How many times have we heard from hardcore Tea Partiers that their cause “focuses on economic issues and doesn’t care about social issues?”

Of course, there’s an ample catalogue of evidence to refute that statement, but just in case we needed any more proof, look no further than the Tennessee Tea Party. They apparently missed the “social issues are verboten” memo when they released this tweet on Monday in reaction to news of Barney Frank’s impending retirement:

Some economic critique.

Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips issued a statement condemning the tweet, but according to Daily Kos, the Tennessee Tea Party is steadfastly standing behind its bigoted views.

Truth Wins Out’s acclaimed Center Against Religious Extremism (TWOCARE), offers original, in-depth, and on-site reporting.

“Please, come join us,” insisted an attractive college student flashing her bright Aquafresh smile.

Before I was able to decline her friendly invitation I was gently pulled into a large prayer circle of thirty or so Charismatic Christians. “I’m sorry my hand is sweaty,” the girl said with a sheepish grin.

Those were the last words she spoke that I understood. We quickly surrounded a handful of young preachers who whooped and hollered before surrendering English for the unintelligible language of tongues.  The manic participants sounded like a cross between a prayer service and a Native American tribe preparing for battle.

Eventually, they raised their hands toward the sky pointing to God, which allowed me to escape and enter the seating area at Ford Field, where Lou Engle, founder of The Call, had gathered 27,000 fundamentalist Christians from across the nation on 11.11.11, a date that came to him in what he believes to be a divinely inspired vision. The majority of the crowd was Caucasian, however a significant number were African American. There was a large youth component, but the age of participants reached across the spectrum.

While I can’t speak for the entire conference, which was a 24-hour call to fast and prayer, I did spend 14 hours at Ford Field watching sermons, surveying sideshows, videotaping the gathering, and interacting with the hyped-up crowd. So, my observations, while not complete, do offer a significant snapshot of the 11.11.11 Detroit rally.

In a press release prior to the event I wrote that I expected 11.11.11 Detroit to be a “gay bashing” and “Muslim trashing” extravaganza. After all, The Call had chosen Detroit as its rally site in an effort to convert the region’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Muslims.

The Associated Press reported that Apostle Ellis Smith, Engle’s local “point person” for The Call, referred to Islam in a sermon leading up to the revival as a “false,” “lame” and “perverse” religion.

Engle had previously held an infamous event in Uganda that whipped up anti-gay hysteria. In 2008, the electrifying preacher organized a rally at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium in support of Proposition 8, a successful measure to prohibit marriage equality in California.

To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.

Indeed, most of the aspersions on Friday evening and Saturday were deliberately cast though euphemism. Homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, but was instead lumped together with other “sins” under the umbrella of “sexual immorality.” Other times, speakers camouflaged their anti-gay agenda by simply saying they supported “traditional marriage.” During the entire time I observed the event there was not one reference to healing homosexuality and no “ex-gays” were trotted up on the stage to tell tales of how they “prayed away the gay.”

However, the Detroit Free Press reported that Apostle Smith claimed that at the event, “a lesbian came from the homosexual community and said she has never experienced such love. And she is now working to change her lifestyle.”

(I’m sure this alleged lesbian was very stable and well adjusted because it is common for healthy and secure LGBT people to spend weekends attending revivals that consider them demonic.)

The conversion of Muslims was also downplayed and “Dearborn,” referring to the Detroit suburb with perhaps the nation’s largest Muslim population, euphemistically replaced the word “Islam.”

It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.

Its real aim was to peel African American support away from the Democratic Party in a swing state during a critical election year. Not only is President Barack Obama’s reelection at stake, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is locked in a tight race that includes social conservative and former GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra. This cynical revival was not about “values” — it was about votes. It was not about worship, but winning office for Republicans by promoting what writer Ed Kilgore called in The New Republic, a “big-God, small-government creed.”

The amazing part was that the audience seemed totally unaware of the underlying motives and machinations. After all, the words “Democrat” and “Republican” were never spoken and there was only one local politician identified on-stage. It seemed that even some of the minor speakers might not have been privy to the overarching strategy. Nonetheless, a brilliant display of political subterfuge was unfolding as the oblivious crowd bopped to Christian rock with their hands swaying above their heads.

This is not the first attempt of white fundamentalists to lure black voters away from the Democratic Party. Immediately following the 2004 presidential election, social conservatives made a strong push to lure African-Americans. Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, The Traditional Values Coalition, hosted a right wing meeting of 70 black religious leaders in Los Angeles.

“In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush,” said Al Sharpton at First Iconium Baptist Church. “They couldn’t come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people.”

Unbelievably, at the Los Angeles meeting Sheldon played an anti-gay video featuring disgraced Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. Remember, Lott had to step down as Senate Majority Leader after he publicly pined over Strom Thurmond not winning the presidency as a Dixiecrat. African-American columnist Leonard Pitts put Sheldon’s power grab in perspective:

“Whether the issue was slavery, segregation, lynching, voting rights or housing discrimination, social conservatives have always taken a position that history later judged to be ignorant and flat-out wrong….which leaves me at a loss to understand why any African American possessed of a functioning brain would give this atavistic bunch the time of day.”

Still, the attempt was gaining some momentum until Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, which badly frayed the burgeoning unholy alliance. The effort was further hampered by the emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic standard bearer.

In this renewed effort in Detroit, Lou Engle and his minions were smart. They wisely figured out that direct attacks on the Democratic Party would not fly, nor would all-out verbal barrages against President Barack Obama, who still has strong African American support. They also understood that the baggage surrounding white Evangelical racism would have to be addressed and surmounted before real progress was made.

To overcome these obstacles and recruit African Americans to vote for the GOP they devised what seems like a five-part strategy.

1) Pick a key swing state with a beleaguered city that had an economically disadvantaged African American population

2) Create an emotional spectacle where tearful white people pleaded for forgiveness and repented onstage for past racism

3) Sharply define new wedge issue(s) and create a racially-based conspiracy theory that could ultimately be used against the Democratic Party

4) Exploit these emerging wedge issue(s) to the point they become more important than fixing the economy

5) Redefine voting criteria so candidates are primarily judged by where they stand on these wedge issue(s) – with the ultimate goal of leading many African Americans to conclude that they are best represented by the conservative GOP.

Lou Engle understands that much of Michigan is conservative. If he were able to peel off fifteen or twenty percent of Detroit’s black Democratic vote, he might be able to turn the state solidly red. The main wedge issue he selected to accomplish his plan is abortion. For good measure, he helped weave a conspiracy theory: Sinister white bigots who run programs like Planned Parenthood were using abortion to reduce African American birthrates.

“What Birmingham is to the civil rights movement, Detroit is to abortion,” bellowed Engle at the event. “Detroit has a calling…blacks and Latinos could lead the parade of history.”

Engle’s message was aided by a parade of socially conservative African American ministers.  One preached that black people must choose “BC (Biblical Correctness) over PC (Political Correctness).” The subtext was that the pro-life GOP is on the side of the Bible and thus should be the party of African Americans. Another pastor was even more explicit when he declared that African Americans had a choice: “God’s way or a political party’s way.” (Read More)

Poor Herman Cain.

He is now in the awkward position of trying to slither out of a mushrooming sexual harassment scandal by parsing words such as “agreement” vs. “settlement.” This led conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer, to ask whether he was being “Clintonian.”

But there actually was a simple way for Herman Cain to avoid the whole mess: He could have chosen to be gay.

Earlier this month on the television show The View, Herman Cain said that he thought homosexuality was a “choice.”

If it is a choice, then why didn’t he flip on his gay switch when he felt sexually tempted? This would have saved him from a lot of trouble. When he safely returned home to his wife, he could have switched back to heterosexuality. It seems that Cain lacks the discipline choose his homosexuality when he needs it most. This is why he is unfit to be president.

I frequently have a certain conversation with people, over what words are acceptable and what words are not, as regards the LGBT community. My contention has always been that intent is everything, and that it’s probably not useful to get one’s knickers in a twist every time somebody says a word we don’t personally like. Because really, we’re not all monolithic on the subject! For instance, I don’t like the word “queer.” I don’t know why, it just bugs me. You’ll never see me sign onto anything called “queer this” or “queer that,” but that’s just my personal preference. If you like that word, if you’ve embraced it, or if you use it in a positive manner, that’s fine by me.

Some people don’t like the word “homosexual.” That is also okay. Personally, my relationship with that word is 100% about the intent of the user. My Wonkette column is called “THE HOMOSEXUALS!” Why? Because I think it’s funny. Others do too. But I understand that, when used by the Religious Right, it’s a dogwhistle meant to engender hatred and revulsion. They emphasize the “sex” syllable, just like hard right Republicans pigheadedly refuse to call the Democratic party by its correct name, instead calling it the “Democrat Party,” emphasis on the “rat.”

The reason I bring this up is that one of THE BEST progressive outfits out there, The Young Turks, hosted by Cenk Uygur, is taking a lot of heat right now because one of them, Ana Kasparian, used the word “homosexual” instead of “gay” in some column. The Young Turks are, hands down, some of the most outspoken, smart, funny, consistently supportive opinion makers out there when it comes to the LGBT community. I know this because I’ve been listening for years. Back when Air America existed, I used to get up every single morning, and instead of flipping on the television while I got ready, I would turn on the radio to listen to The Young Turks. I even used to call in!  If you’re not familiar with them, enjoy their YouTube page for yourself.

As to the specific situation at hand, here’s Cenk and Ana discussing what happened, so watch that, and I’ll meet you on the other side, because a writer at a large gay blog is not happy, and I want to respond to it:

The blog that had a problem was AfterElton. Here’s a bit of what Dennis Ayers had to say at that site:

Turns out these folks consider themselves liberal progressives! And that makes this video far more disappointing than if you’d seen something like it on FOX News. And you easily could.

[...]

Watching Kasparian walk through the objective data showing that the choice of using “homosexual” instead of “gay” is actually detrimental to the GLBT community, and then having Cenk Uygur actually dismiss that as gays… sorry, homosexuals… being overly sensitive and unreasonable is truly infuriating.

Last time I checked the “gay community” (is there really such a monolithic thing?) wasn’t calling for a ban on the word “homosexual.” But given the determined use of that term by Christian conservatives it really does seem like someone who is generally pro-gay, once aware of the negative connotation, would make the choice to not use it.

Why exactly does Uygur feel the need to draw a line in the sand and continue making the choice to refer to gays as homosexuals?

Well, more power to him if that’s what he wants to do. I can’t speak for the “gay community,” but I at least won’t be tuning in.

First of all, if you’re not tuning in, you’re missing something, because, as I said, The Young Turks are fabulous. What the writer found “pugnacious” is that Cenk Uygur has a biting, sarcastic, dry wit about him, and he’s willing to say what he thinks. This is not, inherently, a problem.

What I notice about that clip is that both Cenk AND Ana had really good points to make! Ana wasn’t aware that there was a problem with people’s perceptions of the word “homosexual,” and she learned about it. Cenk, quite rightly (!), points out that wingnuts will do this to ANY word that non-wingnuts use to describe ourselves. This has happened with the word “feminist,” to the point that freaking Lilith Fair participants all the way up to Ms. Sarah McLachlan were waffling around about whether they were or were not feminists, in the year 2010! We all know that wingnuts have done this to the word “liberal.” Sometimes, the correct response is to rebrand, but sometimes it’s much better to embrace the word and say “Yes, I am a liberal homosexual man [who happens to also be a feminist], and what exactly is your problem with that, please?”

My point, as I said above, is that it’s all about intent.  Cenk Uygur is not anti-gay!  He is extremely, vociferously pro-gay.  I think we have to be careful, as LGBT people, not to approach every conversation about language like we’re teaching our own impromptu course in Cultural Sensitivity 101, because again, we all have differing opinions about this.  Here’s another one of mine:  I think we get mired down when we keep adding letters to “LGBT.”  Partially, it’s because I’m simply not willing to spend the time learning them, but partially, it’s also because I think it confuses people.  But if you like them, good!  Use them!

And there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Cenk here, or Ana.  That’s fine.  And you don’t have to listen to them, if their style isn’t to your liking.  But I don’t think it’s a good excuse to make a mountain out of what is, in my opinion, nothing more than a teachable moment embedded in an intelligent discussion between two people who are, decidedly, on our side.

If you weren’t familiar with Cenk before, here he is on MSNBC defending marriage equality, in his trademark way:

Sidenote:  I can almost smell the wingnuts trying to draw a parallel between this and the right-wing “How come they can say ‘nigger’ and we can’t?” argument.  This is not the same thing.  This is not about a term that is, and always has been, a pejorative.  For one thing, I’d be hard pressed to find a white person who simultaneously:  1.  Truly loves black people, and 2.  Has a deep, resentful desire to use the word “nigger.”  We’re talking here about a term that is actually, all the way back to its Latin roots, the correct term.  The fact that certain people have turned it into a pejorative is undeniable.  But it doesn’t have the immediate, cruel implications of words that have only been used as tools of hatred and demonization.

Weekly Column

The war over gay rights in America and other modern nations has been largely won. Too many people have come out of the closet and will never go back in for the clock to be turned back. Most of these out individuals have loyal friends and family members who offer unequivocal love and unqualified support. We have reached a tipping point where LGBT people are even coming out in traditionally conservative bastions where the issue has long been seen as taboo.

For example, in England, 6’3″, 225-pound rugby star Gareth Thomas recently came out. He was featured in a major Sports Illustrated spread detailing his life as the first openly gay male athlete in team sports. While no comparable male star has come out in America, Thomas’ brave journey sets the stage for this breakthrough to occur.

Gospel singers Ray Boltz and Tonex have acknowledged their sexual orientation, blazing a trail in a very homophobic environment. Country music crooner Chely Wright (pictured), who will be working with the LGBT organization Faith in America to combat religion-based bigotry, courageously came out this month.

While Ricky Martin’ announcement that he is gay did not seem to shock many people, it still had a significant impact in the Hispanic community and reverberated across Latin America. And, the recent support of marriage equality by Cindy McCain and Laura Bush gave fair-minded Republican women across this nation a green light to openly embrace their gay friends.

Daily advances suggest that the LGBT community is about fifteen years away from full equality. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday indicates that 78 percent of the public supports allowing openly gay people to serve in the military, with only one in five opposed.

“Support is widespread, even among Republicans. Nearly six in ten Republicans favor allowing openly gay individuals to serve in the military,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “There is a gender gap, with 85 percent of women and 71 percent of men favoring the change, but support remains high among both groups.”

A new Gallup poll released Monday showed that while the number of Americans opposed to marriage equality continues to outnumber those in support of it, the number opposed has dropped to tie Gallup’ all-time low for the number. According to the poll, 53% of Americans oppose marriage equality compared to 44% who support it. The 53% number is tied with 2007′ 53% for the lowest opposition to gay marriage among Americans that Gallup has recorded.

In the next decade or so, a more supportive demographic will fully come of age and replace voters who hail from more conservative generations. During this period, we will witness an increasingly bitter and divisive culture war, as opponents sense defeat and grow desperate. There is no alternative to fighting these battles if we expect to win.

Often, I am asked the question: Why do you spend so much time focusing on religious extremists?

I spotlight these zealots because the only way we can now lose is if America is overthrown by a theo-fascist regime that obliterates the separation of church and state. Let me state clearly that it is highly unlikely that such a takeover will occur.

However, such a nightmare can only take place if we do not pay attention to our opponents. There is no shortage of Americans who desire an intolerant “Christian Nation” that excludes non-fundamentalists from first-class citizenship. I have traveled to rabidly right wing conferences, witnessed their radical vision for America and have seen the determination in their eyes. We should never underestimate their will or doubt their commitment to turn this country into the Christian version of Iran.

The one genuine concern I have is the enthusiastic embrace of fringe anti-gay activists by respectable members of the Republican Party. Strong ideological divisions combined with a weak economy and high unemployment could place in power Republicans beholden to fanatical elements. This could potentially create a dire situation where our opponents have the raw power to reverse the LGBT community’ notable gains.

If you don’t think they can do it, consider that the extreme right took over the Texas School Board and rewrote the history books. These same people would have no qualms about writing LGBT people out of America’ future.

Minnesota is a troubling example of GOP leaders in bed with extremists. According to the Minnesota Monitor, a radical anti-gay ministry, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide (YCR), has solidified ties to the Republican Party of this state. The group is linked to Rep. Michele Bachmann and gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.

YCR recently said on its radio show that Muslim countries that use the death penalty for gays and lesbians are “more moral than even the American Christians”. While this has caused Emmer to tiptoe away from YCR, the question remains, why is the GOP cavorting with crazies?

As we approach the finish line for equality, we must always keep one eye on the prize and the other on the awful surprise our theocratic foes desperately want to inflict on America. If they win, we lose. That is a lesson we don’t have the luxury of forgetting.

(Example in video of the crazy people we must face) 

It is time for Congress to act swiftly and boldly to end the insane Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy by attaching repeal to the defense budget bill this week.

Doing so will be good for the military and America.

There are some who call for the completion of a Pentagon study, due in December, before abolishing the discriminatory law. However, we don’t need a study to know that the current policy hurts military readiness, wastes taxpayer’s money and ruins the lives of patriotic service members.

The sooner we stop fighting this ridiculous, counterproductive culture war, the sooner we will have the soldiers we need to fight real wars. More than 13,000 gay members of the military have already been forced to take off their combat boots to be booted out of the armed forces. This includes at least 58 Arabic linguists.

A GAO report released in 2005 estimated that DADT has cost U.S. taxpayers $200 million and the loss of “valuable personnel over the last decade.”

Can any serious person who cares about the success of our military say that we could not use these 13,000 trained soldiers today as we enter battle in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar?

The hard truth is that the Religious Right is eager and willing to sell out our military to peddle their socially conservative dogma.

A New York Times editorial on Sunday pointed out that gay soldiers are performing nobly and honorably in other western nations. Contrary to what fear-mongering supporters of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell are selling the American public, allowing gay people to serve has not led to a breakdown in unit morale or discipline. According to the Times:

Military generals from Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Israel were in Washington last week offering assurances that ending the gay ban became a nonissue once their services were justly integrated.

“There were concerns in the late ’90s of gay men walking across the gangplank in feather boas and high heels,” retired Lt. Cmdr. Craig Jones of the British Navy related. “That just did not happen.”

Quite frankly, the religious right and their lackeys in Congress are insulting our men and women in uniform. What they are essentially saying is that American soldiers are uniquely socially stunted and lack the discipline to handle the integration of openly gay soldiers.

For people who like to fancy themselves as “patriots”, how do they justify their low opinion of our courageous men and women in the military?

We have the greatest military in the world. Unlike The Center for Military Readiness and their President Elaine Donnelly, I have faith that America’s Armed Forces will carry out gay integration as well — if not better — than any other nation on earth.

The Democrats control Congress and President Barack Obama has promised repeal. If not now, then when?

If you want to help with repeal, please contact SLDN. We can’t let this crucial moment slip away.

A new study found that gay men may be predisposed to nurture their nieces and nephews as a way of helping to ensure their own genes get passed down to the next generation.

But scientists have been puzzled about how these genes are perpetuated, since gay males are less likely to reproduce than straight males. Basically, why haven’t gay people gone extinct?

One idea is called the “kin selection hypothesis.” Perhaps gay men are biologically predisposed to help raise the offspring of their siblings and other relatives.

“Maybe what’s happening is they’re helping their kin reproduce more by just being altruistic towards kin,” said evolutionary psychologist Paul Vasey of the University of Lethbridge in Canada. “Kin therefore pass on more of the genes which they would share with their homosexual relatives.” (Read More)

The Catholic Church is all but extinct in The Middle East where it began. It is largely irrelevant in Western Europe, its former stronghold. In America, a one-time bastion of Catholicism, the church is in decline after having surrendered its moral authority by covering up sexual abuse with minors.

The future of Rome is clearly in developing countries where it is locked in a death match for supremacy with Evangelical Churches, Anglicanism and Islam. A microcosm of this struggle is best witnessed in religiously fractious Nigeria, where sectarian strife has repeatedly led to violence.

To effectively compete with these homophobic religions, The Vatican has adopted a strategy of using virulently anti-gay rhetoric and opposing equal rights. The Church has become a bully, kicking a helpless minority in nations where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are already persecuted. This is pure cowardice by a Church that hardly has the moral standing to discuss sexual morality, given the outrageous sins against children that have taken place within its walls.

The latest gay bashing came this week from Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan who called homosexuality an “insult to God”.

“Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the kingdom of heaven and it is not me who says this, but Saint Paul,” the cardinal said, in comments reported by the Ansa news agency. “People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence. It may not be their fault, but acting against nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God.”

Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, quoted a passage from Paul’s epistle to the Romans which speaks of “men committing indecent acts with other men”.

“Homosexuality is therefore a sin, but this does not justify any form of discrimination. God alone has the right to judge,” the cardinal said. “We on earth cannot condemn, and as human beings we all have the same rights.”

Well, I guess we will give him credit for arguing in favor of equal rights after stepping all over us and saying we are morally inferior. That is better than we are getting from other Catholic leaders these days.

(Weekly Column)

Earlier this week, extremists within the Republican Party proposed a 10-point checklist of principles that GOP candidates would have to sign if they expect to receive Party support. Like a deranged “Social Issues Santa”, the enforcers of doctrine are descending in their sleighs to slay Republicans who are naughty and not considered nice.

According to their puritanical plan, Republicans would be required to sign 7 of 10 radical resolutions, such as, “opposing Obama’ socialist agenda.” By far the most reckless part of this pledge is the demand that Republicans agree to, “Support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troops surges.” I wonder what such pandering politicians might say to families if these wars took a turn for the worse: “I’m sorry your son died on the battlefield, but I had six campaign pledges and needed a seventh to get a windfall of dough from the Republican Party.”

Ironically, the Republican governors gathered last week and ran away from such extremism. According to The New York Times, “There was little talk of the divisive social and political issues that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove embraced as a way to attract independent and moderate Democratic voters and build a lasting Republican majority.”

The right wing chest thumping seen in the GOP checklist was echoed in a manifesto signed by 145 religious activists and clerics called the Manhattan Declaration. This document basically said that religious people were above the law and did not have to obey it if they deemed it unholy. Tony Perkins, the President of the Family Research Council, hailed the radical manifesto by calling it a “line in the sand” and vowing that the malcontents “will not be moved.”

Of course, growing up on the lovely beaches of Florida and Hawaii, I’ve learned that there is nothing more temporary than a line in the sand. These arrogant preachers are badly overreaching and will be surprised to find that their sinister sandcastle will succumb to history’ high tide.

The Catholic Church, in particular, is entering politically perilous territory it will soon regret. For most of American history, many voters were concerned that Catholic politicians were beholden to Rome. John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President, won by assuring people that he was independent of the Vatican.

This week, however, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin scolded another member of the famous clan, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), and told him he was unworthy of taking part in communion because of his pro-choice views.

Amazingly, Tobin told NBC News, “To receive a sacrament you have to be in union with the church.” To voters, this can be interpreted as: “Bow to Rome or go home.”

If the Church continues to push these boundaries, it will become toxic. It will force office holders into making a decision between voting with the Vatican, or risking nasty public spats, like the Tobin-Kennedy spectacle. In an era where people are quite fickle with faith, aspiring Catholic politicians may find it easier to avoid this dilemma and switch religions. In the future, the only remaining Catholic politicians may be hardliners, such as former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

In fact, this backlash is already underway. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine criticized the Archdiocese of Washington this week for threatening to end contracts to feed Washington, DC’ homeless if the city allows gay couples the freedom to marry.

“I’m Catholic and I think it’s wrong,” Kaine said. “If you look at the church through history, the church will stand in tough situations and continue to do good. I think the strategy of threatening to hold back, it just doesn’t seem like the church I’ve come up in.”

Kaine was seconded by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who also is Catholic.

“I don’t understand how they can possibly do this,” O’Malley said. “I have a hard time believing that the nuns and priests who taught me about the Corporal Works of Mercy would agree that this is an appropriate response for the church.”

Inside their adoring mega-churches and towering Cathedrals, these conservative clerics are powerful demigods. Such adoration blinds them to the sobering reality that millions of people view them as power hungry demagogues. The Religious Right is still one of the strongest special interest groups in America, but they keep forgetting that they represent an immoral minority, not the Moral Majority they once fancied themselves to be.

Raging with dictatorial ultimatums and mutinous manifestos, these extremists are too far-gone to realize they have gone too far. As the “Social Issues Santas” shimmy down the chimney to deliver their dogma, it is unclear if they are simply blowing smoke or gift-wrapping future elections for the Democratic Party.

On October 10, 2009, President Barack Obama spoke to the Human Rights Campaign about GLBT issues. On Oct. 11, 2009, Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director, Wayne Besen, commented on the speech and the National Equality March that took place later that day.