Dispatches From the Culture Wars
Serial adulterer, prostitute client and diaper afficianado David Vitter is, of course, opposed to same-sex marriage. Something about the sanctity of marriage or something, I couldn’t hear him above the sound of his wife claiming she would cut off his penis if he cheated on her. And wouldn’t you know it, he thinks it’s being shoved down the throats of straight people.
I find it highly amusing that so many Christian right leaders seem to think, or at least pretend to think, that they’re going to manage to put the gay rights genie back in the bottle and turn the clock back to the 50s again. Some of them, I’m quite sure, say that just to keep the money flowing in to their organizations (*cough* Tony Perkins *cough*). Others, like Michael Brown, just seem to be living in a fantasy world.
The World Conference of Families annual conference is going on right now and advocates of equality have been criticizing the group and many of the speakers. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council puts his hypocrisy on stark display by claiming that criticism of the group or the conference is an attempt to “silence” the group.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal continues his habit of lying through his teeth on the campaign trail. During an appearance on the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch radio show, he got all uppity about Obama sending the Department of Justice down to sue the state of Louisiana for voiding Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood. There’s just one problem: He didn’t do that.
At the Values Voters Summit this weekend, the Family Research Council gave Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis the Cost of Discipleship Award for her courageous stand in favor of discrimination and her inevitably losing legal battle. Her attorney, Mat Staver, the dumbest lawyer in America not named Larry Klayman, helped Tony Perkins give her the award and delivered some typically over-the-top hyperbole.
One of the more ridiculous arguments we sometimes hear from the Christian right is that we can’t pass progressive policies that help gay people or women because that will inflame the Muslim world and put our troops in danger (not that we have many troops in war zones anymore). Louis Gohmert is the latest to suddenly develop a concern for the views of Muslims while demanding that the Senate not confirm the openly gay Eric Fanning as Army Secretary.
Is it my imagination or does the annual Values Voters Summit put on by the Family Research Council seem to come around every few months? This year it’s Sept. 25-27 and it’s notable that Jeb Bush was once listed as a speaker and now is not going to appear, and that Donald Trump has apparently turned down an invitation to speak. That has made Tony Perkins rather upset, evidently. The Christian Post reports about it:
If I had a dollar for every time some wingnut declared that Obama, or the Supreme Court, or whomever else, had “shaken their fist at God” or “slapped God in the face” or “poked God in the eye” by doing something the divine bully doesn’t like, I’d be a very rich man. Tony Perkins is the latest, saying that lighting the White House up in rainbow colors after the Obergefell ruling is gonna get the deity quite upset.
As the anti-gay bigots compete with one another to see who can use the most hyperbolic rhetoric about the upcoming same-sex marriage ruling, Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council’s entry into the competition is to claim that the ruling will be as consequential as 9/11, World War II and the Civil War.
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