On today's "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Matt Barber and Shawn Akers were positively incensed by President Obama's "shameless attack on U.S. Supreme Court Justices," by which they meant his remarks from a few weeks ago that it would be "unprecedented" for the Supreme Court to  strike down health care reform legislation.

Despite the fact that President Bush made a very similar point during his presidency, Barber was particularly outraged at the idea that Obama would dare to call it "judicial activism" because, as he explained, not striking down health care reform would be judicial activism by omission:

Any judge that is not an Originalist is acting in a counter-constitutional manner. We have four Justices currently sitting, at least, on the bench of the United States Supreme Court that buy into this living, breathing model of the Constitution, that it is whatever we say it is whenever we say it is. So clearly this was a disingenuous portrayal of what is or what is not judicial activism on the part of this president. If the United States Supreme Court fails to overturn Obamacare, that would be judicial activism through an act of omission.

Phyllis Schlafly is an all-around right-wing activist who has been around forever. You could say she was Tea Party before her time, railing against liberals and taxes and the UN's threat to US sovereignty. Her 2009 "How to Take Back America" conference was an amazing gathering at which health care reform was described as fascism, President Obama was described by Rep. Trent Franks as an "enemy of humanity," and attendees were encouraged to buy guns and ammo to defend themselves against impending tyranny.

But Schlafly’s real bread and butter is the hostility to feminism that fueled her campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment – and it was her anti-feminist schtick that she brought to George Washington University in D.C. last night.  I use the word schtick because it’s hard to take seriously Schlafly’s caricature of feminists as anti-men, anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-child-rearing, not to mention claims like these:

• “Feminists don’t have any role models of happiness.”
• “They don’t believe that women can be successful. You never hear the feminists  talking about really successful  women like Margaret Thatcher or Condaleeza Rice, they just don’t believe women can be successful…that’s why they hate Sarah Palin….”

What?  Feminists don’t believe women can be successful?  That didn’t ring true to the many GW students, women and men, who politely protested Schlafly’s appearance.  During the Q&A, one challenged Schlafly directly, saying her mother is a feminist, a role model of happiness, and had instilled in her children a love of family.  The student said Schlafly seemed to be having a 40-year old argument with quotes plucked from early feminist writers.

Schlafly did have her admirers.  The young woman who introduced her said Schlafly had given her an example of how to stand up against the emerging “gender-interchangeable society.”  Schlafly returned to that theme later, saying that feminists don’t want equality for women, they want “gender interchangeability.”

Schlafly reveled in the recent flap about Ann Romney never having to work outside the home, since she saw it as proof that feminists have no respect for mothers who choose to answer to a husband rather than a boss.  But Schlafly was not on message with the Romney campaign’s claims that women have accounted for almost all job losses during the Obama administration.  Schlafly, who repeatedly claimed that the Obama administration is utterly controlled by feminists, “proved” her case by saying that feminists had successfully demanded that most jobs created by federal stimulus funds went to women.

Schlafly touched on a few other issues, such as her opposition to marriage equality (though she seemed to say she didn’t think civil unions were worth fighting about).  And she pushed the same theme being pushed by Ralph Reed and other strategists trying to build a broad electoral coalition: you can’t separate fiscal and social conservatism.  She took a shot at Mitch Daniels for seeking a “truce” on social values, something she called “impossible.”

In the end, she told the young women, they should get married before having babies, and they should ignore feminists who might poison their attitude toward life by telling them that women are victims of the patriarchy. She derided the notion of a "glass ceiling" and denied that unequal pay is a problem. Men, she said, are willing to do dangerous jobs that women aren't, because "women like nice inside jobs with carpeted offices." American women, she said, are the most fortunate people who have ever lived.  Why, in Africa, she said, some women have to wash their clothing in the river.  “We have all these wonderful modern conveniences that men have invented for our pleasure.”  

Delivering the commencement address at Liberty University has become a rite of passage for Republican and conservative leaders such as John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck and Chuck Norris, and today it has been announced that Mitt Romney will deliver the 2012 Commencement address at the school founded by the late Jerry Falwell and currently led by his son, his son, Jerry Falwell, Jr.:

Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. announced today that Gov. Mitt Romney will address Liberty University graduates at the 2012 Commencement ceremony to be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 12, at Arthur L. Williams Stadium.

“We are delighted that Governor Romney will join us to celebrate Commencement with Liberty’s 2012 graduates," said Liberty Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. "This will be a historic event for Liberty University reminiscent of the visits of Governor, and then presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan to Liberty’s campus in 1980 and of President George H.W. Bush who spoke at Liberty’s 1990 Commencement ceremony.”

This will be Governor Romney’s first appearance at Liberty University. Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. will also be making remarks during the ceremony.

Liberty University's 39th Commencement will celebrate the achievement of more than 14,000 graduates with more than 34,000 guests expected to attend. The ceremony will also be broadcast by streaming video to the families of Liberty’s 70,000+ online students around the world.

Liberty University prides itself as training the “replacements” of the current Religious Right leadership, but despite its name the university has banned people on campus from accessing a local newspaper that wrote about LU’s huge sums of aid from the federal government, refused to recognize a College Democrats club, inculcates students in ultraconservative, anti-gay and anti-evolution courses, and trumpets a professor who wants to outlaw pornography.

Maybe Romney, who is selling his $5.25 million ski lodge, can stop by the Liberty Mountain Snowflex.

As Brian noted the other day, it has not been a very good week for Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

First there was the continuing controversy over his statement that "race hustlers" where using the Trayvon Martin tragedy in order to "gin up the black vote" for President Obama. Land had largely remained defiant in the face of the criticism he had been receiving, saying he was being "mugged" by the media and that he would "not bow to the false god of political correctness."

But this week, Land backed down and issued a rather passive-aggressive quasi-apology, saying he "overestimated the progress that has been made in slaying the ugly racist ghosts of the past in our history."

But that was not the only bad news for Land, as he also had to fess up to having routinely plagiarized articles and columns during his weekly radio program, where he had a habit of reading things on air written by others without attribution and passing them off as his own words.  

But Land's multiple apologies have not put an end to his problems, as the ERLC's executive committee has now issued a statement saying that it is "very concerned" about how Land's behavior "may damage the work of the ERLC" and is launching an investigation: 

Comments by Richard Land about the Trayvon Martin killing "have angered many and opened wounds from the past," the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission's executive committee said in a statement released April 18.

The executive committee also registered concern that Land, the ERLC's president, had used sources from other media without proper attribution for some of his comments in his weekly radio call-in show.

An ad hoc committee has been formed "to investigate the allegations of plagiarism and recommend appropriate action," the ERLC executive committee reported in its statement.

"The [ERLC] Executive Committee is very saddened that this controversy has erupted, and is very concerned about how these events may damage the work of the ERLC in support of Southern Baptists and in furtherance of the Kingdom of our Lord," the six-member committee said.

On the website for Land's weekly radio program, all of the archived programs have now been removed and replaced with this message from the ERLC:

We recently became aware of instances in which Dr. Richard Land read from materials written by others during his radio show without clear and proper attribution to the authors of those materials on the program. We have also learned that news agencies occasionally access this website and use clips from Dr. Land’s past broadcasts without prior notice or permission. Due to the danger that such unauthorized use by news agencies or others might include quoted material used by Dr. Land without clear and proper credit being given to the author or source of the quoted material, we have removed links to prior radio broadcasts.

• Michael B. Keegan @ Huffington Post: The Right's 2012 Solution: "Just Close Your Eyes."
• Good As You: Iowa Family Leader creates literal religious test.
• Meenal Vamburkar @ Mediaite: Catholic League Vows To ‘Mobilize’ Boycott Of Jon Stewart Sponsors, Citing ‘War On Women’ Segment.
• Warren Throckmorton: David Barton’s bad media day.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Wild, Wild West

• A week after ending his presidential campaign, a fundraising letter from Rick Santorum arrived in Iowa mailboxes saying "It truly frightens me to think what’ll happen if Mitt Romney is the nominee."
• That should make for an interesting conversations with Santorum meets with Romney to discuss the possibility of an endorsement.
• Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich is staying in the race because he "owes it to the conservative movement to stay in."
• Chuck Colson has reportedly taken a turn for the worse and those close to him say he is near death.
• Tom Ridge will probably soon find himself under attack from the Religious Right for saying the GOP needs to stop being anti-gay.
• This Cincinnati Enquirer profile of Janet Porter and the other anti-choice activists behind Ohio's "Heartbeat Bill" reports that one of the other ideas considered a proposal to ban abortion "when a fetus sucked its thumb in the womb."
• Finally, Cliff Kincaid says "the notion of Obama as an 'extreme secularist,' if not a dictator wannabe, is widely shared within the Catholic Church."

Earlier today we posted video from Truth in Action Ministries of Religious Right leaders condemning the Obama administration’s push to curb anti-LGBT violence and persecution and the criminalization of LGBT status. now the group’s president Dan Scalf is comparing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Pharisees in John 8:1-11, who wanted to stone a woman for adultery, for her attempt to “promote homosexuality globally”:

How should Christians react to our tax dollars being used to promote homosexuality globally?

I am reminded of the situation religious leaders created in an attempt to trap Christ. They brought a woman to him they had caught in act of adultery and asked, “Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say?”

Hillary Clinton did something similar to that in her speech. She reminded the international leaders and representatives in her audience that the United Nations had adapted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Then, she went on to state that homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people deserve the same protections as people persecuted because of their religion, ethnicity, age, or gender.

Christians are often trapped by that type of intellectual posturing. We allow those who call good evil and evil good to frame the argument without challenging their agenda or assumptions. We cannot come to a good solution when beginning with a flawed presupposition.

…

Hillary Clinton, and all those who promote homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights have an agenda. It is not “equal” rights. They want nothing less than complete cultural acceptance for a practice that God’s holy and infallible Word calls sinful.

Concerned Women for America is also voicing their opposition to efforts to decriminalize homosexuality. CWA’s Mario Diaz called the administration’s policy against anti-LGBT discrimination “embarrassing,” claimed that a “majority of Americans” do not believe that gays and lesbians should have equal rights, and even heralded a statement from the Foreign Minister of Russia, which has a dreadful record on safeguarding LGBT rights and protecting LGBT community from violence:

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has made clear that the President has put an emphasis on all foreign assistance from the U.S. to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) "rights."

"Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights," Clinton said in a speech at the end of last year that sparked strong criticism from many nations who do not adhere to the same belief.

…

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said:

We have repeatedly said that the Russian Federation condemns any forms and manifestations of discrimination on any grounds…

In this connection we cannot agree with attempts to artificially single out this category of people as an independent group claiming that its rights and interests should be specially protected.

Embarrassing.

This is yet another reason why the next election is so crucial for our nation. Will we continue to export homosexuality as a human "right," despite the fact that the majority of Americans do not agree with that?

There is little doubt as to where President Obama stands in this question. His emphasis on the promotion of homosexuality as a human right internationally and his all-out effort against the traditional definition of marriage have been swift and decisive.

While many "conservatives" plead with us to stop talking about "social" issues and focus on the economy, the President has been steadfast in undermining marriage and the family. Under his leadership, the future looks bleak in this regard.

On yesterday's episode of the "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Matt Barber stated that groups such as ours and Americans United and the ACLU were nothing but "paper tigers" to whom conservatives must stand up.

In fact, said Barber, the "secularist left" in general is nothing buy a bunch of bullies who intimidate the righteous and push "religious bigotry" on everyone else.  And like all bullies, they just need to be punched in the mouth:

They're bullies. And we know that we people stand up to the bully on the playground - the bully on the playground intimidates, that's what he does, intimidates people into silence, into fear, into avoiding the bully. And oftentimes the bully is the paper tiger and when the righteous individual who is being bullied defends his or herself and punches the bully in the mouth, guess what, the bully more times than not has a glass jaw, falls down and then everyone on the playground says "whoa, the bully was a weakling after all."

That's the secularist left. The secularist left are bullies. They try to bully and intimidate and push religious intolerance and religious bigotry on everyone else.

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage isn’t the only anti-gay activist seeking to take the symbol of the rainbow “back” from the “gay lobby,” as Washington state pastor and NOM-ally Kenneth Hutcherson, who is working to overturn the state’s marriage equality law, writes today in WorldNetDaily that it is time to “take back the rainbow for God” and let “the homosexual community find a different religious symbol to commandeer.”

How did we get here? Just when was this symbol liquidated of its meaning? When was the sign pointing to God’s promise intentionally co-opted to point to a certain lifestyle choice? Let’s just say that the homosexual movement has been busy over the last couple of decades and that many of these changes have taken place without so much as a peep from the larger Christian community. Rome’s burning; Nero’s fiddling; and Christians are taking a well-deserved nap.

…

Yes, let’s take back the rainbow for God. Let the homosexual community find a different religious symbol to commandeer. If they were feeling congenial, perhaps the Muslims would let them borrow their crescent moon. In these desperate economic times, maybe the Wiccans would rent the pentagram to them. I don’t really care. What I want is for the Christian community to wake up, wipe the sleep from their eyes, and realize that they are in a spiritual battle that isn’t going away and has no demilitarized zones. The rainbow is a symbol, but it’s meaning points to the very character of God. So Christians …use this God-given symbol for His glory. Using it won’t make you a homosexual. It won’t make you a New Ager. It won’t make leprechauns real. But it might allow you to get into conversations with people who need to meet the very One Who gave us His promise in the first place.

Last week, Truth in Action Ministries released a film marking the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by arguing that the “radical homosexual agenda” is the “iceberg” that will destroy America, and today the group unveiled a new video, Is Our Government Promoting Immorality? Hosts Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy and Jerry Newcombe called for gays and lesbians to be delivered from “this deadly lifestyle” and introduced a segment featuring the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land and right-wing author Michael Brown where the Religious Right activists defended the criminalization of homosexuality and attacked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech against anti-LGBT violence and persecution.

Sprigg, who has advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality in the past, condemned attempts by the State Department’s push for “decriminalizing homosexual acts” and Brown attacked the “outrageous” dissemination of “our gay activist standard.” “Whenever you go against God’s law, when you challenge God’s law and you have the effrontery and the hubris of trying to redefine one of God’s institutions like marriage you are putting yourself in the place of judgment,” Land concluded, “there is no question in my mind, God is already judging America and will judge her more harshly as we continue to move down this path towards sexual paganization.”

Watch highlights from the film here: