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July 22, 2008
Alan Keyes's Martyrdom Aborted
It appears we spoke too soon when we declared Alan Keyes’s presidential hopes over in April. Keyes had failed to make any headway in the Republican primary, and when he quit the GOP to become the nominee of the Constitution Party—the Howard Phillips fringe group that won James Dobson’s protest vote in 1996—he discovered that the activists at the Constitution Party convention didn’t care for him too much, rejecting him 3-to-1 in favor of Chuck Baldwin.
Keyes is no stranger to political failure, having lost (by similar margins) three Senate races in two states, along with two previous presidential runs. This year he waxed philosophical: “I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, but they kill you. You're invited in, but they kill you.”
But somehow, Keyes has found a way to continue his quixotic race. An article in FrontPage magazine (which described Keyes as “the Energizer Loser”) detailed how disgruntled members of California’s Constitution Party delegation (known there as the American Independent Party) broke away from the national party after it rejected Keyes.
And now it seems that the California Secretary of State is recognizing the breakaway faction. So, barring any further legal action, Keyes is going to be a real presidential candidate in November. At least in California. Why, Keyes’s presence on the ballot may even siphon enough far-right votes from John McCain to tip the state’s electoral votes to Barack Obama.
While this must be an exciting moment for the Keyes camp, one has to wonder: If Keyes “represent[ed], in political terms, the abortion” before, what does he metaphorically represent now?
Posted by Ezra at 4:44 PM | Permalink
July 10, 2008
Vigilante: 'Deport Them All'
In case you thought the anti-immigrant fever of 2006 had broken, restrictionist think tanks are still promoting restriction, states are still passing immigrant crackdowns, and there are still plenty of hard-core cranks across the country. A story from CBS 13 in Sacramento, California featured one man ennobled by his passion for confronting day laborers with a trailer-mounted billboard saying “DEPORT THEM ALL.”
[Davi Rodriguez] drives the sign up and down the streets of Sacramento where day laborers wait for work, sometimes videotaping the reactions and uploading them to YouTube. Workers we talked to say they feel harassed, and they're losing jobs.
(The CBS 13 site has video of the report.)
Harassment of day laborers is a common tactic of local anti-immigrant vigilantes. Rodriguez’s billboard directed viewers to go to the website of Save Our State, the group that wrote the blueprint for local immigration crackdowns in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and dozens of other cities. Two years ago, Save Our State founder Joseph Turner described his method of “saving” California from becoming a “Third World cesspool”:
"With as little as five people you can shut down a day-laborer center," says Mr. Turner, because employers will be too intimidated to stop and hire them. Contractors have been deterred from hiring from these sites during the protests and in several days that followed. Home Depot declines to comment on Mr. Turner.
As Turner explained then in another interview, this is all a way of expressing himself as a “proud nationalist”:
"I believe this country is superior and I believe our culture is superior to all others," he declared.
He sees illegal immigrants as the pre-eminent threat to that culture.
Posted by Ezra at 5:55 PM | Permalink
June 27, 2008
McCain Endorses CA Marriage Amendment After Meeting OH Right-Wing Activists
As we noted yesterday, John McCain was scheduled to meet with a handful of right-wing activists in Ohio who were not particularly excited about the prospect of supporting his campaign. At the meeting, McCain reportedly “took detailed notes and listened intently” but apparently didn’t quite win them over:
He spoke for more than an hour but never mentioned issues that social conservatives skeptical of McCain want to hear about: his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, or appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court.
Conservative activists say that's a big problem.
"John McCain needs to talk about life more often, he needs to talk about marriage," activist Phil Burress said. "If the senator thinks he is going to run the campaign appealing to the middle by avoiding to talk about the social issues, he is going to lose Ohio."
But what do you know? One day later, it looks like the message these activists delivered has sunk in, leading McCain to suddenly come out in support of the California Marriage Amendment:
United States Senator John McCain today announced his support for the California Protection of Marriage initiative on the state's November ballot, leaders of the ProtectMarriage.com campaign announced. In an email received by the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, Senator McCain issued the following statement:
"I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions."
Posted by Kyle at 4:31 PM | Permalink
June 19, 2008
The Right Goes All In to Stop Marriage Equality in California
As we have noted over the last several weeks, the Religious Right’s response to the California marriage ruling has been noticeably over-the-top, even for them. Throwing out everything from Nazi metaphors and warnings that the end of the world was upon us to hateful language and ridiculous scare-tactics, the Right’s response has consisted almost entirely over rhetorical over-reaction.
But now that same-sex marriages have begun in California, the Right appears to be transitioning from over-reaction to action and begun ramping up its organizing efforts to amend the California Constitution to “provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized.”
Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Focus on the Family dumped a quarter-million dollars into the effort:
The initiative campaign proposes to amend the state Constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. It received $250,000 this week from an evangelical group, Focus on the Family, and declared that the debate about same-sex marriage "is not over." Focus on the Family, led by James C. Dobson, posted a statement on its website declaring that California's "judicially imposed social experiment has hastened the demise of religious freedom across the U.S."
Today, the Family Research Council sent out an email seeking to have its own quarter-million dollar investment be doubled by a matching grant for the fight in California and across the nation:
I'm writing to ask you to give a generous donation to Family Research Council's MARRIAGE CAMPAIGN.
Your donation and others will be doubled by a Matching Grant up to $250,000!
Traditional marriage is now in grave peril across the nation due to the outrageous decisions by activist judges and radical legislators in Massachusetts, California, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Oregon. With reckless disregard for logic and law, these threats open the door to:
* Counterfeit marriage being imposed on states with marriage amendments
* Erosion of traditional morality as homosexuality is normalized
* Schools teaching that homosexual behavior and homosexual "marriage" are social goods
* Restriction of religious freedom and free speechIn response to the marriage crisis, FRC has launched our Marriage Campaign.
Our initial goal: raise $2 million immediately to educate the nation on the centrality of marriage, respond to threats and lies across the country, educate leaders and pastors, and register voters.
The crisis is so great that FRC has been given a $250,000 Matching Grant to help fight this battle and others
FRC plans to use the money is raises to, among other things, “Educate the grassroots and government leaders, Launch paid advertising and press events, Alert and inform FRC's powerful network of churches and Flood TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet with FRC experts doing eye-opening interviews.”
FRC plans to use the money is raises to, among other things, “Educate the grassroots and government leaders, Launch paid advertising and press events, Alert and inform FRC's powerful network of churches and Flood TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet with FRC experts doing eye-opening interviews.”
The group through which FOF and FRC will presumably channel their money and efforts is ProtectMarriage.com, a who’s who of right-wing organizations and individuals. ProtectMarriage itself appears to kicking its efforts into high-gear, beginning with what they seem to be billing as the single most important conference call ever:
Dear Pastors, Friends and Christian Leaders,
We have labored to make this letter as short as possible. However, the gravity of this moment caused us to need to share several critical items. Please read carefully – at least this first page.
The landscape of California will change dramatically as of Monday, June 16 at 5:01 PM. Every Bible believing pastor and church will be affected.
Please join with pastors and Christian leaders all across California who are coming together at 43+ locations for a statewide Pastors Strategic Conference Call, Wednesday, June 25, at 10 AM.
For the location list, please see www.protectmarriagesd.com.
If you, as a pastor, are willing to host a gathering of pastors and Christian leaders at your church, or you know of a pastor who will host, please contact Chris Clark at pastor@eastclairemont.com or 858-395-7136. You need to have speaker-phone capability that can be adequately amplified, along with PowerPoint capabilities for visual purposes.
Additionally, please forward this email to as many pastors and Christian leaders as you can or email reply with the email addresses of pastors and Christian leaders so that we can keep them informed of future developments … Be assured that the information shared will be extremely beneficial for the future of the cause of Christ in California. Saying it another way, it is worth canceling all other appointments in order to be present at one of these locations.
The conference call looks like it is tied to the organization’s efforts to use churches to register thousands of new voters before the November election:
The church in California is being called upon to turn out the vote for the November election, in which voters will vote on a constitutional amendment to nullify a recent court decision legalizing homosexual "marriage" in that state.
ProtectMarriage.com has already signed on a thousand churches to work to increase voter registration and turnout. As spokesman Ron Prentice notes, the church is seen as one of the keys to victory. "[In] many elections, only 50 percent of those church members register to vote," he says. "And so we know that our success hinges on getting out as many votes as possible -- and the church community is available and willing."
Prentice explains that as a follow-up to voter registration materials, his group will provide church leaders with specific sermon content on the subject of biblical marriage -- "and then we'll be working with them to get out more and more of their congregation to vote," he adds.
It seems as if it has finally dawned on the Right that a loss in California on the marriage issue could do serious damage to their efforts to pass a federal marriage amendment and permanently deny marriage equality to men and women throughout the nation and they look set to pull out all the stops in an effort to ensure that that does not happen. As AFA’s OneNewsNow put it: “History has shown that what happens in California affects the rest of the country, so Prentice is calling on people to pray for victory."
Posted by Kyle at 5:30 PM | Permalink
June 17, 2008
How Gay Marriage “Sodomized The Entire Culture” and Destroyed Father’s Day
Last month, when the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage rights for gays and lesbians, the Right was typically apoplectic, unleashing everything from Nazi metaphors to warnings that the end of the world was near. In the weeks since, it doesn’t seem as if the Right has calmed down much and now that marriages have begun in the state, they have come out in force to rail against it and warn of dire consequences to come.
While Concerned Women for America announced a Day of Prayer and Fasting in hopes that “our nation will return to the Biblical values on which she was founded,” others such as Biblical Family Advocates screeched that “California has slid off of its foundations into moral anarchy” and accused the court of mandating sin by allowing gays to “sodomize the entire culture”:
"It is truly amazing that the homosexual community desired the government to get out of their bedroom and now they use the government to force their bedroom upon the general populace. They will not be satisfied until they have sodomized the entire culture, including the family, schools and even the church which should be a safe haven for children, not hedonistic indoctrination camps."
For his part, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough lambasted the “judicial autocrats” who have dealt “another body blow to the institutions of marriage and the family” and proclaimed that religious institutions and the family itself were now in danger:
"Those who think the judicial assault on marriage won't affect them had better think again. It will impact on everything from adoption to public-school curriculum. Church-based agencies will be forced to place children with same-sex couples or get out of the adoption business. The schools will be required to teach that there's absolutely no difference between a family with a mommy and a daddy and one with two mommies, or two daddies." Scarborough urged the people of California and America to "resist this monumental evil."
The idea that faith-based organizations will come under attack was echoed by the Family Research Council, as was the idea that the traditional family was also in danger, with FRC going so far as to run ads bizarrely claiming that marriage equality was somehow going to destroy Father’s Day:
Posted by Kyle at 6:18 PM | Permalink
Pat Robertson on Marriage Equality: 'So Gross' It Will Lead to End of Nation
Pat Robertson commented yesterday on legal same-sex marriages in California:
Sodomy. In all history, as far as I can tell, any nation that embraces this so-called lifestyle, and that legalizes it, celebrates it, protects it, is on the ash-can of history. …
Whew. What does it say? You’ve sown the wind, you’ve reaped the whirlwind?
Posted by Ezra at 5:31 PM | Permalink
June 9, 2008
Pat Robertson on Election Priorities: 'Judges, Judges, Judges'
Decrying the recent California Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality on the “700 Club” yesterday, Pat Robertson reminded his viewers about the upcoming election:
I think that if there’s ever a cause in this election, it is to put in judges. I think—last election, I said the three most important issues were judges, judges, and judges.
Posted by Ezra at 9:28 AM | Permalink
June 5, 2008
Giant Ads Recruit for 'Religious War' Against Gay Marriage
Not surprisingly, the Religious Right is upset at the failure of an effort to block California’s recent same-sex marriage decision from going into effect. “[N]ationwide legal chaos,” predicted the Alliance Defense Fund. The decision “abolishes the meaning of motherhood and fatherhood,” opined Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. A “further extension of their judicial activism,” said Pacific Justice Institute’s Brad Dacus.
At the same time, readers of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times were confronted with an enormous advertisement urging them to “join the Crusade” of “conscientious resistance” to “the homosexual ‘moral revolution.’”
An obscure but well-heeled group called the American Society for Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) ran ads today covering two full pages in those newspapers, warning of the threat of same-sex marriage. The ad echoes the now-common Religious Right theme that equality for gays and lesbians would lead to the “persecution” of Christianity, but with 4,600 words in some of the most expensive print around, TFP apparently tried to make the argument in the least succinct way possible, discoursing on Nazism, the definition of truth, various Vatican publications, and Joan of Arc.
By legalizing same-sex “marriage,” the State becomes its official and active promoter. It calls on public officials to officiate at the new civil ceremony, orders public schools to teach its acceptability to children, and punishes any state employee who expresses disapproval. …
Left unchecked, this anti-Christian trend will become an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and our American way of life that we do not hesitate to call persecution. …
As the homosexual revolution’s anti-Christian intolerance makes itself felt through increasingly persecutory measures, a terrible problem of conscience arises in any who resist: Should we follow our consciences? Should we give in?
For Catholics like ourselves, the condoning of same-sex “marriage” would be tantamount to a renunciation of Faith. …
This is a battle for the soul of America. The so-called Cultural War is gradually becoming a Religious War.
Tradition, Family and Property is an unusual group. Founded in 1973 after the anti-Communist writings of a Brazilian dissident Catholic activist, TFP brought a unique style of protest—serious young men with red capes, heraldic banners, and brass bands—to issues ranging from abortion, homosexuality, and contraception to anti-Communism, water subsidies, flag burning, and the Gulf War. While the group doesn’t have the name recognition of the more media-savvy Catholic League, it still brought in $6.8 million in donations and sales in 2006.
Posted by Ezra at 6:05 PM | Permalink
May 20, 2008
Gay Marriage = End-Times Prophecy, Says Janet Folger
Ex-Rep. Ernest Istook of the Heritage Foundation might have thought he was pretty edgy in resorting to Nazi metaphors to describe the California Supreme Court’s decision in favor of marriage rights for gays and lesbians. But Janet Folger consulted her sources and came up with an even more apocalyptic comparison:
There was only one time in history, according to these writings, where men were given in marriage to men, and women given in marriage to women.
Want to venture a guess as to when? No, it wasn't in Sodom and Gomorrah, although that was my guess. Homosexuality was rampant there, of course, but according to the Talmud, not homosexual "marriage." What about ancient Greece? Rome? No. Babylon? No again. The one time in history when homosexual "marriage" was practiced was … during the days of Noah. And according to Satinover, that's what the "Babylonian Talmud" attributes as the final straw that led to the Flood. …
In fact, [Caucus for America’s Aryeh Spero] said, "the writings indicated that it wasn't even so much the 'straw that broke the camel's back,' but that the sin in and of itself is so contrary to why God created the world, so contrary to the order of God's nature, that God said then and there 'I have to start all over … to annihilate the world and start from the beginning. …'"
Not only did Folger indicate that gay marriage is what caused the deluge, she outlined specifically what that means for the California decision: “the end of the world.”
The one time it happened was: "During the days of Noah." When I first heard this, my mind immediately went to a verse I've heard many times but never with such relevance. The verse is found in Matthew 24:37. It reads:
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. – Mathew 24:37 (NIV)
I used to read this verse and think: It was bad at lots of points in history; it doesn't necessarily mean now, but if these Jewish writings are true, we are uniquely like the "days of Noah" right now – and only right now. …
I'm praying and working to protect marriage in California (and the rest of the country) not only because I care about marriage, but because I care about civilization. And, if we obey God, he just may spare us from the judgment we deserve.
Posted by Ezra at 2:56 PM | Permalink
Right Attacks California Marriage Ruling
Not surprisingly, the Right’s reaction to last week’s ruling by the California Supreme Court in favor of equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians was swift and negative.
Former Rep. Ernest Istook, now of the Heritage Foundation, evoked Nazi metaphors to blame those who supported civil unions as a compromise: “By trying to appease homosexual rights activists, those who have refused to stand up for traditional marriage helped to create this court ruling. They are the Neville Chamberlains of the cultural wars.”
Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said he was "saddened for the people of California" but "especially for the children of that state."
"The California Supreme Court ruling not only overruled the very clear will of the people, it also proposes to overrule God's design," Duke said. "These judges may think they know more about marriage than the rest of us, but I am confident they don't know more about marriage than God. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Children need that environment to give them their best chance to fulfill their great potential. That's not only my opinion and the opinion of most of the people in this country, it's God's opinion, and His opinion overrules the opinion of any judges.
Indeed, the Right emphasized this “activist judges” angle; Gary Bauer, attacking the “four unelected robed radicals,” wrote:
It was an egregious exercise in judicial activism – of judges wielding raw political power to redefine our most basic values. But that is how the Left has succeeded. It cannot achieve its goals through the democratic process via the elected legislatures, so it ignores the people and goes to the courts, where it relies on political activists cloaked in black who answer to no one. The Left succeeds by using the most undemocratic methods possible.
Of course, Bauer may not realize that, while appointed at first, justices on California’s Supreme Court face voters at the next general election; each of the justices in the majority for this case has been retained by voters at least once. Bauer is probably aware, though, that the “elected legislature” in California passed marriage equality in 2005 and 2007, only to have it vetoed both times by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Nevertheless, right-wing activists hoped the decision would energize opponents of gay rights into action. “The good news is that I believe this will re-ignite the debate over a federal constitutional amendment,” according to Concerned Women for America’s Matt Barber. Jan LaRue called on Californians to recall members of the state’s Supreme Court in the way they recalled the governor several years ago. “Are you going to sit by and do nothing while four black-robed despots take away your right to govern yourselves?”
Meanwhile, the effort to put on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the California ballot continues—now, apparently, with more funding.
And, in spite of a beleaguered GOP’s effort to keep a low profile on social wedge issues during this election cycle, the Right is hoping the decision will push John McCain to “speak out more strongly in support of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” as Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council put it.
Posted by Ezra at 12:21 PM | Permalink
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