Right-wing pseudo-historian and David Barton, who also leads one of the Keeping the Promise Super-PACs backing Ted Cruz, appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio program today to promote the republication of his book “The Jefferson Lies” by the fringe website WorldNetDaily after it was yanked from shelves by its previous publisher back in 2012 due to its inaccuracies.
Barton used the opportunity to explain that Thomas Jefferson “came out very clearly” against LGBT rights because they violate the the law of nature and the Bible.
“He actually introduced a bill that said that laws should be those that are recognized by the Bible,” Barton said. “Marriage should be based on biblical recognition. So he said marriage has got to be defined by what the Bible defines it as. That’s the law that he introduced. He also said that sexual relations were designed for procreation, not for entertainment. And therefore, in that basis, that’s how you define marriage, is procreation. So sexual relations was designed by the Creator, throughout the law of nature, for procreation. Anything that violates that, violates the laws of nature. And he came up also on the issue of marriage and he said, ‘Taking from the states the moral rule of their citizens and subordinating to the federal government would break up the foundations of the union.’ You leave it at the states, not the feds.”
As usual, Barton didn’t bother to explain just what legislation Jefferson introduced that defined marriage according to the Bible, so it is impossible to verify. But the quote that Barton cited from Jefferson about leaving issues of “moral rule” to the states had nothing to do with the issue of marriage whatsoever, as Jefferson was discussing the case of Cohens v. Virginia in which the Supreme Court “reaffirmed its right to review all state court judgments in cases arising under the federal Constitution or a law of the United States.”
