After coming out in favor of marriage equality for gays and lesbians, gay conservative groups Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud have attacked the President for his announcement.

Log Cabin Republican’s Executive Director called the move “offensive and callous”:

“That the president has chosen today, when LGBT Americans are mourning the passage of Amendment One, to finally speak up for marriage equality is offensive and callous,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director. “Log Cabin Republicans appreciate that President Obama has finally come in line with leaders like Vice President Dick Cheney on this issue, but LGBT Americans are right to be angry that this calculated announcement comes too late to be of any use to the people of North Carolina, or any of the other states that have addressed this issue on his watch. This administration has manipulated LGBT families for political gain as much as anybody, and after his campaign’s ridiculous contortions to deny support for marriage equality this week he does not deserve praise for an announcement that comes a day late and a dollar short.”

In a similar vein, GOProud called the announcement “cold comfort” for North Carolina’s LGBT community:

“It is good to see that after intense political pressure that President Obama has finally come around to the Dick Cheney position on marriage equality. I am sure, however, the President’s newly discovered support for marriage is cold comfort to the gay couples in North Carolina. The President waited until after North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.”

“This is hardly a profile in courage by President Obama. For years now, President Obama has tried his hardest to have it both ways on this issue.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney continues to oppose not only marriage equality but also civil unions for same-sex couples.

One of the most amazing things about Religious Right activism, especially around elections times, is how redundant so much of it is.

Back in 2010, it seemed like every organization was organizing a prayer campaign aimed at swaying the election.  But this time, it looks like the Religious Right is focusing more on getting conservative Christians registered to vote.

We have already written about the Champion The Vote effort, which seeks to register 5 million new Christian voters ahead of the 2012 election and some 50 million over the next decade.  And now it looks like Focus on the Family is heading up a joint voter registration with pretty much the same goal.

Yesterday, Focus released a new video in which Gary Schneeberger, the organization's vice president of communications, (mistakenly?) claimed the goal of the effort was to register some 50 million new Christian voters before the election, which would seemingly require them to begin registering more than 250,000 new voters daily. 

That seems highly unlikely, especially since the rudimentary website for the effort, called Commit2Vote2012.com, says that the goal is to reach some 5 million unregistered voters: 

It's really a matter of simple math: If we want politicians and policies that reflect our most deeply held Christian convictions to win on Nov. 6, we need to ensure fellow believers register to vote and then get to the polls on Election Day.

And you can help make that happen with your financial gift to Focus on the Family's most ambitious voter-registration effort to date. "Commit 2 Vote 2012," an unprecedented partnership with six other pro-life, pro-family groups, aims to reach 5 million unregistered, pro-life Americans with easy registration materials and the motivation to vote their values on Election Day. Every dollar we raise is another potential voter activated who shares our morals and biblical values.

The election is only six months away and Focus is just announcing this massive registration effort now?  How exactly do these various Religious Right groups plan on registering nearly one million voters per month via a project that doesn't even have so much as a website yet?

The Family Research Council recently called for boycotts and prayer requests against the Girl Scouts, typically by pushing a false and misleading claim that Girl Scouts are distributing brochures from Planned Parenthood and suggesting that proceeds from Girl Scout Cookies go to the women’s health group, which is also not true.

Yesterday, FRC president Tony Perkins spoke with FRC senior fellow Cathy Ruse on Today’s Issues, the program Perkins co-hosts with American Family Association president Tim Wildmon, where Ruse attacked the Girl Scouts for hiring LGBT staff members and supporters of gay and abortion rights. Perkins explained that the reason the “progressive agenda” is targeting Girl Scouts for “liberal indoctrination” is because “they’re not having kids [and] so they want to make sure they can get our kids.” Perkins said the Girl Scouts’ decision to hire LGBT staffers, unlike the Boy Scouts which bans gays, is “like leaving the door wide open at the chicken coop for the fox”:

Ruse: They have been taken over by these radicals, and there’s no other word for them, they’ve got people on their board that are also on the board of the Human Rights Campaign and push for same-sex marriage, they’ve got people on their board that outwardly promote abortion and work in clinics on the side, it’s been taken over. The Girl Scouts’ leadership is completely now at odds with what I believe most of the families of the girls think Girl Scouts is all about.

…

Perkins: Folks we couldn’t make this up. Truth is stranger than fiction in this city and in this nation when we see really the progressive agenda behind this liberal indoctrination, they are going to where the kids are. They’re not having kids so they want to make sure they can get our kids, and they are going to these organizations. As you described Tim, Boy Scouts have been at the forefront of saying ‘hey look, we’re standing true to our founding values, we’re not departing from that, we’re not going to go down to this path of political correctness,’ and a lot of people think, ‘well, the Girl Scouts are probably the same way.’ In fact, it’s really like leaving the door wide open at the chicken coop for the fox.

Today the 700 Club aired a story about a woman who claims that after converting to Christianity she quit drinking and the “lesbian lifestyle,” which she said was brought about by child abuse, and married a man. Following the segment televangelist Pat Robertson prayed for gays and lesbians and linked homosexuality to child molestation: “So many people who are in the so-called homosexual lifestyle found that some camp counselor, some coach, some older person, older teenager or whatever, had started them on the road to homosexuality.”

Later, Robertson said those who are “involved in a lesbian relationship or a homosexual relationship or got tendencies” should join him in prayer “to turn away from that which is displeasing in Your sight” and to “set me free from whatever would bind me.”

Watch:

The ultraconservative website LifeSiteNews today is boasting that Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia and a leading candidate for Governor, told a gathering of activists from groups such as the American Life League and the Campaign Life Coalition, which founded LifeSiteNews, that he uses the website as part of his anti-choice activism:

Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is one of the rising stars on the national pro-life stage – and he reads and supports LifeSiteNews.com.

LifeSiteNews.com is “the homepage for one of the computers in our house,” the eloquent lawyer and former Virginia state senator told a gathering of influential members of the pro-life movement at the website’s 15 anniversary gala in Herndon, Virginia, on April 28. During his 20-minute speech to a special VIP event before the banquet dinner, he said to advocates for the unborn, “You’ve got to have the tools, the information. That’s what you get from LifeSiteNews.”

He said that often when reading the website’s stories he says to himself, “I haven’t read this anywhere else.”

“I’m very appreciative of that fact,” he said. “And we use it. And we’ve learned from it.”

…

He closed by thanking LifeSiteNews.com founder Steve Jalsevac by name and “all the reporters…for the work you all do to give us that ammunition to convert the other side in the battle we’re in for life.”

This is the same website that demanded the Catholic Church excommunicate Democratic politicians, maintained that feminists were to blame for the Costa Concordia disaster, compares gays and lesbians to pagans and fervently supports ex-gay ‘reparative’ therapy. Jalsevac even asked for donations to promote “freedom from the homosexual lifestyle”:

With the enthusiastic help of the rich, the powerful, and the famous, and the all-too-willing mainstream media, the tactics of the “gay pride” agenda are proving to be frighteningly successful - to the detriment of the family, traditional sexual ethics…and our freedoms.

Have no doubt about it. Many gay rights activists are not satisfied with mere “tolerance” - they want acceptance, even if it tramples on our basic rights. Already we are seeing devout Christians losing jobs, being fined, and being ostracized, simply for speaking up in defense of the family.

…

As I was standing watching Sunday’s Gay Pride parade, I was filled with sadness for all the lost, confused souls who were participating in it.

The fact is, despite the unprecedented levels of social acceptance for homosexuality, the gay community continues to be plagued by soaring levels of deadly sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, depression, and suicide. And no wonder!

We know that only God can provide the peace and happiness for which we all crave. What could be more opposed to this than the promiscuous gay lifestyle?

As our editor-in-chief, John-Henry Westen, wrote last week, it isn’t acceptance that homosexuals need. It’s freedom from the homosexual lifestyle, and all its dangers and miseries.

…

So please, for our culture, our children, and for the homosexuals themselves, who are in need of God’s love and freedom from the homosexual lifestyle, please consider making a donation to LSN today.

There is no question that Bryan Fischer played a key role in the resignation of Richard Grenell from his position with Mitt Romney's campaign, as Fischer had  been relentlessly attacking the campaign for having hired an openly gay man to serve as foreign policy and national security spokesman.

And when Grenell finally resigned, Fischer declared it to be a "huge win," saying that the Religious Right had taught Romney a lesson and that the campaign would not make this sort of "mistake again."

And then on Friday, Fischer capped off the crusade by essentially mocking Romney for having caved on this issue to "a yokel like me," saying that his handling of the Grenell situation was now raising questions about Romney's leadership abilities since it showed that he could be "pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America."

But apparently Fischer has since realized that demanding concessions from politicians and then mocking those politicians when then make the very concessions that you demanded might be somewhat hypocritical ... and so yesterday Fischer offered an amazingly back-handed "apology" to Romney, saying that even though the entire fiasco demonstrated Romney's weakness and utter lack of core values, he still deserves credit for having done the right thing in letting Grenell go:

I want to issue what amounts to sort of an apology to Gov. Romney. I was pretty hard on him on Friday and my point on Friday was his waffling when conservatives raised a concern about Richard Grenell - he went silent, he put a bag over Richard Grenell's head, let him fall on his sword, only said supportive things to Richard Grenell after he had resigned - it was an indication of the challenges that we have with Gov. Romney, that he does not seem to have a core set of principles, a core set of values by which he guides himself. And the fact that he could be so - I used the word intimidated or coerced or whatever - could be so influenced by a comparatively small number of conservatives ... and so I think it was illustrative of Gov. Romney's weaknesses and things that we've got to be concerned about.

But, at the end of the day, I didn't make enough of the fact that he did the right thing here. Now, regardless of why he did it - most likely, it was for reasons that are politically expedient - but he did the right thing. He allowed this resignation to take place, probably had some hand in bringing it about; I cannot believe that they were entirely passive in that. But here's the point: at the end of the day, Richard Grenell had stepped down, this homosexual activist, this crusader for gay marriage had stepped down and Romney could have taken a different tack. So I want to give Romney credit for doing that. Now, you'd like to know that he did it on the grounds of principle and conviction and all that - I believe that would kind of be a bridge too far - but nevertheless, Gov. Romney did the thing that he should have done.

• Rob Boston @ Wall of Separation: The Barton Lies: New Book Exposes ‘Christian Nation’ Advocate’s Long List Of Distortions.
• Nick Sementelli @ Bold Faith Type: 10,000 Sign Christian Statement Condemning Pastor’s Violent, Hateful Sermon.
• Towleroad: Maggie Gallagher Explains Why She Goes After Gay Marriage and Not Adulterers and Divorcees.
• Vyckie Garrison @ RH Reality Check: Where's Your Shame, Woman?! Fundamentalist Pastor Takes to YouTube to Fault Women for All Social Ills.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Heartland facing 'mutiny' from donors, staff.
• Sam Stein @ Huffington Post: Nancy Pelosi Hires Think Progress' Faiz Shakir As Director Of New Media.

• Rick Santorum has finally gotten around to half-heartedly endorsing Mitt Romney.
• Michele Bachmann told students at Pat Robertson's Regent University that their graduation was the "literal fulfillment of generations of fervent prayer."
• It seems that James O'Keefe won't be traveling to New Hampshire any time soon.
• 10 Ways 'The Avengers' Are an Example for the Church.
• Bob Vander Plaats says honoring the three Iowa judges who were ousted by the Religious Right over the gay marriage decision is "an insult to all the 525,000 Iowans who overwhelmingly voted these justices out for judicial activism."
• Finally, Jonah Golberg says all the Romney campaign did in letting Richard Grenell resign "was feed crocodiles like [Bryan] Fischer." Oddly, Goldberg didn't mention any of that when he appeared on Fischer's program just last week.

The Republican National Committee’s Hispanic Outreach Director Bettina Inclan sparked a mini-firestorm today when she told reporters that she could not comment on Romney’s immigration positions because “he’s still deciding what his position on immigration is.”  She later tried to clean up the mess by tweeting that she was mistaken, and that his position was clear, linking to his website. 

Unfortunately for Romney and for the RNC’s Hispanic outreach, his position is all too clear: he opposes not only “amnesty” but all “magnets” – such as the DREAM Act or in-state tuition for students whose parents brought them here as children.  Romney has backed legislation, like Arizona’s, that has the goal of making life for undocumented immigrants so miserable that they will choose to “self-deport.”  That’s a bit much even for some right-wing activists, including some of those at the Freedom Federation’s recent Awakening conference in Orlando, Florida, where one speaker called the “self-deportation” approach “cruel” and “unbiblical” and where the Southern Baptists’ Richard Land called the GOP’s positions on immigration policy “dismal” and “indefensible.”

The Greene County, Virginia Republican Committee publishes a monthly newsletter for members called “The Constitutional Conservatives.” The newsletter is heavy on Tea Party rhetoric about how Obama and liberals are ruining America, and so forth. But even by these standards, an item in the March newsletter stands out.

We have before us a challenge to remove an ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized.

 

An individual who has come to power within a Nation which yields it’s strength over the entire world.

 

An elected leader who shuns biblical praise, handicaps economic ability, disrespects the honor of earned military might.

 

In the coming days and weeks  ~ we the people must come to grasp as a common force, our very soul’s, that our future as a sovereign nation is indeed at risk.

 

If every single individual that you know, would contact 25 other individuals  ~ we can make a difference that will be heard across the Commonwealth and in Washington.

 

The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware  ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November ~ This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.