Kyle Mantyla's blog

Last month, the radical "personhood" amendment in Mississippi was trounced in the polls, with 58% of voters rejecting the Religious Right's effort to implement draconian anti-choice restrictions in the state.

But that has not stopped supporters of this "personhood" movement from moving ahead with plans to try and pass similar amendments in states across the nation. 

And now Personhood USA has announced that Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich have all signed the organization's pledge to support and promote both state and federal "personhood" laws:

Personhood USA has unveiled a detailed and unique pledge declaring a commitment to advance the personhood rights of every human being, born and preborn. Ahead of the nation’s first presidential caucus in Iowa, Personhood USA is asking the Republican candidates to sign the pledge and declaration.

“I ____________ proclaim that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, and is endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to life,” it reads.

So far, candidates who have returned the pledge with their signatures include Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The "Personhood Republican Persidential Candidate Pledge" reads as follows:  

I __________________ proclaim that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, and is endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to life.

I stand with President Ronald Reagan in supporting “the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death,” and with the Republican Party platform in affirming that I “support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children.”

I believe that in order to properly protect the right to life of the vulnerable among us, every human being at every stage of development must be recognized as a person possessing the right to life in federal and state laws without exception and without compromise. I recognize that in cases where a mother’s life is at risk, every effort should be made to save the baby’s life as well; leaving the death of an innocent child as an unintended tragedy rather than an intentional killing.

I oppose assisted suicide, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and procedures that intentionally destroy developing human beings.

I pledge to the American people that I will defend all innocent human life. Abortion and the intentional killing of an innocent human being are always wrong and should be prohibited.

If elected President, I will work to advance state and federal laws and amendments that recognize the unalienable right to life of all human beings as persons at every stage of development, and to the best of my knowledge, I will only appoint federal judges and relevant officials who will uphold and enforce state and federal laws recognizing that all human being at every stage of development are person with the unalienable right to life.

Back in September, administrators at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center updated the hospital's visitation policy and, in an effort to "respect patients' religious practices and preserve their privacy," included a provision that stipulated that "no religious items, (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit."

The new language went unnoticed for several several weeks until the document was forwarded to the Family Research Council, which immediately alerted members of Congress like Rep. Steve King, who then denounced the policy on the House floor, claiming that it prevented priests from offering communion to wounded soldiers and family members from bringing a Bible to a loved one.

Officials at Walter Reed quickly rescinded the policy, saying it had been incorrectly worded and should have been more thoroughly reviewed before it was released.

Rep. King was on AFA's "Today's Issues" program today with Tim Wildmon and Bryan Fischer to discuss the issue and explained that, in the end, this policy change was really all President Obama's fault:

How does this happen? How does the President of the United States have the time to have all of these things changed all the way down to these levels and levels well below this level? And I've watched it happen in the transition of the Chief Executive officer a couple of times in the past and it happens this way: when you put somebody in place as Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, then he fires everybody that he can and puts in political appointments. Those political appointments then lord it over everybody beneath them and that philosophy of the Commander in Chief just flows down across the entire Executive Branch of government and it cascades through there in a matter of a couple of months. And then the people who like their jobs and will slide into their desk in the morning and they'll be thinking "what would Barack Obama do if he were sitting at my desk, doing my job today?" I want to please him so I'm likely to , I'm going to write something that is compatible with our Commander in Chief's attitude."

That kind of thing does change the culture; that's why we need a new president so badly. You cannot fix these one at a time - you can fight them off and you can sometimes take a little back, but there's another hundred or two or three hundred of those out there going on simultaneously that we didn't catch, that we weren't able to reverse. You just simply can't play Whack-a-Mole endlessly and save our American religious liberty, you've got to replace the Commander in Chief who will then appoint new people and have the right principles cascade down from the White House throughout the entire Executive Branch and that affects the culture of the whole United States of America.

• Jillian Rayfield @ TPM: Florida Family Association: ‘Anonymous’ Hacked Us Over Lowe’s Campaign.
• Towleroad: Anti-Gay Amendments Dropped from Defense Bill; Sodomy Ban Stays.
• Gawker: Stadium’s Closed Roof Dooms Birthers’ Aerial Message.
• David Corn @ Mother Jones: Romney in 2002: I'm "Moderate," "Progressive," and "Not a Partisan Republican."
• Igor Volsky @ Think Progress LGBT: DeMint Blocks Confirmation Of El Salvador’s Ambassador Because She Condemned Homophobia.

• Donald Trump has dropped out of his own debate.
• Newt Gingrich tells CBN News that, when it comes down to it, the Religious Right will want someone who can debate and defeat President Obama, so his personal baggage will not really matter.
• Bryan Fischer says he does not understand how people can be supporting Gingrich.
• Meanwhile, anti-gay fringe activist Eugene Delguadio is taking credit for pressuring Gingrich to support The Family Leader's pledge.
• Mike Huckabee has endorsed Tommy Thompson for the US Senate in Wisconsin.
• Finally, Tony Perkins is mad at Starbucks.

Last week, the Culture and Media Institute released a report entitled "Baptism by Fire" which complained that media outlets were covering the faith issues as they relate to the Republican primary battle in a different manner then it was covered during the Democratic primary battle in 2008:

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama's potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion.

ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they're letting viewers know that "Rick Perry's gonna have to answer some questions about the people" he prays with, fretting that God "told Michele Bachmann," to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is "a cult" or if "Mitt Romney is a Christian," the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates' faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn't) candidate Obama's 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to "black liberation theology," or Obama's half-Muslim heritage.

The Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field.

The obvious response to this allegation would be to point out that the media probably writes a lot more about the faith of Republican candidates because Republicans candidates regularly use their faith as part of their campaigns.

After all, Rick Perry just released two ads about his faith and organized a massive public prayer rally earlier this year, while Michele Bachmann was just on James Dobson's radio program talking about the importance of a "biblical worldview."  For his part, Newt Gingrich regularly uses his faith as part of his campaign while Mitt Romeny's Mormonism continues to be an issue to various Religious Right activists.  In fact, just last month, most of the Republican contenders gathered for a "Thanksgiving Family Forum" hosted by several Religious Right groups where they spent several hours discussing nothing but their faith.

So the reason the press writes more about the faith of Republican candidates probably has a lot to do with the fact that Republican candidates make faith a large part of their campaigns ... but admitting that would pretty much undermine the entire premise of CMI's report, which is why, when CMI's Matt Philbin was on The Janet Mefferd Program yesterday and she raised this rather obvious point, he struggled to explain that it was still a double standard because Democrats are "supposedly" just as religious as Republicans:

Mefferd: Now I wonder if that fact that you have a number of GOP hopefuls who are very, you know, open about their faith - you have Michele Bachmann, you have Rick Perry, you have Herman Cain (you have Herman Cain,) you have Mitt Romney - could it be construed that faith is more of an issue in this election because they are more candidates talking about it?

Philbin: Well, in any GOP primary battle, they do talk about it more, certainly, then Democrats do. In Iowa, they're going to evangelical conservatives and they certainly are not going to be reticent about their faith. But the problem is that the Democrats are, supposedly, just as religious, they have a need to appeal to almost the very same people, so for the networks not to cover the religion of the Democrats while they are covering the religion of the Republicans is a strange double standard.

One of CMI's recommendations in this report is that "reporters should refrain from injecting religion where it doesn't belong" ... but apparently reporters should also be writing a lot about the faith views of Democratic candidates even if those views tend not to play nearly as prominent a role in their campaigns as compared to Republicans. 

• PFAW: Catering to Hate Is Bad for Business, Bad for America.
• Marie Diamond on Think Progress Justice: Another Oops: Perry Says Solar Company Solyndra Is A Country.
• Frances Martel @ Mediaite: Andrew Breitbart Resigns From GOProud Advisory Board After Group Outs Perry Staffer.
• Towleroad: Newt Gingrich Bows Down to Iowa Anti-Gay Group 'The Family Leader.'
• David Weigel @ Slate: Breitbart to Beck: You're a Liar and a Coward, "Dead to Me."
• Washington Independent: NOM’s 2010 financial records raise questions.
• Carlos Maza @ Equality Matters: Report: MSNBC, Fox News Promote Anti-Gay Hate Group Leader Tony Perkins.

• Gary Bauer encourages his readers to contact Lowe's and "applaud their decision not to promote thinly veiled Islamic propaganda."
• Bill Keller is back with another press release about how Glenn Beck is a cult member.
• In addition to graphic anti-abortion ad, Randall Terry is also running ads accusing President Obama of funding Islamic terrorists.
• Bryan Fischer on Newt Gingrich: "His Svengali-like ability to swindle conservatives into thinking that he is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan is a striking testimonial to his slippery gift of glibness."
• Mat Staver, on the other hand, says that "if I had to cast my vote now, it would be for Newt Gingrich."

Last week, Concerned Women for America posted a video featuring Janice Crouse, a Senior Fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute, discussing the three biggest threats to the institution of marriage.

Among them were promiscuity, co-habitation, and, of course, homosexuality.

Crouse's presentation was chock-full of statistics that she pulled from who-knows where but they featured heavily in her case that the institution of marriage was threaten by gay relationships because gays have a much shorter life span, much higher suicide and STD rates, do not maintain relationships for longer than a year and a half, increased rates of abuse and have multiple sexual partners:

For eight years, Timothy Goeglein served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison where he served as the middle man between the Oval Office and the Religious Right.

Goeglein served in this capacity until it was discovered that he had plagarized several columns he had been writing for an Indiana newspaper over the years and he subsequently resigned, eventually landing a new job as the main lobbyist for Focus on the Family.

Since leaving the White House, Goeglein has not been shy about proclaiming his undying admiration for his former boss, calling President Bush the "most pro-life and pro-family president in the history of the United States" and a "great thinker" who was "the instrument in God's hand" that kept America safe and who will one day be recognized by historians as one of the nation's greatest leaders.

Goeglein has now written a book about his time with Bush entitled "The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era" and this week is a guest on Liberty Counsel's "Faith and Freedom" radio program where he is promoting.

And judging by today's episode, Goeglein's love of President Bush has in no way abated, as he declared that Bush was one of those men who possessed an Aristotelian "a greatness of soul":

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell and Pastor John Hagee have been engaged in a war of words lately, stemming from O'Donnell's characterization of Hagee's infamous sermon in which he preached that God used Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust as a means of getting Jews to return to Israel. 

On Friday, Buster Wilson decided to weigh in on the dispute on his "AFA Today" radio program where he called on the network to "clean the stable" of hosts like "the admitted lesbian Rachel Maddow" and Lawrence O'Donnell:

National news networks do have ... a tendency for mischaracterizing the works, motivations, and the actions of religious people. Do you notice that? Well, I'll tell you, one of the worst, one of the worst is MSNBC. When you take the likes of Chris Matthews, and when you take Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow, you have some of the most anti-Christian, anti-religious people on journalistic television today. No question about it.

...

We need to let MSNBC know it's time for them to clean the stable out of those people who are so anti-Christ, so hateful. When you listen to the admitted lesbian Rachel Maddow, when you listen to Lawrence O'Donnell and some of the things that Chris Matthews says and some of the other people that they've had to chasten on their network with either getting them off the network or giving them time off without pay, this network needs, I say this network needs to do a little cleaning up in their house because absolutely it's out of phase with the reality of what's going on in the rest of the world.

Allow us to point out that Wilson is General Manager of the American Family Radio Networks, which just so happens to be the radio network that provides Bryan Fischer with two hours of radio time every day from which to spew all manner of unmitigated bigotry:

As general manager, Wilson presumably has some say over the barrage of hate-filled bigotry that Fischer unleashes on a daily basis on his radio station ... so perhaps he ought to get his own house in order before he starts telling others that they need to do some house cleaning.