My latest at Westword: Millions to Ab-Only “education” continues

“Abstinence-only education doesn’t work and is a poor use of federal funding.  Our nation’s young adults deserve access to information that helps them take on real life situations and make smart decisions,” Lautenberg said.  “This legislation would make smart investments in programs that prevent teen pregnancy and stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.” From press release announcing defund ab-only legislation.  The Lee-Lautenberg bill, introduced in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, would reallocate the abstinence-only funding to comprehensive sex education programs.

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Iowa for Israel?

The FAMiLY Leader is circulating a petition called “Iowa For Israel” to all state legislators to pass a resolution officially recognizing the Nation of Israel.  I can’t possibly rehash the crazy stuff TFL has done over the last few years but I have written about their anti-gay, anti-choice political antics here and here if you have about three hours to spare.

Here’s the set up from Chuck Hurley of The FAMiLY Leader:

Iowa for Israel Proclamation

Last year, President Obama made policy statements calling Israel to dramatically scale back its borders to that of 1967.  These statements were in stark contrast to decades of bi-partisan support for the nation of Israel. Friends of The FAMiLY LEADER are circulating a petition to the Iowa Legislature to pass a proclamation supporting Israel and its right to maintain its current borders. Israel has been a steady friend and ally to the United States for a long time, and it behooves our state and nation to affirm and continue this alliance. To read the petition and for more information, go to http://www.iowaforisrael.com/

Here’s the petition (fancy Bible font and old-timey paper original to document):

Although The FAMiLY Leader is circulating the petition, the author is Pastor Brad Sherman of Purpose Ministries (Solid Rock Church) in Coralville, Iowa.

Mr. Sherman, in addition to being a pastor, is also a board member of Ralph Reed’s Iowa “Faith and Freedom Coalition”.

Sherman along with The FAMiLY Leader (then known as The Iowa Family Policy Center – IFPC) were the creators of another pledge – one against same sex marriage.  In 2010 Sherman along with IFPC crafted an open letter to Iowa pastors to sign demanding Iowans be given the opportunity to vote on the rights of other Iowans to marry.

IFPC/The FAMiLY Leader is no stranger to worthless pledges.  Last year they created the marriage pledge that all but a couple of the GOP presidential hopefuls signed apparently without reading it.  You may remember the pledge came under fire for lauding the benefits of slavery to African American families.  The group, after an immediate and fierce backlash, removed that passage from the pledge.

IFPC/The FAMiLY Leader and its leader Bob Vander Plaats are the leading anti-gay, anti-choice, pick your anti, group in Iowa.  They received $3 million in federal funding for marriage counseling through George W’s faith based funding initiative.  As soon as the IFPC was outed for taking the money, they formally rejected the last year of funding.  But those years of money pouring in helped build the group’s network and infrastructure throughout Iowa.  Their mission:  implementation of a Christian world view.

Ever politically active, IFPC is likely keen to launch this pledge as Iowa runs up to the fall elections.  There handfuls of unsafe democratic seats up for grabs and rallying the right-wing base with anything Israel can only serve them well.  And, of course as part of Ralph Reed’s Iowa contingency, Pastor Sherman is no political slouch when it comes to recognizing the value of a churchy petition to corral the base and funnel them to the voting booth.  His petition in 2010 to end gay-marriage gathered the signatures of over 800 pastors – and Iowa pastors like their pulpit politicking.  So that’s 800 x congregants….carry the one….that’s a lot of right-wingers turning up at the polls if all goes according to plan.

I am no Israel expert but it seems the US already recognized(ish?) Israel:

At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed a new State of Israel. On that same date, the United States, in the person of President Truman, recognized the provisional Jewish government as de facto authority of the Jewish state (de jure recognition was extended on January 31, 1949). The U.S. delegates to the U.N. and top-ranking State Department officials were angered that Truman released his recognition statement to the press without notifying them first. On May 15, 1948, the first day of Israeli Independence and exactly one year after UNSCOP was established, Arab armies invaded Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war began.

NYC’ers make ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ tell the truth: they are not clinics

Thank God.  Once again the NYCity Council is pushing to force deceptive crisis pregnancy centers to be honest.  This from Speaker Quinn:

Right here in New York City there are over two dozen so-called crisis pregnancy centers, many pretending to be full-service reproductive health care facilities.  Many of these centers purposely deceive and misleadwomen who are seeking safe and legal reproductive health care services.  Often they do not have licensed medical providers on staff, offer prenatal care, and refuse to even give referrals for birth control or abortion.

Last year Mayor Mike Bloomberg signed into law legislation that was sponsored by Council Member Jessica Lappin and passed by the NYC Council requiring crisis pregnancy centers to be transparent about what they do and do not offer.  The responsible ones already are.  Unfortunately, a coalition of pro-life forces and center operators sued the City, claiming that our new law violates their First Amendment rights.  In July, a federal court blocked the measure on the grounds of free speech.

The law passed but then a judge placed an injunction on the bill so it has not been implemented.

Here is the common sense top line of the bill:

ELIMINATING MISINFORMATION
This bill will require Pregnancy Services Centers to inform clients that women who are or may be pregnant are encouraged by the DOHMH to consult with a licensed medical provider.  Additionally, Pregnancy Services Centers will be required to disclose whether they do or do not:
• have a licensed medical provider on staff;
• provide or refer for prenatal care;
• provide or refer for abortion; and
• provide or refer for emergency contraception.

Notice will be in both English and Spanish in the form of a posted sign visible at entry and in waiting areas as well in any advertising of services published.

I wrote about this last year.  I was at the City Council building when the initial law was passed and had a creepy encounter with Chris Slatery, founder of Expectant Mother Care, a notoriously deceptive CPC.

Sign on to show your support of making the CPC’s tell the truth.

Fetus Earrings and the problem with facts

“They make earrings out of them,”  the teenage girl told me.  Stone faced, pained.  I remember her eyes looked like they were begging.  She stretched out arm across the card table to hand me The Proof of what she said; a pamphlet with a picture of human fetuses dangling from earring hooks.  If I remember right the earrings if worn would graze ones clavicle.

We had just come to the mall, my high school friend and I to people watch (boys!), eat fried food (chimichangas) and shop for prom dresses (Gunne Sax).  It was the only entertainment we had wandering the mall, and smack in the middle of it sat that table.

It was set up outside the now defunct Walden Books and I remember it clear as day.  Stoic, mournful young women (watched over by ladies I assumed were their mothers) seated behind stacks of pamphlets, flyers and books plastered with images of dead bloodied babies.  Thinking about it now, they could have been Operation Rescue judging by the graphic posters on easels flanking the table display.

They told us they were aborted babies, they walked us through their information spread, pointed out tangled piles of discarded fetuses on this pamphlet, babies with their microscopic limbs ripped to shreds on that flyer and a picture of those earrings.  I bought it.  They hooked me and I was horrified – what woman could do such a thing?  I signed up for  newsletters scribbling my name on a piece of lined paper stuck to a clipboard.   That is all I remember.  I don’t know if my friend and I talked about it any further; we probably walked off , fed our high-metabolismed faces and tried on prom dresses.

That was over 25 years ago and the anti-choice movement is still in the business of shock, awe and lies.  I am talking about the moving vans with dead fetuses splashed on the sides pulling up in front of women’s health clinics, people with posters of dead babies weeping outside Planned Parenthoods around the country.  But it is the state and federal legislators who use false information, graphic images (implying almost full term fetuses are routinely aborted) and religious rhetoric to pass increasingly abhorrent laws aimed to end a woman’s right to an abortion I worry about most.

Reuters published a piece the other day about just this issue.  Briefly setting this up, the article is titled:  ”ABORTION SAFER THAN GIVING BIRTH: STUDY”.  Here the article addresses the issue of these lies as they impact legislation and the trickle down impact it has on women seeking abortion:

Depending on the state, however, doctors legally must go over the risks of abortion in language that may be misleading, researchers said, with skewed lists of possible complications. Others require a 24-hour waiting period in between the counseling and the abortion itself.

Harwood said that laws regarding what’s said between the doctor and a woman seeking an abortion often hamper doctors’ attempts to inform patients in a balanced way.

“It is certainly an impediment to have the state dictate my informed consent process beyond the usual,” Harwood told Reuters Health.

“Abortion care and pregnancy care should not really be any different than consenting people for any other procedure.”

Davis agreed that state-mandated discussions have no place in abortion counseling. She said she was glad to see the new report, which helps dispel “misinformation” and “lies” about abortion risks included in some state laws — such as the idea that abortion is linked to cancer. (Reuters article)

I have a handful of very religious, conservative friends.  Most from elementary and high school and all on Facebook.  This affords me the ability to see the lies of the anti-abortion movement up close and personal.  I wrote the other day – on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade a disturbing interaction I had with a gang of anti-choice men on the subject of forced ultrasounds in Texas.  Here is a snippet from that exchange:

Likening – by Texas law – sexual assault (penetration via transvaginal ultrasound) mandated by the state to taxes as rape?  That is the kind of crowd we are dealing with.  The conversation deteriorated.  This from my post in The Frisky:

Under the Texas penal code penetration of a woman’s vagina without her consent is sexual assault.  In other words, it is rape  — which is punishable by imprisonment. All this is why I took umbrage, in the Facebook exchange I mentioned above, with a man who likened “rape by the state” via the Texas’ transvaginal ultrasound law to his paying taxes to “the IRS.” And the conversation deteriorated from there, culminating with one gentleman telling me I was lucky my mom didn’t abort me and to shut my “pie hole.”

It would have been simply hilarious if the premise were not so disturbing.  I wouldn’t take these things so seriously if the men on this thread didn’t represent the radical right the GOP is pandering to right now.  I would brush it off if there weren’t erroneous “heartbeat” “fetal pain” waiting period, forced ultrasound, anti-tele med, etc. bills being introduced in statehouses around the country.

And the lies and rhetoric are only going to get worse.  This is an election year.  Nothing rallies the right-wing base like a poster of a bloodied fetus.

Big Fat Liars: Oklahoma Senator Shortey’s fetus sandwich

Earlier this month Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey introduced Senate Bill 1418 that would outlaw the use of “aborted human fetuses” in food.  Before you start thinking about fetus finger soup or tossed umbilical cord salads, Mr. Shortey was just trying to be provocative of course.

According to an NPR post this gets to the bottom of SB 1418:

The senator says that his research shows there are companies in the food industry that have used human stem cells to help them research and develop products, including artificial flavorings.

“I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be. What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here,” Shortey tells KRMG’s Nicole Burgin.

To that end, his proposed statute reads, “No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.”

Coupla things I like here:

1. The senator claims to have done “research”
2. “I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma…” but introduced a bill anyway.  Excellent use of taxpayer money – erroneous legislation.

There is a huge bullshit leap between Shortey’s research turning up companies using stem cells for product development and “aborted human fetuses” in the produce aisle.

Clearly, Shortey wanted you – and the religious right base – to flip out and think that a diner in Oklahoma City was frying up placenta and infant omelets.  But, like other anti-choice zealots, Mr. Shortey is a big fat liar.

I contacted Mr. Shortey but haven’t heard back yet.  You can try too here if you like.

39th Anniversary of Roe @ The Frisky

Bee Gees and a mental break from the GOP race

Oh yes it is a thermos from the 1980s that I carried religiously to school.  And yes, it is sitting on a book by Garrison Keillor.

Dear NYTimes, Chris Matthews, et. al: Please ask Tony Perkins about the FRC’s anti-gay hate group status

If you are going to elevate someone to be legitimate figure in the public media, please make sure to tell the whole story.

I am continually amazed and disgusted when pundits invite Tony Perkins on their show without asking him the following question:

“Mr. Perkins, your organization The Family Research Council, which is the PAC arm of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, has been designated an anti-gay hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Center.  What can you tell us about that?”

Equality Matters, an offshoot of Media Matters, which focuses monitoring anti-gay hate speech in the media released a top line report about how many times Tony Perkins has appeared on various shows.

Here is EM’s helpful and illuminating chart:

Also from Equality Matters this really sums it up:

“More important, MSNBC and Fox have helped whitewash Perkins’ anti-gay extremism by constantly depicting him as a legitimate and fair-minded source of political commentary. Every time a real news network like MSNBC calls Perkins an “honest conservative,” it legitimizes the incredibly damaging and dishonest work that FRC promotes on a daily basis in order to demonize and smear LGBT Americans.

If MSNBC and Fox News are so deeply committed to inviting Tony Perkins on national television, the least the networks can do is accurately identify him as the leader of a known anti-gay hate group. Failing to acknowledge Perkins’ anti-gay extremism while praising him for his trustworthiness and respectability isn’t just misleading; it does real damage to the millions of LGBT Americans who are forced to deal with his hate-filled propaganda machine on a daily basis.”

The worst offender on the “liberal media” side is hands down Chris Matthews.  I mean hands down.  He has slobbered all over himself to praise Tony Perkins as a true conservative leader that always looks for the truth.  Please click here to see all his crazy proclamations about Perkins.

Identifying Perkins as a leader of an anti-gay hate group is especially important as he appears during the election season.  And, while the media is at it, let’s tell everyone what these following men are all about.  Don Wildmon and James Dobson are scrambling to find an alternative to Mitt Romney next week at a big evangelical hootenanny down south.  Who will it be?  Newt or Rick Santorum?  Or could it be the ailing Rick Perry (probably not).  These are the big wigs in Evangelical politics.  These are the men that are being lifted to kingmaker status in the GOP field.  People – especially fair minded Evangelicals – should be told the truth about who Wildmon and Dobson are if they don’t know already.

This from the NYTimes:

The plan disclosed this week for dozens of conservative Christian leaders and political strategists to meet in Texas next Friday and Saturday, a week before the South Carolina primary, is the latest of several such efforts in the last six weeks to seek an elusive unity. Among the conveners of next week’s gathering are luminaries of the evangelical movement, including James C. Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, and Donald E. Wildmon, the retired president of the American Family Association.

The piece goes on to identify Tony Perkins, clearly the go to on all things Evangelical/political:

“We’re moving closer to the point where a decision needs to be made,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian conservative group. “I think people understand that the stakes are very high.”

There is nothing wrong with adding something like this after the Perkins quote.

“The Family Research Council has been identified as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

That’s it.  Presented without comment a factual piece of information.  Whitewashing these far right leaders as mainstream, fair minded or in any way worthy of elevation does nothing to further the public’s need for accurate reporting.  Give the people the facts – the truth – let them decide for themselves if Dobson, Perkins, Wildmon and the like are worthy of important spotlight they are given.

PS – I haven’t even mentioned how awful FRC, FOF, AFA, etc. are in their dismantling of a woman’s right to choose and hate speech against Muslims.  

Posted here in its entirety is the assessment of FRC and AFA as hate groups by the SPLC:

Family Research Council
Washington, D.C.

Started as a small think tank in 1983, the Family Research Council (FRC) merged in 1988 with the much larger religious-right group Focus on the Family in 1988, and brought on Gary Bauer, former U.S. undersecretary of education under Ronald Reagan, as president. In 1992, the two groups legally separated to protect Focus on the Family’s tax-exempt status, although Focus founder James Dobson and two other Focus officials were placed on the FRC’s newly independent board. By that time, FRC had become a powerful group on its own.

Headed since 2003 by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia: Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”

That’s the least of it. In a 1999 publication (Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys) that has since disappeared from its website, the FRC claimed that “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order,” according to unrefuted research by AMERICAblog. The same publication argued that “homosexual activists publicly disassociate themselves from pedophiles as part of a public relations strategy.” FRC offered no evidence for these remarkable assertions, and has never publicly retracted the allegations. (The American Psychological Association, among others, has concluded that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.”)

In fact, in a Nov. 30, 2010, debate on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” between Perkins and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok, Perkins defended FRC’s association of gay men with pedophilia, saying: “If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children. So Mark is wrong. He needs to go back and do his own research.” In fact, the college, despite its hifalutin name, is a tiny, explicitly religious-right breakaway group from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the 60,000-member association of the profession. Publications of the American College of Pediatricians, which has some 200 members, have been roundly attacked by leading scientific authorities who say they are baseless and accuse the college of distorting and misrepresenting their work.

Elsewhere, according to AMERICAblog, Knight, while working at the FRC, claimed that “[t]here is a strong current of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. … [T]hey want to promote a promiscuous society.” AMERICAblog also reported that then-FRC official Yvette Cantu, in an interview published on Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s website, said, “If they [gays and lesbians] had children, what would happen when they were too busy having their sex parties?”

More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.

Perkins has his own unusual history. In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican State Rep. Louis “Woody” Jenkins of Louisiana, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Klan chieftain David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000 (reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure forms in a bid to hide the link to Duke. Five years later, on May 17, 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Perkins claimed not to know the group’s ideology at the time, but it had been widely publicized in Louisiana and the nation. In 1999, after Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was embroiled in a national scandal over his ties to the group, GOP chairman Jim Nicholson urged Republicans to quit the CCC because of its “racist views.” That statement and the nationally publicized Lott controversy came two years before Perkins’ 2001 speech.

American Family Association

Methodist minister Donald E. Wildmon formed the National Federation for Decency in 1977, changing its name to the American Family Association (AFA) in 1988. Today, the group, which was taken over by Tim Wildmon after his father’s 2010 retirement, claims a remarkable 2 million online supporters and 180,000 subscribers to its AFA Journal. It also broadcasts over nearly 200 radio stations.

The AFA seeks to support “traditional moral values,” but in recent years it has seemed to specialize in “combating the homosexual agenda.” In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy. Taking a page from the anti-gay fabulist Scott Lively (see Abiding Truth Ministries, above), Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” (Ironically, the elder Wildmon was widely denounced as an anti-Semite after suggesting that Jews control the media, which the AFA says “shows a genuine hostility towards Christians.”) Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. In a 2010 “action alert,” the AFA warned that if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve in the military, “your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals.”

Gays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies. In late 2009, Fischer suggested that all Muslims should be banned from joining the U.S. military. “Islam is a totalitarian political ideology,” Fischer added in August 2010. “It is as racist as the KKK. … Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different that granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.” A little later, according to the Huffington Post, Fischer said that whatever the government does to “to make it unthinkable for America’s youth to join a white supremacist group,” it should also do “to make it as unthinkable for a resident of America  to embrace Islam.” Around the same time, the Huffington Post said, he blogged that Muslim values are “grossly incompatible with American values,” and therefore no place in America should allow a mosque to be built.

And then there are the promiscuous. On his May 26, 2010, radio show, Fischer recounted the biblical story of Phineas, who used a spear to kill a man and a woman who were having sex. Citing the nation’s “rampant sexual immorality,” Fischer said, “God is obviously looking for more Phineases in our day.”

Iowa! New Hampshire! South Carolina! Santorum! God!

Bob Vander Plaats (Mr. Clappy) at Santorum’s Iowa victory speech

The Iowa Republican caucuses found Mitt Romney winning in an 8 vote landslide over Rick Santorum.  Not 8 percent – 8 votes.  Santorum’s showing was impressive and more of a win than Romney’s.  The candidates packed up and left for New Hampshire, Bachmann dropped out and Perry is heading straight to South Carolina – he is sick of the “loosey-goosey” Iowa process and would like to get back to the real deal.

Barring an airport restroom toe tapping incident, Romney will win New Hampshire.  But, Santorum is happy to use his Iowa victory to peel off some Romneyites.   With Newt’s newfound obsession to bury Romney – and after giving an Iowa concession speech that practically endorsed Santorum – the margin between first, second and third place will be shaved.

A January 5 shows the field like so:

Santorum edges out “Not Sure” by a nose

While Perry is off trying to scoop up votes in a friendlier southern state Santorum will let his boots on the ground team in South Carolina work its magic for him – just like in Iowa – while he traipses around NH.

Let me explain.

The media marveled at the spending gap between Romney and Santorum.  According to the Washington Post Romney spent about $1.47 million on media and won 29,874 votes = $49 per vote - Santorum spent only $21,980 in Iowa and took 29,908 votes in the caucuses, totaling about 73 cents per vote.

Romney spent most of that slamming Gingrich while Santorum didn’t need to spend as much – he had The FAMiLY Leader (TFL), Bob Vander Plaats and a host of Evangelicals both in and out of the pulpit spreading the Santorum good news.  (Currently in New Hampshire, from USA Today, ”Romney is pumping $264,000 into television ads in New Hampshire, while Santorum is spending just $16,000 in the Granite State this week, according to the Associated Press.”)

The pastors – namely Cary Gordon of the recently bankrupt Cornerstone World Outreach in Sioux City, Iowa and Jeff Mullen of Point of Grace church in Waukee (and, Mullen is running for Iowa Senate).  Both have worked with TFL and Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition to organize the Evangelical electorate in Iowa.  Be it rallying against gay marriage, ousting justices from the Iowa supreme court or waxing ridiculous about secularism’s resemblance to Nazis, these pastors defied the IRS to endorse candidacies.

Santorum was on the stump in Iowa since the anti-judge campaign during the mid-terms of 2010.  He showed up with Vander Plaats and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins on the FRC and National Organization for Marriage anti-judge bus tour which rallied the Evangelical base to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

To recap, The FAMiLY Leader is responsible for the bizarre “Marriage Vow” made famous in July that extolled the benefits of slavery to African-American families (after push-back, TFL removed all reference to slavery from the pledge’s text) and women’s role in society (producing lots of babies) and most recently a possible pay to play scandal where TFL asked Santorum to essentially pay for its endorsement.  (Despite all this, TFL wouldn’t be half as interesting a story if the organization hadn’t been built with over $3 million in federal funds.)

Bob Vander Plaats, a former high school principal (with a gentle, golden Trumpian comb over), was called a Republican political “kingmaker” byThe Atlantic (and almost all national media outlets) and ranked as one of the top 10 “endorsements the presidential candidates covet most” by The Hill last year.

TFL began building its serious national political clout during the run up to the 2010 mid terms.  Then known as the Iowa Family Policy Center, The FAMiLY Leader (the little “i” stands for subservience to God) scooped up the three-time Iowa gubernatorial race loser Bob Vander Plaats.  His assignment?  To lead the charge to oust the three Iowa Supreme Court Justices that ruled in favor of same-sex marriage (mentioned above).  With the help of over half-million of out-of-state dollars from groups like The Family Research Council, the insane American Family Association and the National Organization for Marriage – they pulled it off.

Vander Plaats leveraged this success and his success in chairing Huckabee’s campaign to victory in 2008 to become the man holding the door for every single GOP candidate coming through Iowa in 2011. The organization’s coup de grace this caucus season?  The Thanksgiving Family Forum featuring Republican candidates taking turns weeping during their personal testimony to cement their Christian conservative cred.  Riveted Evangelicals were stapled in their pews as the candidates spoke for over two hours in an Iowa church.

Santorum’s chumminess with The FAMiLY Leader will serve him well.  TFL is part of network of Christian organizations – affiliates of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.  The South Carolina analog to TFL – The Palmetto Family Council – will undoubtedly follow suit and start working its magic for Santorum.  The Palmetto Family Council also received federal funding – $1.2 million to preach heterosexual marriage and abstinence-only via George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives.

One thing to note:  It doesn’t matter what Santorum wins – Romney is a foregone conclusion as the nominee which in turn won’t matter because Obama is a shoe-in.  This is a polish job for 2016.  Santorum is just trying to get his organization right, his message will need to be refined as he can’t possibly let his crazy hang out too much – gotta keep that man on dog as analogy for homosexuality stuff to yourself Rick.

That Santorum will not get the candidacy is irrelevant – it is the right-wing infrastructure of state Family Research Council affiliates (in many cases built with taxpayer money) that enabled Santorum to spend so little money in places like Iowa and no doubt South Carolina.

There are many things to understand about the caucus process itself before one even dives into the run up to the caucus circus of GOP campaigning.  If you would like to investigate further I recommend this link on the Des Moines Register website.  I encourage you to check this out but here is the top line:  no delegates were awarded, nor will they be until the convention and even then delegates can hop from candidate to candidate.

You could say – and many have – that Iowa just doesn’t matter and in a way you would be right. But in the sense that Iowa gives us an inside view as to how candidates will campaign and who is campaigning for them is invaluable.* Iowa is the first true vetting process for the presidential election.  Candidates are forced to leave it all on the field in Iowa.  They have to show up, sling their arm around a farmer or hoist a baby off a propped hay bale at the state fair.

(This was purely a GOP race this year.  Repeat – GOP race only.  This bit of information will help the observer understand the who-can-out-conservative-Christian-the-other-candidate battle waged across the state.)

I don’t remember which pundit brought this up during the caucus coverage (probably Chris Matthews) that they spoke with 2 (count ‘em – 2!) Iowans that said they wouldn’t vote for Romney because of his Mormon faith.

This is a popular story line and one that the media loves to whip up.  Though it may have been true Romney’s last go-round, the sheer desperation of the Republican party has done away with much anti-Mormon sentiment.  With such a representative sample of two people, Chris (or whoever it was) does nothing to help the country’s ailing perception of Iowa.  Iowa is not the bible belt.  Again – this was a GOP caucus – Iowa Democrats effectively didn’t caucus this year.  As with any GOP anything the God talk is going to be at least a simmer and often a rolling boil.  In Iowa there is just a fine point put on right-wingery as the main political group is The FAMiLY Leader.

By the way, Iowa has Mormon Secretary of State, Matt Schultz.  (Schultz ended up backing Santorum.)

I have a handful of Evangelical friends in Iowa so I ran the Mormon question up the flagpole.  Was it an issue at their precinct?  The answer came back a resounding no.  One very conservative Christian gentleman I went to high school with (Jason S.) summed it up like this:

“The supporter for Romney in our precinct specifically mentioned that although Romney’s relationship with God was different than this person’s own, they would leave that between him and God. Perhaps my perception was stronger than the reality, we will have to see. It does appear though that there are a number of people who are of the camp that there is some sort of common morality between most religions and that this is what is important, that the elected official has demonstrated that they are morally upstanding.”

I found this Romney supporter’s rationale refreshing: leave Romney’s religion between him and his God.

Here is what a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll finds about the 2012 Republican caucus in Iowa:

Among the 57% of Iowa caucus-goers who describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, Santorum finished in first place with 32% support. Ron Paul garnered 18% of the evangelical vote, while Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry each received 14% of the evangelical vote.

Romney, Gingrich and Perry all walked away with 14%.  And, Romney didn’t show up to the Thanksgiving Family Forum sponsored by The FAMiLY Leader, whereas Gingrich and Perry did.  Pew also points out Huckabee was the clear winner in 2007 walking with 46% of the evangelical vote.

CNN’s Belief Blog co-editor Dan Gilgoff said that religion will not be a factor in The Granite State.  As if when the candidates left Iowa, the cathedral doors of the state clapped shut.  Although Gilgoff’s observations, and the input of New Hampshirites in his article, that religion is essentially less discussed in NH than IA is probably true.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t at work in the political process in New Hampshire.

Here’s what I mean.  In the very first paragraph – very first! – Gilgoff points to Cornerstone as the go to Christian group in the state.  (Karen Testerman, founder of Cornerstone has already endorsed Santorum).  He talks about the group’s flagging membership and how it’s changing its focus from “family values” (read:  anti-gay, anti-choice, Christian Worldview, etc) to fiscal and taxation issues – their membetship and bank account soared.

This doesn’t mean that religion is taking a backseat, this means religion – via a Christian Worldview – is embedded in our political system.  Here is an example of the Christian Worldview of The FAMiLY Leader pulled from an article I wrote (The Revealer) about the group last year:

Guided by such a Christian world view – with their interpretation of the Bible as policy guide — The Family Leader and Iowa House Republicans have already introduced a landslide of far-right legislation.  There is the previously-mentioned HJR 6 anti-gay marriage amendment.  A “religious conscience protection” act was introduced but quickly scrapped after a swift public backlash.  It is feverishly being reworked to more closely resemble other states’ Religious Freedom Restoration Acts for re-release, possibly during this congressional session.  There is a “personhood” bill that will be discussed in committee any day now, and the always repugnant “fetal pain” bill.  These bills attempt to make abortion illegal based on the personal religious belief of some that life begins at conception and on bad science claiming to prove that a fetus feels pain.

The Christian Worldview is applied across the board – not just on social issues but to economic and foreign policy as well.  Santorum aligns with this Worldview.  How will that play in New Hampshire?  His anti-gay talk is off to a bad start, the candidate receiving boos when he expressed his anti-gay marriage views.  But in a state that had the ‘chootspah’** to introduce an anti-evolution bill, the booing that greeted Santorum could be the exception not the rule in NH.

One thing is for sure: Santorum will have to downplay his Christian chatter in New Hampshire.  To be a mainstream candidate he is going to have to appeal to Ron Paul Libertarian and old-school Republicans not just the tea partying religious right.  Can he pull off such a ruse?  Don’t know, but if his recent claim that there should “always be a Jesus candidate” in a political race is any indication it may be rough going for Rick.

Notes:

South Carolina is currently looking like this:

 * RE:  Iowa’s first in the nation caucus status:  Anyone that goes first in anything is going to be the source of ridicule and frankly state envy.  Who would be more suited to go first?  Minnesota?  South Dakota?  New York?  LA?  Mississippi?  No one anywhere will be happy with who goes first except the state that goes first.  There is no magical place where an even racial, religious or socio-economic groups coexist in perfect percentages.  Just won’t happen.  Iowa is white.  There is no getting around that.  There is also no getting around the fact that Iowa gave Obama his first win in 2007.  And, as a native Iowan I would like to say you should always care about Iowa.

** (Bachmannian spelling) 

*** There is a minor debate about who handed Santorum his political win in Iowa among Christian pundits.  Steve Deace hands over full credit to Bob Vander Plaats for a Santorum win.  Keep your eyes on the sky in the Midwest people as Vander Plaats is about to float out the top.  Conservative blogger Shane Vander Hart doesn’t agree giving BVP some credit but spreading it around to several other helpmeets.

Happy Caucus Day Iowa! Thank you Bob Vander Plaats for kicking off the end to the religious right’s dominance in Iowa (and possibly the nation!)

What’s wrong with Iowa this year?  Why all the religious pandering to the far right base?  What is turning up the heat for Rick Santorum of all people? Watching national news coverage you would think Iowa is riddled with cross toting religious nuts praying for the rapture and trying to pray away the gay twenty-four seven who should have their first in the nation caucus status yanked.

This is an exhilarating storyline of red red meat.  Like everywhere, Iowa has its share of über Christian conservatives and we shouldn’t ignore (or eschew calling out) their hate filled rhetoric aimed at the poor and homosexuals or their repeated attacks on a woman’s right to chose.  But overall Iowans know what the national media has paid superficial lip service to:  religio-political groups have held their state captive and Iowans – Democrat, Republican or Libertarian – are over it.

This caucus is unlike any I have seen.  I live in New York City but as a native Iowan I lived through my share of caucus cycles. I even served time as the editor of small Iowa newspaper in 2007.   Looking back over my coverage of that caucus season I see no resemblance to what is happening now.  It is not only the overly religious context of the Iowa caucuses but the lack of Iowan’s enthusiasm as contrasted to the energy of 2007 contest.  The New York Times picks up this vibe:

“Veterans of Iowa politics say the size and tenor of this year’s Republican crowds across the state have not come close to those in the final days of campaigning by the 2008 candidates — particularly the eventual caucus winners, Barack Obama for the Democrats and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, for the Republicans.  “There was more energy four years ago for Huckabee — and even with the last Romney campaign,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa.”

An elementary and high school friend mine, Jessica, now living in Des Moines, is in charge of the caucus for the 87th precinct in Des Moines.  She told me that the county Republican Party was predicting a big turnout.

Jess is skeptical saying, “I believe Iowans are mostly non-engaged at this point. I called a gazillion people on my precinct list to ask for volunteers, and had two step up. This could be due to a lack of inspiring candidates, in addition to [far right wing religious involvement in politics].”

My perception, before I got home for a six-day Christmas visit to my parents in Beaman, Iowa, was that I would be greeted at the state line with billboards and neon signs:  Vote Santorum!  Vote Gingrich!  Bachmann!  Ron Paul!  But there were none.

Driving through the state, first via I-80 through Iowa City, then Tama and Toledo, on to Marshalltown down to Des Moines then winding back on Highway 30 through small towns then Cedar Rapids and finally through Clinton before crossing the Mississippi – I saw one political sign; a banner draped on a fence about two miles from my parents house screaming Draft Sarah Plain!  Pretty much says it all to me.

Sitting around the with my family watching the local news I was struck that the coverage was more about the weather (unseasonably warm) and the burgeoning Occupy the Caucus movement than of the candidates or the caucuses themselves.  Don’t get me wrong, there was a never ending loop of political ads running on our local stations, but this year bears only a passing resemblance to the 2008 caucuses in that they are the political exercise called a caucus.

The Republicans have – hopefully and at long last – overplayed their religious hand.  They will always have their hardcore base, which in Iowa is whipped into shape by Iowa’s leading Christian conservative political group The FAMiLY Leader (TFL) and its president Bob Vander Plaats.

Due to missteps by TFL and Vander Plaats the group is heading toward irrelevancy both in and out of the state.  The FAMiLY Leader has done more damage to the Republican Party than the poor field of candidates.

They are responsible for the bizarre “Marriage Vow” made famous in July that extolled the benefits of slavery to African American families (after push-back, TFL removed all reference to slavery from the pledge’s text) and women’s role in society (producing lots of babies) and most recently a possible pay to play scandal where TFL asked Santorum to essentially pay for its endorsement.  (Despite all this, TFL wouldn’t be half as interesting a story if the organization hadn’t been built with over $3 million in federal funds.)

Bob Vander Plaats, a former high school principal, has been called a Republican political “kingmaker” by The Atlantic (and almost all national media outlets) and ranked as one of the top 10 “endorsements the presidential candidates covet most” by The Hill last year.

This evangelical Christian organization began building its serious political clout during the 2010 mid terms.  Then known as the Iowa FAMiLY Policy Center, The FAMiLY xLeader (the little “i” stands for subserveance to God) scooped up the three-time Iowa gubernatorial race loser Bob Vander Plaats.  His assignment?  To lead the charge to oust the three Iowa Supreme Court Justices that ruled in favor of same sex marriage.  With the help of millions of out of state dollars from groups like The FAMiLY Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage (Rick Santorum even showed up with Bob at whistle stops to oust the judges) they pulled it off.

Vander Plaats leveraged this success and his political Rolodex left over from chairing Huckabee’s campaign to victory in 2008 to become the man that held the door for every single GOP candidate to come through Iowa in 2011. The organization’s coup de grace this caucus season?  The Thanksgiving Family Forum featuring Republican candidates taking turns weeping during their personal testimony to cement their Christian conservative cred.

Thanks to The FAMiLY Leader, Bob Vander Plaats and handfuls of Iowa pastors politicking from the pulpit, other states feel justified saying Iowa should be stripped of its first in the nation caucus status. I say if anything, the people of The United States owe Iowans a debt of gratitude this year.  The Iowa caucus season exposed the religious right for what it is:  a destroyer of political sanity, abusers of women’s and gay rights, and electoral hostage takers.

When thinking about the Iowa GOP’s track record for picking winners lets remember Mike Huckabee took Iowa in 2008 and McCain became the nominee.  Iowa Democrats however selected Obama, our President, and in five out of six past election cycles Iowa went blue.  Neither the process (our antiquated caucuses) nor Iowans are broken.  The Republican Party is.  Its decades of allowing religio-political groups, politicians and pundits to commandeer the party haven’t served them  – or any of us – well.  We are tangled up listening to purported small government Christian conservatives who have no problem with government reigning over a woman’s uterus, bringing an end to same-sex marriage or bestowing citizenship on a fertilized egg.

Realizing the party has shifted so far to the right and the use of evangelicals as voting block to be reckoned with is backfiring on a national scale.  Republicans are finally moaning over the religiosity that’s seized Iowa caucuses.  They are also (finally) worrying aloud about the overly conservative position growing out of Iowa – too conservative to be maintained through a general election.  As a result we may be hearing the death rattle of the religious right playing an outsized roll in national politics; and if it is we have the GOP and Iowa to thank for it.

NOTE:  This is my fantasy that the radical Christian right will now play a downsized role in politics – which I think at least on the surface they will.  Don’t take this to mean we should let up on being diligent when the back state legislation that is anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-worker – pick your anti.  Just keep your eyes peeled.  

Iowa Nice! Yapping with Scott Siepker about his hilarious video

This morning my friend Sonia forwarded me the following hilarious video.  I may think it is hilarious because I am a native Iowan and the video is about Iowa – but I have a feeling one will find it hilarious regardless of their home state:

Naturally, Sonia is practically the Mayor of Western Iowa and – naturally – she knew the guy rattling off the funny in the video.  She immediately put me in touch with him.

Scott told me they made the video primarily (or cacusally) because they are worried about Iowa’s first in the nation caucus status being trashed due to the crazymaking by Iowa GOP’ers this year.  We commiserated a bit about how the religious right has hijacked the process this year and how the lack of a real Democratic caucus offers no balance to the right wingery.

Originally from Mt.Carmel – according to Scott an Iowa town with “101 people and 26 pets” – just outside Carroll, Iowa.  He’s an actor who hosts the Iowa Public Television program Iowa Outdoors now entering its second season.

He and his friend filmed over the course of two days, “We just kinda drove around filming it, Paul edited it and the response has been great so far.”  Scott said there are people from “both sides of the aisle” that are enjoying the video – hearing its truth and sending it along to friends and family.   Scott’s hope? that, “[the video] will offend everyone equally.”

And, by the look of my facebook and twitter feed, it is getting growing play. The video was just posted by The Rachel Maddow show and word on the street is they are trying to track him down.

Scott says he has a general interest in politics overall calling it “intriguing”.  He really, really wants to hold on to first in the nation status.  He calls his wish kind of selfish – so I guess that makes me selfish too.  I want Iowa to stay right where it is in the political pecking order.

“I want us to keep this first in the nation position and address the misconceptions people have about Iowa.  It’s the right size and mix of people and I want to make sure people know that and Iowan’s can be trusted to do again what we did four years ago.”

He is seriously proud to be an Iowan and he wants to share that pride and love of his home state – and defend her from the Fuck Wads (who he addresses curtly in the video).   His favorite way to do this is of course through humor.

We talked for a bit about how funny we Iowans are, that we have a great sense of humor.  I told him his video passed the only real test I use:  my 70+ year old mom, lifelong bleeding heart liberal Iowan, laughed her ass off as she watched the link I forwarded her.

In addition to Iowa Nice and Iowa Outdoors Siepker is featured in Valentine Road a series of webisodes about Iowa during prohibition and the role the state played with its infamous Templeton Rye.    Scott is also working on a script about Iowa actors that can’t get out of Iowa.  He tells me, “I want people to know there are a ton of really talented people in this state – we haven’t all left.”   He’s right.

This just in:  another friend of mine from Iowa – Erin – was one of Scott’s teachers at Carroll!  Small, small world!