit in well with the Occupy Wall Street movement ... [T]he pundits and talking heads turn a deaf ear to all the hyperbolic rhetoric on the left. They were quick to point out one or two odd signs at a Tea Party rally, but they ignore the blatant anti-Semitism in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Bauer then went on to offer his thoughts on the Viki Knox controversy where he offered up this bizarre explanation for why the teacher's union was defending her anti-gay statements:

Knox, by the way, happens to be black. The teachers’ unions won’t defend her because they have fully embraced the homosexual rights movement. And in the liberal pecking order of minority rights, gay trumps black.

Last month we noted that Rena Lindevaldsen, the attorney for Lisa Miller, had written a book all about Miller's saga ... or, at least most of it, since there is barely any mention of the fact that Miller ultimately kidnapped her daughter and fled the country, which is odd considering that Lindevaldsen is reportedly teaching young lawyers at Liberty University to recommend just this sort of "civil disobedience" to clients they believe are being ordered to violate "God's law."

The book itself was predictable and, frankly, rather dull but that didn't stop Mat Staver, Wendy Wright, Mike Huckabee, and Peter Sprigg from glowingly endorsing it ... and now we can add Tony Perkins to the list of those endorsing the book:

Every parent's nightmare is losing a child--and Lisa Miller couldn't face the prospect of losing hers. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. Lisa Miller's child wasn't at risk from a dreaded disease. Or from violence. Or even from kidnapping. No, believe it or not, Lisa faced the prospect of losing her biological daughter because the courts ordered her to turn the child over to another woman. Why? Because she and the other woman were lesbian partners in Vermont when Lisa's daughter was born. The women are no longer together, and their civil union was dissolved. In fact, Lisa's now an ex-lesbian, who's renounced homosexuality and accepted Christ. So instead of giving up her daughter, she disappeared. Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel was Lisa's lawyer through all the court battles--but she also became her friend. She's telling Lisa's story in a new book called, Only One Mommy. Anyone concerned about parental rights, the homosexual agenda, and religious liberty should read this book--Only One Mommy, available on Amazon.com.

It is amazing that Perkins says that it is every parent's nightmare to lose a child and then actually mentions the threat of kidnapping in an effort to portray Miller as the victim when it was Miller who literally kidnapped her daughter and fled the country in order to defy multiple court orders and escape law enforcement. 

I guess we probably should not hold our breath waiting for any Religious Right leader to actually step up and suggest that maybe Miller ought to have obeyed the law or, at this point, turn herself in to authorities.

Yesterday we took the opportunity of Rick Perry’s recent speech at Liberty University to revisit his appearance on last year on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, in which he went into depth about the “supernatural events” (mainly rain or lack thereof) that have driven his life.

If the governor’s visit to Liberty is any indication, the affinity that he displayed with the Religious Right in his TBN appearance is still going strong. Before Wednesday’s speech, Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. gave Perry a rousing welcome, defending the governor for his controversial effort to require that girls in Texas recieve HPV vaccinations and calling Perry’s secession talk “gutsy.” Brian Kaylor of EthicsDaily, a publication of the Baptist Center for Ethics, reports that the ties between Perry and Falwell are even closer than what is being reported. Falwell was scheduled to take part in one of televangelist James Robison’s leadership summits, at which Religious Right leaders urged Perry to enter the race. While Falwell “could not make it,” Liberty University’s Vice President Johnnie Moore participated. Kaylor reports that Moore and David Lane, who organizes state-based “restoration” projects, were behind Perry’s appearance at Liberty:

Organized by Texas evangelist James Robison, the June meeting was a follow-up to a September 2010 meeting as Robison and other conservative Christians plotted to bring political revival and change to the 2012 elections.

Liberty's chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., son of Liberty's late founder, was scheduled to attend but could not make it.

Robison led a similar effort prior to the 1980 presidential election as he sought to defeat then-President Jimmy Carter. That effort culminated in an August 1980 rally in Dallas with then-Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan as the key speaker.

On Wednesday, Falwell introduced Perry at Liberty by talking about how much he "admired" Perry for "having the guts to say things that weren't exactly politically correct, like when Governor Perry hinted that Texas might secede one day from the Union."

Falwell also recounted saying several months ago – before Perry joined the presidential race – that "it was too bad" Perry was not running for president.

…

Falwell also said that Perry's trip to Liberty was organized and made possible due to the work of religious-political organizer David Lane and Liberty's vice president for executive projects, Johnnie Moore. Both Lane and Moore have been part of Robison's group.

According to Perry, Lane and Robison inspired him to lead "The Response," a prayer rally held last month at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Numerous other individuals in Robison's group were key leaders in planning the event, which thrust Perry into the national headlines just days before he officially announced he was running for president.

Perry's support among conservative evangelicals is one of the key factors to his rapid rise to the front of the Republican presidential primary polls.

His speech at Liberty University on Wednesday, his private meetings with Christian leaders in June and August, and his prayer rally in August demonstrate Perry's efforts to mobilize conservative Christians and receive their support as he seeks to be what Robison and his group say they are hoping for – a new Ronald Reagan.

The Family Research Council has released a series of radio ads in North Carolina, calling for the state legislature to place a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality for gays and lesbians on the ballot this November. North Carolina already prohibits same-sex marriage by statute, but the FRC says it’s not enough, warning, “Our laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman could be overturned.”

Organizers of the marriage amendment have called marriage equality an evil plot concocted by Satan and said an amendment is needed to “put a big letter of shame on the behavior.” According to findings from Public Policy Polling published today, while 61% of state voters oppose legalizing same-sex marriage, just 30% support the constitutional amendment.

Listen:

Marriage is at risk in our state. Our laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman could be overturned. Marriage between one man and one woman benefits families in society so we must preserve the marriage laws in our state Constitution.

On September 12, the North Carolina legislature will vote on putting a marriage amendment to a vote of the people. Powerful voices in our state capitol are threatening your right to vote on marriage. Take a stand for marriage. Call Rep. Chuck McGrady and ask him to vote yes to the marriage amendment. It's not about party, it's about marriage.

And on September 12, join us for a rally supporting marriage at 11 a.m. in front of the legislative building in Raleigh. Bring a sign and take a stand for marriage.

Joseph Farah, the editor of WorldNetDaily, is out with yet another column attacking marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, arguing that it will lead to the downfall of civilization. Farah, who once called for “literally, a break-up of the nation” because several states have legalized same-sex marriage, writes that marriage equality will inevitably lead to polygamy. Claims that same-sex marriage are not uncommon from the Right, Farah fears that if Republicans support the right of states under the Tenth Amendment to legalize same-sex marriage that they will ultimately introduce polygamy:

It took nearly 50 years for Utah to be admitted into the Union for this reason. And it was Republican Party opposition to polygamy that forced the action – just as it was Republican Party opposition to slavery that resulted in an end of that hideous institution in the United States.

Today we have even some Republicans in denial of history and in denial of the natural lusts of men throughout history.

Believe me, there is no legal or moral argument that can be made against polygamy if the institution of marriage is redefined as one between any two people. At that point, I would have to agree that marriage, as redefined, really would become discriminatory, since it is based on nothing more than judicial rulings and legislative actions by men.

…

Those who tell you that same-sex marriage is no big deal and won't lead to the further diminishment of the 6,000-year-old institution of marriage are either being disingenuous or are just plain ignorant.

Marriage is the most important cultural institution in any free and self-governing society.

If you want to plunge into the moral abyss of chaos and barbarism, then just cast your vote for same-sex marriage. Just pretend this profoundly faddish idea is only the latest breakthrough in "civil rights." Just don't raise your voice of objection to this bizarre idea being rammed down America's throat by those who have no appreciation for what really works in God's economy.

William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC joined Janet Mefferd today to make the case that President Obama is now a dictator who plans to create a police state and use undocumented immigrants to wage war on “White America.” Gheen, who previously accused Obama of treason and “replacing many core Americans” (among other radical claims), told Mefferd that “extra-political activities that I can’t really talk about because they’re all illegal and violent” may be needed to bring down Obama. Later in the interview, Gheen demanded that Republicans begin an impeachment process against Obama but lamented that he couldn’t hold marches in Washington D.C. because he was afraid that the president has too many supporters among the city’s black and Latino residents.

Gheen: What Janet Napolitano has spent most of her time doing in the last couple of months has been, one, preparing the new spy network that’s available now, the new data-collecting, see everything you do online, beyond the normal terrorist list that they’re creating, they’re creating a much larger list now of people who might be troublesome here in the country. And putting out videos and propaganda telegraphing what I believe to be a conflict with White America they’re preparing for after they get another 10 or 15 million people in the country to back them up.

…

We’re no longer referring to him as President Barack Obama, our national organization has made the decision and made the announcement we now refer to him as Dictator Barack Obama. That’s what he is. And basically at this point, if you’re looking for a peaceful, political recourse there really isn’t one that we can think of, and I’m really not sure what to tell people out there than I guess they need to make decisions soon to just accept whatever comes next or some type of extra-political activities that I can’t really talk about because they’re all illegal and violent.

A secretive ‘Super PAC’ tied to an Ohio political operative is planning to aid congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign after working to defeat South Carolina congressman John Spratt in the last midterm election. Chris Cillizza writes that “Citizens for a Working America, as the group is known, will be chaired by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Ed Brookover, a longtime political consultant and adviser to Bachmann, will be involved as will conservative lawyer and economist Marc Nuttle.”

Ken Blackwell’s ties to the Religious Right are well known, but Nuttle’s activism has flown below the radar.

Blackwell was Ohio’s Secretary of State from 2002-2006 whom after leaving office, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2009. He is now a senior fellow with the ultraconservative Family Research Council, a senior fellow with the far-right American Civil Rights Union, and a board member the pro-corporate Club for Growth. Columbus-based televangelist Rod Parsley vigorously backed his failed gubernatorial campaign and Religious Right activists endorsed his abortive bid for RNC chair. His staunchly anti-gay views will serve him well in the Bachmann camp, as Blackwell once compared gay people with arsonists and kleptomaniacs and same-sex couples with farm animals.

Nuttle is a Republican adviser and economist with deep ties to an extreme movement within the Religious Right composed of advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism. Nuttle is in fact Chairman of The Oak Initiative, a far-right organization dedicated to promoting the Seven Mountains ideology. The group claims in its mission statement, “The Oak Institute is being developed to raise up effective leaders for all of the dominant areas of influence in the culture, including: government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family services, media, and the church,” otherwise known as the Seven Mountains of society that Dominionists think should be controlled by fundamentalist Christians.

The Oak Initiative’s president Rick Joyner, the founder of MorningStar Ministries, has claimed that God is planning to destroy California and that God used Hurricane Katrina to punish America for tolerating homosexuality. The Oak Initiative’s board is filled with leading proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism, including Jerry Boykin, Janet Porter, Lance Wallnau and self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs. Lou Sheldon, the head of the Traditional Values Coalition who described LGBT activism as “the very face of evil,” is also a board member.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (Blackwell’s boss) and 2000 GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes addressed the Oak Initiative’s 2011 Summit alongside Nuttle, where Perkins called gays and lesbians “hateful” people who are “pawns” of Satan and Keyes urged Congress to impeach President Obama before he seizes power with the help of foreign countries. At the Summit, Boykin said that Obama is creating his own Brownshirt army to usher in Marxism and Joyner suggested that a secretive cabal crashed the economy to help Obama win the presidential election.

Nuttle spoke to Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries on how to “apply proper biblical principles to the marketplace and the workforce” and that God “has a plan and a solution for this current world crisis we find ourselves in.” Nuttle said that people “don’t have to figure” out all the economic solutions, “all you have to do is be obedient” to God. He also claimed that the United States is the only country with a government subservient to God: “Every other government in the world is some sort of government authority, it’s a dictatorship, or Islam where government is God, or where the dictator is God, or the Constitution is God, over the constituents.” Nuttle argued that “the fight is against the 30% [of politicians] who don’t care” about the decline of the economy, “because then there’s more room for government. Government’s what they want, socialism is the goal.” He ended his speech by saying, “lock your shields with each other against the enemy.” 

Earlier this year he addressed Liberty University’s Awakening 2011, the Religious Right political event hosted by Mat Staver of the LU-affiliate Liberty Counsel. Nuttle also appeared on God Knows with Jacobs, where he shared with the 'Prophet' his plan to solve the nation’s debt troubles.

As heads of the pro-Bachmann Super PAC, Blackwell and Nuttle will surely help Bachmann link her far-right economic views with her deep-seated social conservative activism.

Casual viewers of “The Response,” including some political reporters who don’t pay a lot of attention to the Religious Right, may have watched Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer rally on Saturday and wondered what all the fuss was about.  Most of the time was taken up with prayer and praise music.  Few of the speakers seemed overtly political.  Nobody used the occasion to endorse Perry’s pending presidential bid.

But context is everything, and the context for this event was remarkable: a governor launching a presidential bid by teaming up with some of the nation’s most divisive extremists to hold a Christians-only prayer rally that suggested Americans are helpless to solve the country’s problems without divine intervention. Some media coverage is missing the boat: the issue wasn’t whether it was ok for a politician to pray, or the size of the audience, but the purposes of the event’s planners and their disturbing vision for America.

Organizers argued (unconvincingly) that “The Response” was about prayer, not politics. But groups like the American Family Association (AFA), which paid for the rally and its webcast, and organizations like the Family Research Council, whose president was among the speakers, are not designed to win souls but to change American law and culture through grassroots organizing and political power-building.  They have a corrosive effect on our political culture by promoting religious bigotry and anti-gay extremism, by claiming that the United States was meant to be a Christian nation, and by fostering resentment among conservative evangelicals with repeated false assertions that liberal elites are out to destroy religious liberty and silence conservative religious voices.

By calling for this rally, and partnering with the far right of the evangelical world, Perry aligned himself with all these troubling strategies.  When he drew criticism for the event and the extremism of its sponsors, Perry suggested his critics were intolerant of Christians.  Speakers returned to the theme, with one of them declaring that “there is an attack on the name of Jesus.” Such claims of anti-Christian persecution are a tried-and-true strategy of the Religious Right for rousing conservative Christians to political activism.  And for those who actually believe that Christianity is on the verge of being criminalized in America, Perry’s event defined him as a defiant and courageous defender of the faith. 

Selective reading of material to support presupposed right-wing views is David Barton’s forte, so it comes as no surprise that the pseudo-historian is using a shoddy poll on same-sex marriage by an ultraconservative organization to claim that very few Americans support marriage equality.

On WallBuilders Live yesterday, Barton and co-host Rick Green hosted Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund to discuss their opposition to equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Barton and Green ended the interview by discussing the ADF poll which claimed that 62% of Americans were against marriage equality. ADF’s findings were something of an anomaly, given that most other recent polls show the majority of Americans are in favor of marriage equality, a number which even Republican pollsters admit is rapidly increasing. Unlike other polls, the ADF survey didn’t ask participants whether they believe gay and lesbian couples should be legally allowed to marry but instead asked if they agreed with the claim, “I believe marriage should be defined only as the union of one man and one woman.” As Dan Nejfelt of Faith in Public Life points out:

A key difference is that these polls focused on legality rather than the "definition" of marriage. Given that the political debate surrounding same-sex marriage pertains to legislation rather than the contents of the dictionary, it's hard to see the relevance of ADF's data. It certainly is interesting, but it's not even close to a refutation of the overwhelming body of current nonpartisan opinion research pointing to majority support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

But for Barton and Green, the poll demonstrates that the country is united against marriage equality, which they say only has the support of a tiny but vocal minority.

Barton: If you can get a Christian spirit going, it unifies people like crazy. And that’s what we got going on the marriage issue, that’s what we have going on the school prayer issue. The other guys are screaming that it’s dividing. No. When it’s 82 to 18 that’s not dividing, when it’s 62 to 35 that’s not dividing, that’s unifying.

Green: Well the way to divide everybody is to take an issue where only 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 percent are for it and force it on the whole country.

Barton: That’s right. Oh, are you talking about gay marriage here?

Green: I’m not even sure 15 percent are for it. Even when we say 62 percent are for traditional marriage I don’t think you can say 38 percent are for gay marriage, but they might be saying ‘I don’t really know if I want to make that decision.’

Barton: See, that’s when you have to look in the polls to see who are strongly for it. And when you get strongly for, very few. And I love the point he made too, he said they want to do this against the will of the people, that’s why they file lawsuits. I mean, they did not give the people of New York a chance to vote on this, and typically they do not. They file lawsuits against marriage because they can’t win at the ballot box. This is the thing, when it comes to the people they can’t win, which is another great indication that this is a minority driving this agenda. It’s not a majority, it’s not a unifying issue.