Fighting the Right

Today's episode of Liberty Counsel's "Faith and Freedom" radio program featured Steve Crampton and Harry Mihet praising the roundly criticized study by Mark Regnerus on gay parenting, calling it a "blockbuster" that "blows the lid" off of the claims that kids are not damaged by being raised in gay households.  

But mainly Crampton and Mihet hailed the study for confirming both common sense and the Bible because, as Crampton said "true science always seems to me to reinforce and strengthen what the Scripture tells us from the start": 

As we have noted several times before, Religious Right radio show host Steve Deace has made a habit of inviting openly anti-Mormon activists onto his program to make the case that Christians cannot vote for Mitt Romney purely because of his faith.

Last night, Deace interviewed Stephen Mansfield, author of the forthcoming book "The Mormonizing of America: How the Mormon Religion Became Became a Dominant Force in Politics, Entertainment, and Pop Culture" to discuss the issue of Romey's Mormonism once again, during which Deace complained that whenever he criticizes Romney, he gets accused of being an anti-Mormon bigot.

Of course, Deace is not being accused of anti-Mormonism because he is criticizing Romney's inconsistent record or history of flip-flops but rather because he frequently offers air time to people who liken voting for Romney to voting for Satan. And, in fact, during the discussion with Mansfield, Deace openly wondered how voters can justify supporting candidates just because they might be good on some issues despite that fact they also "believe things that are so crazy" like Mormonism: 

What I have found is, you know, I can vet every other Republican candidate running for president the last two cycles, I can vet their record. I can talk about I don't like Rick Santorum's endorsement of Arlen Specter and nobody calls me an anti-Catholic bigot. I can vet the record of every other Republican running for ... I can vet Rudy Giuliani's record and nobody calls me a bigot against agnostics. But if I vet Mitt Romney's record, I'm a religious bigot and this continues on to this day.

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At some level, when people believe things that are so crazy, does that cancel out where they're at on anything else?

When Deace was "vetting" the other GOP candidates, he never explicitly attacked any of them for their faith, yet he does exactly that to Romney on a regular basis.  So if Deace doesn't like being called an anti-Mormon bigot, perhaps he ought to stop offering air time to (and agreeing with) anti-Mormon activists.

Michele Bachmann took her propensity for promoting conspiracy theories to another level this week while speaking with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios, after warning of not just a media plot to use “flattery” to sway the Supreme Court decision on health care reform but also new claims about the Obama administration and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. She told Rios that Obama undercut the Magna Carta and “spit at the Constitution and at the will of the American people” with his move to block the deportation of some younger undocumented immigrants, proving that he is “the most dangerous President we have ever had in the history of the United States.” Bachmann, who last year said Americans were concerned about “the rise of the Soviet Union,” also criticized Obama for having “whispered to the Russian, Communist president that he would be more flexible in his second term.”

Rios: They said that even if the mandate is struck down they are going to keep other parts of it, what’s your comment about that? What do you know about that?

Bachmann: That was already violated last Friday when President Obama said that he was not going to enforce the law when it came to illegal immigration for people of a certain age. This President is not bound by the law; this is huge. Even King John under the Magna Carta had to be bound by the law, that’s what it said, that the King is under the law, that’s the essence of the Magna Carta and the very earliest form of Western, English law. But Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama sees that he is the law. That’s unbelievable. And so if the President is saying that if the Supreme Court is striking down the law and yet he is going to ignore the court and continue to put this unconstitutional law in place? That tells us who he is.

Remember, this is the same President who whispered to the Russian, Communist president that he would be more flexible in his second term. He sees himself as a law unto himself rather than a man bound by the Constitution. That’s why I say he is the most dangerous President we have ever had in the history of the United States.

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When I look at the sacrifice that was made to this country, I’m absolutely outraged that a President would continue to spit at the Constitution and at the will of the American people and instead insist on his own way. This has been infantile the way that this President has governed. We better do something about it, rather than just shaking our heads, it’s time for us to stand up and actually do something between now and November when we have a chance.

Later in the interview, Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood” and that security agents are no longer allowed to learn about terrorist attacks, apparently referring to efforts to stop using discredited, anti-Muslim material.

Bachmann: It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has been found to be an unindicted co-conspirator on terrorism cases and yet it appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency. I am calling upon the Justice Department and these various departments to investigate through the Inspector General to see who these people are and what access they have to our information.

There is also another issue that is going on that doesn’t get talked about at all in the media and it is very sensitive. We currently have orders by President Obama for a purge in the FBI and now in the military of any training materials that teach FBI agents or people in the military about Islam and these materials are being purged. So the motivations behind terrorism and the understanding of the ideology of why people are committing terrorist acts, that is being purged out of the training materials. There was a request for this to be done by over forty Muslim groups and the President ordered this purge to occur and it’s happening now, they are purging libraries. We have other governments that have censored libraries but not the American government, now the American government is purging in the libraries in the FBI and in our military any training materials that could in any way be construed as negative about Islam.

Rios: Let me jump in and let me just say that also the trainers, many that you and I know, that are the experts on this issue are being blackballed from the Pentagon and from FBI training because they hold the wrong view.

Bachmann: That’s right. They are being blacklisted. Your listeners need to know, the experts that are training our FBI to find these terrorists, those experts are being blackballed and they are no longer allowed to teach our FBI agents. I am standing outside right now in front of our United States Capitol and a few months ago an illegal alien strapped a bomb onto himself and he was going to blow up the Capitol, and now our new agents are unable to learn that information.

As is customary, Bryan Fischer began his radio program yesterday with a discussion of his current reading in the Bible, in this case a passage from the Book of Ephesians pertaining to Satan, demons, and spiritual warfare.  The discussion prompted Fischer to declare that Satan's spiritual warfare is always at work in our culture and that Satan is behind everything from gay rights to Planned Parenthood to environmentalism:

Any time you see some kind of agenda that is anti-human being, it's anti-baby, it's anti-humanity, it's anti-population growth, you're looking at something that ultimately comes from Satan himself. He hates human beings. Why? Because we are made in the image of God. We remind Satan of the God that he hates and so he wants to stir up in human beings the same kind of hatred for humanity that he has. And he'll use Planned Parenthood to do it, he will use the pro-abortion movement to do it. He will use the pro-gay movement to do it because you can't get human beings out of the homosexual lifestyle; it's not possible so that's one way to slow population growth. He can get there through the environmental movement which is flatly opposed to population growth and actually proposes abortion policies as a way of reducing pressure on the environment. So anywhere you see that anti-human agenda, you are looking at the work of Satan himself.

The Republican committee chair leading the partisan witch hunt against Attorney General Eric Holder shows willingness to play up fringe conspiracy theories.

One of the central components of David Barton's entire brand of pseudo-history is the way in which he holds up obscure documents, sermons, and individuals from the Founding Era and presents them as representative of the entire generation. 

Barton will cite some textbook with references to God, or some sermon discussing the rights of conscience, or some Founding Father who delivered an impassioned defense of Christianity and declare that at the founding of this nation, everyone knew these things and held these views.

Barton is constantly citing unfamiliar individuals from the Founding Era, discussing how religious they were and then asserting that they were extremely influential in drafting the Constitution and shaping the nation.  The fact that nobody today has ever heard of any of them is, for Barton, proof that secularists have been succeeding in erasing our Christian history.

Today, Barton provided some insight into just how his mind works when making these sorts of claims when he hosted Rep. Todd Akin on his "WallBuilders Live" radio program.  Barton and co-host Rick Green were discussing how people today might be aware of maybe 20-25 high-profile members of Congress despite the fact that there are more than 500 hundred serving in office.  Lots of the lesser known members, Barton said, are dedicated Christians while the better-known members frequently are not, giving the American public a skewed view of just how truly Christian our Congress really is.  

Barton and Green held up Akin as proof, explaining that when he speaks to the Pastor's Briefings they regularly host on Washington, DC, the pastors are always blown away by just how deeply religious and biblically knowledgeable he is, prompting Barton and Green to compare Akin to John Witherspoon during the Founding Era:

Green: It's probably like with the Founding Fathers when you start pointing out all these guys that went to a seminary and were pastors and did all that, it changes people's perception of the Founders. I figure Todd Akin, he's like the John Witherspoon, you know Witherspoon was probably quoting a lot of the same stuff that Todd Akin is out there quoting to fellow members of Congress and to these pastors.

Barton: But the problem is, it's like today, you know I show that slide of the 56 signers of the [Declaration of Independence] and I get kids at really sharp schools, I mean Ivy League schools, and the most they can give me is two of the 56. And I start going through like John Witherspoon ... John Who? Never heard of John Witherspoon. Well, her served on a hundred committees in Congress, he was George Washington's boss, he was on the Board of War during the Revolution to direct the Revolution, he was the President of Princeton. You've never heard of him but he's a really significant Founding Father and, by the way, he is a preacher and a minister and wrote a dozen books of sermons and did two bibles - it's kind of like Todd Akin. If you throw Todd Akin out there, people go "Todd Who? Haven't heard of him." He's like that Witherspoon guy. We know the 20-25 out of Congress, not the 535 so the perception is bad.

This is rather telling because is reveals a bit about how Barton operate because, while Akin is certainly an influential member of Congress, he is probably not a "really significant" figure that future historians will be writing about two hundred years from now ... except, of course, for future Barton-like psuedo-historians who will probably look back on this current generation and hold up somewhat obscure elected officials like Akin as representative not only of the views of this Congress, but of this entire generation.

Focus on the Family president Jim Daly hosted Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Focus on the Family board member, to discuss same-sex marriage and its supposed threat to religious freedom. Daly claimed that Satan himself is promoting same-sex marriage since “he hates marriage because it’s a reflection of God’s image.” “The Enemy hates that, it’s disgusting to him,” Daly said, “and with that, he wants to break it down, he wants to destroy it.” Later, Mohler maintained that “same-sex marriage is going to be the greatest challenge to religious liberty in our lifetimes” and will replace religious liberty with a more limited freedom of worship:

Daly: When you look at human sexuality, someone suggested to me the other day, they said, if you think about it, the Enemy of our soul, yes we refer to this entity as Satan, that he hates marriage because it’s a reflection of God’s image. In other words, in the Scripture it talks about us being made in God’s image, male and female, and when we come together in lifelong commitment to marriage we become one flesh, that the Enemy hates that, it’s disgusting to him and with that, he wants to break it down, he wants to destroy it.

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Mohler: There’s no doubt that religious liberty is now very much on the line. As a matter of fact, same-sex marriage is going to be the greatest challenge to religious liberty in our lifetimes, and both sides on the controversy know it. You can look at the papers, the law articles, the kinds of things that are already on both sides of the argument. There’s a fundamental, shared understanding that this is going to be the big issue. You mentioned Christians running bed and breakfasts, Christians in any kind of employment situation or public services, photographers for weddings and frankly even churches are going to be very much on the line because what we’ve seen in recent political decisions is that religious liberty is really being reduced, and listen very carefully to what people are saying, is a freedom of worship. Religious liberty means much more than freedom of worship.

Last month, we reported on Family Research Institute chairman Paul Cameron’s appearance on Voice of Christian Youth America’s flagship show Crosstalk, where he suggested that President Obama might be gay after he endorsed marriage equality. On Monday, Crosstalk host and VCY America founder Vic Eliason doubled down on the accusation, citing reports “on YouTube of people who claimed to have engaged in this type of behavior with the President of the United States.” While criticizing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s Gay Pride Month message, Eliason warned that rights for gays and lesbians will ultimately lead to the acceptance of cannibals, grave robbers, pedophiles and people who practice bestiality. Eliason, fearing that “the moral fabric of our country” is “literally in flames,” goes on to insinuate that Obama might be gay based on videos he found on YouTube:

[Panetta] said this, “We are people with different values.” We’ll let’s talk about different values. When I came to Wisconsin way back in the 50’s, there was a story running around about a guy named Ed Gein who was a grave robber and his values meant that he would rob graves and corpses and the things that came out of the—well I don’t want to go further into that story—except it was you know it was his values after all. I mean what’s wrong with having values like that? Then some years ago ten blocks up the street from where we’re sitting right now was Jeffrey Dahmer, whose values were along the same line homosexuality but in addition to that, literally the cannibalizing and killing of human beings, dismembering their bodies and all kinds of weird stuff. But that after all we have diversity, right? We have different values.

Then of course we have people who have different values even in different venues. There are those whose values mean it’s very desirable and their own desire to molest children. We call them pedophiles. Because it’s a moral behavior or immoral behavior if properly defined. Its molestation but that happens to be their set of values and how dare we say anything about that. And then of course I don’t go from the sublime to the ridiculous here, but bestiality. Bestiality!

I mean this this is vile behavior. God says this stuff is an abomination and is sin, but of course if we no longer have a moral compass and we no longer have a God, we have a whole bunch of them and we can sit here and look at leadership, the highest leadership now in our country, that has literally voted for and has the legend has it the allegations has it that in his previous history, there are reports out even on YouTube of people who claimed to have engaged in this type of behavior with the President of the United States. These are allegations but they are out there.

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When I when I think of what is happening here folks, when I see the moral fabric of our country literally in flames; how do you define morality? I mentioned the allegations that had been circulating about the past of even our President. And again, those are allegations out there. You can even go to YouTube and there are videos of those who have claimed to engage with certain.