Reality TV star Jim Bob Duggar, from TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, endorsed Rick Santorum today at a rally in Polk City, Iowa. “All the people in America that have conservative family values have to get behind Rick Santorum for President,” Duggar said.
According to BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, The Duggars “brought ‘about a dozen’ of the kids to Polk City and they drove overnight from Arkansas.”
Like Duggar, the Santorum family is also notably very fertile, with 7 kids of their own.
Those above are the faces of fertility, apparently. A reality teevee star famous for breeding due to the fact that he’s in a religious cult and a Frothy Mix. Sorry if you just had lunch…
It’s widely known that Newt Gingrich’s history of it being All About Him and his ambitions goes back a long way, but this news is still really gross. A story from years ago is making the rounds right now, about his marriage to Jackie, his first wife, and it’s fairly disgusting:
She had free will. Nobody forced her to marry someone eight years younger. The man is supposed to marry someone younger, and Newt corrected that the second time around after divorcing Jacqueline in 1980 for “irreconcilable differences,” which he said had been the case through the 1970s, despite counseling.
But did he have to be so mean about it? As reported by L.H. Carter, his campaign treasurer, Newt said of Jacqueline: “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer.”
Newt has been claiming for years that it was Jackie that wanted the divorce, but it’s looking like that’s a lie:
[N]ewly revealed 30-year-old court papers posted on CNN’s website appear to contradict that.
In the papers, Battley asks the judge to reject her husband’s request for a divorce.
“Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time,” her petition said.
“Defendant does not admit that this marriage is irretrievably broken.”
CNN said it was initially told the divorce documents were sealed, but then a reporter found the folder stashed in a court clerk’s drawer in Carroll County, Ga.
[...]
CNN interviewed Newt Gingrich’s former pal and early congressional campaign treasurer Leonard Carter, who said their friendship ended over the ambitious pol’s callous treatment of his wife.
[...]
He said Gingrich initially refused to pay alimony — a claim supported by the court papers — and a church had to launch a food drive for Battley and her two daughters.
Nice. The article points out, of course, that at that time, he was already dating the newer, hotter model, who became his second wife. When she got a wrinkle before Newt’s ambitions came to fruition, he started testing out the 3.0 version, named Callista, with whom he was having an affair while he was attacking President Clinton for infidelity.
Newt Gingrich will never be president — this, we know — but if his pattern holds, I wouldn’t be surprised if Callista gets the boot sometime after the 2012 elections.
Santorum said Gingrich’s stance of allowing exceptions [on abortion] is “inconsistent with mine and inconsistent clearly with most Iowans and, with respect to federal funding, with most Americans.”
Once Iowa conservatives are aware of Gingrich’s record, Santorum said, “my guess is that they’ll do what has happened to a lot of candidates, which is once you find out more about the candidates, you may try to look for another candidate.”
He added: “I may not be the guy that the girls are initially attracted to when they walk into the dance hall, but ultimately once you get to know all the folks, I’m the one you want to take home to Mom.”
Ew. I mean, granted, no woman in her right mind would want to take Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain home to Mom, but I’m struggling to imagine a scenario where that same woman would then opt for the piece pictured above. Unless this is what the lady and her mom are looking for.
This will probably make you retch if you are a thinking person, so if you happen to be eating lunch right now, I am sorry. But PZ and severalothers found this letter from a devout Reformed Baptist man, describing his marriage to his wife, and let’s just say that if this is what anti-gay bigots are talking about when they extol “traditional marriage,” well, then, there’s a reason divorce rates are so high in more fundamentalist states and communities.
Disclaimer: yes, we know, this is not what all Christians are like. Indeed, these are Reformed Baptists, which, as a recovered Reformed Presbyterian (they’re not that far apart), I happen to know something about. It’s a strange theology, and a cruel one, wherein humans have no say in whether or not they were created in order to be sent to paradise or a fiery hell by their benevolent god. Thanks, John Calvin! As many of the most vehemently anti-gay bigots out there are Calvinists of some stripe or another, I find this relevant.
So anyway, this seems to be a note from a Reformed Baptist man to the guests of his wedding feast to the wife he has procured [you will need to click to embiggen it, probably]:
Okay! So let’s break this down a bit, so we can learn about the qualities of, apparently, some Reformed marriages, which are viewed by these people as The Real Thing, whereas same sex marriage is “an abomination.”
As Bible-believing Baptists who hold to reformed theology, X and I believe that God is sovereign in choosing who will or will not believe in him, having chosen his people before the foundation of the world (see Ephesians 1), and that his selection is unbreakable and irresistible. If marriage is to mirror this principle, we believe that a woman has no right to select a husband for herself, but that she is to be chosen by a man and marriage is to be an unbreakable arrangement between the man and her father. Based on this reasoning, we have shunned a standard proposal and wedding ceremony, because if I had asked her to marry me (which I did not) then I would have given her the decision to marry me rather than selecting her and taking her myself. Furthermore, if we had exchanged conventional marriage vows, our union would have been based on X’s will and consent, which are not Biblical factors for marriage or salvation. Instead, I asked X’s father for his blessing in taking her hand in marriage. When he gave his blessing, X and I considered ourselves to be unbreakably betrothed in the sight of God. While we had initially intended to consummate our marriage after today’s symbolic ceremony, we instead did so secretly after private scripture reading, prayer, and mutual foot-washing.
Yes, in Reformed theology, humans have no say in the matter. Therefore, as a logical extension, since “marriage” is a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church, it would follow that that sort of marriage would be essentially a transaction between a man and his new chattel’s daddy. And really, she’s just a woman. It’s not like she’s a person or anything! This is, of course, a rather childish understanding of Reformed Theology, not that I expect any more from its typical adherents. In point of fact, if this devout Reformed Baptist man had a wedding and marriage that really went according to the Calvinist “plan of salvation,” there are few details missing. Yes, they believe that their god chooses who will and will not be saved and that humans have no say in the matter. However, they also believe that, by the very act of being called upon by their god, humans come to “salvation” irresistibly. In other words, only those who are chosen are called, and by their god “changing their hearts,” they are impelled, but happily, to freely come to a “saving faith.” Those who are not chosen are simply not called and thus remain hardened or deaf or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days.
So for Reformed Baptist Dude to really make his wedding a mirror of his understanding of the relationship between Christ and the Church, he needs to have coerced her in some way into believing that she has no other choice but to do what he commands, which in this case is marrying him. She must first be bamboozled into believing on her own that she has literally no choice in the matter. I assume that the wife’s father probably helped with that.
Moving, on, his words about how his god hates gays. This, in a letter about his own marriage, again, presumably to his wedding feast guests:
X and I have obtained a marriage license in Hall County, GA to gain recognition from the state, but their recognition does not make us married. The recognition of a civil government cannot marry any two people in the sight of God, and this should be obvious from the state’s recent confusion in “marrying” same-sex couples engaged in the sin of sodomy.
Uh. Yeah, millions upon millions of people know differently. But of course, his statement is essentially arguing with itself, as wingnuts so often do. OF COURSE they want the civil benefits of being “married in the eyes of god!” They want the goodies, because they were chosen, you see! This dude and his chattel’s father were chosen together to trade a particular member of the wimminfolk race from one generation to another, and they’ll be damned (well no, they won’t, as they are chosen) if you’re going to keep gubmint benefits from them. But they want the secular civil government to conform its idea of marriage to their weird notion of matrimony. By this definition, of course, most other Christian couples aren’t really married, and neither are Jews or Muslims or atheists, even if they all have penis-vagina marriages! But you’ll never see this breed of wingnut argue to take marriage rights away from straight couples who don’t believe in the medieval crap they espouse. Something in them knows that’s just a bridge too far. But, you know, gays are bad.
The rest of his letter, as you can see, is about how she’s wearing white and he’s wearing a red shirt, representing blood, or something. Sounds like the wedding party looked like hell.
Anyway. So there is a portrait of one kind of biblical marriage. To most sentient beings, it’s pretty disgusting. But that is what at least some of the bigots are defending from the marauding hordes of evil gays.
If you are like normal Americans, you were under the impression that yesterday, Labor Day, is a holiday where we celebrate the accomplishments of the organized labor movement in this country. More information about that here! Of course, wingnuts really hate organized labor in this country, so they have to find weird, contrived things to write about it whenever it comes around. So it is that we have this dude, writing at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Choler, about what Labor Day means to him, personally:
Robert Morrison served in the Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan. He is now a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at Family Research Council in Washington.
Great, a dingus I’ve never heard of from a hate group that annoys me. This should be entertaining:
As we mark Labor Day, I’d like to salute those women who keep our economy productive by their labors in the home.
Scripture refers to the first time that God said that something was not good. “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him’” (Gen. 2:18). By “an help meet,” the Elizabethan writers of the King James Bible meant someone who is able to help a man work. Even in paradise, there is much work to be done. Naming and exercising authority over the plants and animals, making the garden fruitful — these are labors of the first order. Thus, we see marriage between man and woman as part of the natural order. In thus creating and honoring marriage, God also dignified labor.
God said something wasn’t good that wasn’t about gayness? Imagine. So we’re paying tribute to the ladies who stay at home, that’s fine. How is he going to make this about gays?
Labor unions claim credit for being “the folks who brought you the American weekend.”
That’s largely true. But today, organized labor also brings us America the weakened. That’s because liberal labor union leaders have too often ignored their members’ values as they’ve pressed for abortion-on-demand and the ending of marriage.
Bravo, weird wingnut, bravo. America is weaker because “labor unions today” (evil) spend all their time loving abortion and gayness. He of course offers no corroborating evidence for these assertions, but “proof” is anathema among the fundamentalist wingnut crowd. You’re simply supposed to take what the hate group hack says on faith!
Anyway, he goes on for several more paragraphs doing his “women should stay at home and push out babies” thing because that is the true meaning of “labor,’ and then he is finished, therefore so are we. Ugh.
Every time I think that the gay wingnut group GOProud has sunk to the lowest possible level of organized self-loathing, they find a way to strap the cilice on just a little bit tighter. It is well documented that Michele Bachmann does not like gay people. She considers her own lesbian family member’s sexuality to be “part of Satan.” Her husband runs a clinic without a license where he offers reparative therapy practices to any clients already abused enough to put themselves through it. She has made a large part of her career on opposing gay people and supporting bigoted, hateful policies against us. So of course, GOProud wants her autograph.
As gay-issue advocacy groups increase pressure on Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann over her views about homosexuality, the gay conservative group GOProud is requesting a meeting with the Republican presidential candidate to possibly lend a hand.
GOProud Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia said that representatives with the organization have already met with some of the GOP candidates to discuss GOProud’s legislative agenda–including a commitment to defeat a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which Bachmann supports–and they hope Bachmann will grant them some face time.
“We have requested a meeting with Michele Bachmann,” LaSalvia told The Ticket. “We’ve made this request, as with the other requests, in good faith.” He said GOProud officials intend to “discuss issues important to gay conservatives” with Bachmann and “anything she wishes to talk about.”
Chris Barron says he’s “concerned” about some of the things Michele has said in the past, but as the article points out, GOProud’s agenda isn’t really about anything resembling civil equality for gays and lesbians. They’re mostly a troupe of disaffected white men who value their white privilege and tax cuts above anything else. When they cozy up to Mitt Romney or someone like that, it’s annoying. To cozy up to the most supreme bigot running for the highest office in the land [Rick Perry isn't officially in yet] is gross and more than a little bit sad.
UPDATE: Intrepid commenters have pointed out that @RickSantorumPR is actually a parody site. Regardless, the headline stands: Rick’s Google problem is here to stay. Good for America!
I do not know what this means, but I find it gross just the same. Joe explains:
Maryland-based carpetbagger Bishop Harry Jackson appeared on the radio show of Minnesota hate preacher Bradlee Dean to declare that gay marriage is part of Satan’s plot to “destroy our seed.”
I had no idea wingnut seed was so weak, the motility so pathetically low, that the nice gay couple down the street sealing the deal legally would kill it.
This picture of Ted Haggard’s family is apparently in the latest edition of GQ, and I don’t want to look at it anymore, so I’m posting this and never looking at it again.
There goes the presidential race:According to BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, The Duggars “brought ‘about a dozen’ of the kids to Polk City and they drove overnight from Arkansas.”
