Michelle Goldberg at the The Daily Beast has a great column about Michelle Bachmann, who has officially entered the presidential race after making a good impression at the last debate.
Titled “Bachmann’s Unrivaled Extremism,” the piece makes a good case that Bachmann is the best example of a candidate from the Religious Right currently running:
Indeed, no other candidate in the race is so completely a product of the evangelical right as Bachmann; she could easily become the Christian conservative alternative to the comparatively moderate Mormon Mitt Romney. “Michele Bachmann’s a complete package,” says Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition wunderkind who now runs the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “She’s got charisma, she’s got an authentic faith testimony, she’s a proven fighter for conservative values, and she’s well known.”
Of course, outside of the Religious Right, Bachmann is known for being a gaff-prone nutcase. But Goldberg suggests that Bachmann has the same problem that Christine O’Donnell has: her strangest statements are really just tropes from the conservative evangelical subculture:
“Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public,” says author Frank Schaeffer, Francis Schaeffer’s son and former collaborator. “But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.”
There’s some disturbing stuff, like her connections to the Christian Reconstructoinist John Eidsmoe. But even more troubling is her relationship to her own stepsister:
In 2004, Bachmann gave a speech warning that gay marriage would lead to schoolchildren being indoctrinated into homosexuality. She wanted everyone to know, though, that she doesn’t hate gay people. “Any of you who have members of your family in the lifestyle, we have a member of our family that is,” she said. “This is not funny. It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay.”
She was clearly talking about her 51-year-old stepsister, Helen LaFave, who had lived with her partner, Nia Wronski, for more than 15 years. As Bachmann became the public face of opposition to gay marriage, her relationship with her stepsiblings grew strained. “Helen always liked Michele, always,” says Linda Cielinski, one of Bachmann’s other stepsisters. “They lived together as teenage girls. They were very close at that time.” Bachmann’s anti-gay activism, Cielinski says, “was a hit to the gut.”
It’s bizarre how she can have a close relation with someone who is gay, yet still be so homophobic. It just gives me one more piece of evidence that the Republicans really don’t care about gay rights one way or the other, but just use it as a tool to get voters to the polls.
At the risk of committing reductio ad Hitlerum, the strategy worked pretty damned well for ol’ Adolf. Bachmann and the Republicans are just using a tried-and-true formula. Having an enemy that you can demonize as ‘the other’ and blame things on is one way that communities define themselves and justify their actions. Nobody would dare use blacks or Jews or women for that political purpose today, but gays (and atheists and Muslims) are still considered legitimate targets in American culture.
I think this kind of makes sense – although whether it’s true or not is another matter! If you want to pick on a “sin” as defined by the Bible then being gay is a good one to go for. Can you imagine the amount of twitching buttocks if someone slammed lust, lying, greed etc. as hard as being gay?
I would definitely say it’s true. The anti-Muslim sentiment specifically has been pushed very hard by right-wing politicians, evangelicals, and military officials. And I can’t say it’s at all surprising.
Atheists usually just get wrapped up either with Muslims (we both hate Jesus or something) or with socialists (which is somehow synonymous with both “communists” and “liberals”).
Good observation Ursa. And I got a good laugh out of reductio ad Hitlerum.
To be fair, Republicans often demonize blacks as “the other”, but they do it in such a way that no one can call them out for blatant racism. Consider Reagan’s “welfare queen”, for example. However, as unethical as this may be, it’s not often taken to the extreme degree that homosexuality is.
Still, it is hard to imagine the Republicans refusing to pass a bill unless riders were attached exempting religious organizations from having to cater to black people because it violates their beliefs. You can still get away with that when gay people are the issue- and it’s happening right at this very moment in the New York State Senate.
I live in St. Louis, so we get all the spillover news from Illinois in addition to the empty heads locally. The Catholic adoption agencies are currently fighting against anti-discrimination legislation because it discriminates against their discrimination against gays, so I understand completely what you mean.
The kicker is that the Catholic agency receives government funding, so they want to have their cake and eat it, too. Un-freaking-believable.
Yes, I’ve heard about that one. I believe that at least one Catholic adoption agency decided to shut down rather than stop accepting government funding or comply with the law- can’t remember which state it was in, but it happened in the past year or so. Ugh. World too big; brain too small.
Amazing, isn’t it, the length that some religious organizations will go to in order to protect kids in need from the horror of having a happy, secure family life?
@Usra M
Are then any reliable stats for how many children are fostered/adopted by gay couples and how many of the children “turn out” (can’t think of a better word than that!) to be gay?
@ Anyone who’s interested
I heard that homosexuality in children is far more prevalent in single parent families (where the parent and child are of different genders) than in gay-parents families. I believe it is because, say if there was a boy and his mother but no father, he has no masculine influence, only a feminine one, you know?
I also heard that hormone levels in the womb play a large part. For males: in an excess of testosterone and an absence of oestrogen the child may be very large and more violent, whereas in the opposite conditions, they may be very effeminate and possibly gay. I imagine for females the opposite is true.
Being in a gay-parent family probably has some effect, but so what? They turn out gay, so what? No reason for massive discrimination.
But then again, for Catholic adoption agencies, the problem is deeper, as they categorically believe homosexuality in itself is immoral,so you have to force them to accept it, effectively shove it down their throats. Anyway, if I was gay and I wanted to adopt, I sure as hell wouldn’t go there!
@Jabster:
I believe there are such studies, and my recollection is that children raised by homosexual couples turn out to be gay at the same rate as children raised by heterosexual couples. I would have to do some digging to locate the actual studies and confirm this, as it has been a long time since I read them.
Here’s a relevant one. Can’t get access to the full article, but here is the citation and the abstract.
Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:692-697
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
Sexual identity of 37 children raised by homosexual or transsexual parents
R Green
The author reports on 37 children who are being raised by female homosexuals or by parents who have changed sex (transsexuals): 21 by female homosexuals, 7 by male-to-female transsexuals, and 9 by female- to-male transsexuals. The children range in age from 3 to 20 years (mean = 9.3) and have lived in the sexually atypical households for 1- 16 years (mean = 4.9). Thirty-six of the children report or recall childhood toy, game, clothing, and peer group preferences that are typical for their sex. The 13 older children who report erotic fantasies or overt sexual behaviors are all heterosexually oriented.
Don’t forget communists/socialists. That strawman villain still exists too!
Dick Cheney was all for anti-gay stuff until his daughter turned out to be gay. People are hypocrites, if it does not affect them they really don’t care.
It is just posturing, it gets them the crazy christian vote. The ultimate irony is that the votes they drum up by their tactics are actually from voters who would benefit from the centrists policies of the Democrats.
(I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but…) To Cheney’s credit, when it did matter to him, instead of doubling-down on the hate he had a change of heart and stopped being a dick (he,he,he…) on this issue. He could just as well have disowned her and continued to toe the party line.
To Bachmann’s discredit, she went in the opposite direction, and for purely cynical reasons. The juxtaposition is damning.
To be fair, he is a smart puppet master while she appears to be incapable of outsmarting a paper bag.
Agreed. I’ve always recognized evil genius when it appears in the Republican Party: Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Richard Nixon, etc. Hated what they stood for, but they weren’t stupid. However, with people like George Bush, Michelle Bachmann, and Palin, you see politicians who are not very smart, not well educated, but who can pull votes in from people like themselves, because they hammer away at the same old talking points: abortion, immigration, crime & punishment, limited government. The Tea Baggers drink it up.
if she is taken anymore seriously than a footnote in the beginning of the GOP race to the primaries, this country is in deeper kimshee than I had ever imagined
I fondly use the term bat$hit when referring to her, but those who love her scare the crap outta me.
There are absolutely 0 intelligent, educated, agenda free people that believe this stuff that the evangelical right believe. There are plenty that have agendas that weave this ideology into their messaging. But it is purely a deception towards another end or outcome….
I strongly suspect that the GOP primary race will be a complete freak-show with maybe one half decent candidate added. My prediction is that a freak will win it and Obama will wipe the floor with them in 2012. In states where everybody can vote in primaries, I strongly urge Democrats to go out and put their X by the biggest nut-case of a candidate available :-D
Anyone can vote in a primary in my state. I usually vote for the lesser evil. Too much precedence of the nut-jobs actually making it through. In the last election, the dems didn’t even want our vote. They “punished” the state’s moving up the date by telling us they didn’t care what we thought. Even hard-core dems voted republican in the primary.
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