Just curious, since she said this about Phyllis Schlafly:

If I could just say a couple of words about Phyllis Schlafly, she is my heroine and my example as a forerunner. As a young bride and a young mother, I read faithfully “The Phyllis Schlafly Report;” she was my lifeline to what was happening in the world.

She truly is the mother of the modern conservative movement …

I think she is the most important woman in the United States in the last one hundred years.

Whatever Phyllis Schlafly says, it’s important that we listen because she’s there on every issue, on every front. She is our hero, our heroine, our stalwart and I absolutely adore her. So God bless you, my dear mentor and the person that I hope to be some day. So thank you very much, Phyllis.

Aside from the fact that it’s horrifying that any human alive would consider Phyllis Schlafly the “most important woman in the United States” during any time period…

Phyllis Schlafly, of course, does not believe marital rape really exists.

So, is Bachmann as crazy as her heroine?

[h/t Tengrain]

My only question is this:  How many of these changes is the Religious Right actually happy with?

I mean, we know Phyllis Schlafly probably doesn’t support the 1993 change, because she doesn’t believe marital rape exists.  The 1769 change probably is a bit of a thorn in many anti-gay bigots’ sides.  1967?  Hell, Mississippi’s still having trouble with that.

Perhaps the greater lesson to be learned here is that it’s important to see the same-sex marriage fight not as simply anti-gay, but as just one more thing that chips away at the frail patriarchy wingnuts need to preserve in order to sustain some semblance of self worth.

[h/t Unicorn Booty]

Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who has spent her life campaigning against the existence of healthy, happy women, said some Christmassy words about gays the other day:

Many social conservatives, such as Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly of Ladue, refuse to believe that a majority of Americans would support gay marriage.

Always remember that “many social conservatives” also believe that the earth is 6,000 years old.  Cf. Phyllis’s mindnumbingly stupid spawn.

Obama’s shifting position [on marriage equality], she said, “is the story of politics: An aggressive well-funded pressure group can achieve goals contrary to what the majority of people want. I think same-sex marriage would be a terrible mistake. I don’t think there are any good arguments for it.”

As to the first part, it seems to me like the Religious Right falls more squarely into the category of “aggressive well-funded pressure groups achieving goals contrary, etc.” Meanwhile, the tide is turning toward full acceptance for LGBT people, and has been for years. As to the second part, Phyllis’s contention that she “doesn’t think” there are any good arguments for marriage equality, when squared with her lifelong crusade against women’s rights, suggest to me that perhaps she should be spending more time in her kitchen in Ladue and less time talking about grown-up stuff with strong, liberated men AND women. Don’t like that construction? Can’t have it both ways, Phyl.

Gays, she said, are already free to live together. “Nobody’s stopping them from shacking up,” she said. “The problem is they are trying to make us respect them, and that’s an interference with what we believe.”

Actually, no, you old bat, gays don’t give a damn whether or not you respect us. It’s a question of whether or not you respect the fact that you live in a society which is more secular than you will ever understand, in a nation that, despite your son’s functionally illiterate barking to the contrary, has been officially secular since its founding.

Deal with it.

Also, Schlafly lives in Ladue?  If you’re not familiar with St. Louis, Ladue isn’t exactly a “socially conservative” area.  I mean, it’s perfect for fundamentalist demagogues who have somehow managed to rack up millions of dollars over the years fighting for a transmogrified bastardization of Jesus and stuff [Ladue is expensive, you see], but it’s also next to Clayton, which is gay gay gay gay gay [and also expensive].  How does old Phyl manage to go out in public, surrounded as she is by reality in all four directions?  And really, what would Phyllis Schlafly think of a woman making the kind of money Phyllis Schlafly has made?  It’s almost like she’s a hypocritical old crank living out her golden years, watching the world regard her life’s work, laugh, and move on, never to return.

From Phyllis Schlafly to Michele Bachmann, and covering all female wingnuts in between, it’s time to celebrate the leading ladies of the conservative movement! This is the most unintentionally funny movie trailer I have ever seen.

[h/t Balk]

In the movie, this happens:

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann tells the story of working and saving for years to afford a pair of contacts only to lose them shortly after while riding her bike. This story was an example of one of the ways she learned how much more you value things when you have to work hard and save to get them.

Sara Benincasa, where are you? We need you to tell that heartwrenching story for us, please.

Joe’s right on this one;  this is an all-time low for the self-loathing Daniel Blatt:

Finishing out today’s homocon hat trick of self-loathing, Gay Patriot blogger and GOProud supporter B. Daniel Blatt announces that Christine O’Donnell has “the right message.” That message being that people with AIDS deserve what they get. Yup, the homocons actually want an “ex-gay” advocate and pathological enemy of gay people in the United States Senate.

But Joe, I’d remind you of one thing: Any time you think they can’t stoop any lower into self-loathing for the sake of their wingnut gods, they will. Just watch. This is a guy who thinks Phyllis Schlafly has good ideas about marriage, of all things.

This applies to almost everything we fight here:

Fundamentalist Islam is entirely incompatible with American values. Nothing could be clearer. But so is fundamentalist Christianity, or any fundamentalism, no matter the faith. This is the lesson we should’ve learned on 9/11 but somehow, we continue to apologize for homegrown extremism.

Yes.

For a little context, that quote comes from ACG at the Submitted to a Candid World blog.  He mentioned Newt Gingrich’s outrage over a (quickly reversed) court decision which exonerated a Muslim man for marital rape, citing Shari’a law.  It was a mistake, obviously, but that will never stop an opportunistic, angry wingnut like Newtie from pouncing and scaring old, ignorant white people into thinking that the Mooselems are coming for them, and they’re bringin’ thar Shar-EYE-uh laws wit ‘em!  But then, smartly, the writer compared that event to the matron of the Religious Right, Phyllis Schlafly, and her consistent, longstanding belief that marital rape simply does not exist.

I say it all the time.  The extremist Muslim worldview is not all that different from the fundamentalist Christian worldview.  The only reason the Christians don’t bomb things (yet) is that they’re moderated by modern society, which is largely absent in the places in the Islamic world where extremism flourishes.  Shari’a already exists in the United States.  The fundamentalist Christians just call it something different, like “Judeo-Christian valyews.”

The American Christian Religious Right are different from radical Islamists how, precisely?

In some Islamic societies, specifically those which veer toward and are ruled by conservative Islamic religious law, women and girls can be blamed, prosecuted, or even killed for being victims of rape or other sexual assault. Even in some relatively moderate nations, such as Jordan, “honor killings” occur over sexual impropriety, whether real or perceived. And of course, in some of these societies, gay people fall victim to the same societal traditions and practices. Regardless, the running theme is that women and gays are objects of shame, and that even if attacked, they still deserve to be punished. It’s the classic “shame the slut” routine that’s existed in patriarchal Abrahamic religious tradition, in varying degrees of intensity, for centuries.

So how, pray tell, is this different?

A state lawmaker and hundreds of child advocates are calling for young girls to be treated as victims and not criminalized as prostitutes.

Sen. Renee Unterman is proposing a bill that would set the minimum age at 16 for prosecuting sex-for-hire.

“There are approximately 400 children per month in the streets of Atlanta that are being prostituted,” she says.

(…)

But conservative and Christian groups banned together to oppose the bill. They say it would lead to more prostitution.

“All we would do is be inviting into our state pedophiles and panderers looking for children,” says former state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, now president of Eagle Forum of Georgia.

She says correction can also turn a child around and that discipline should not be removed when it comes to children engaging in illegal activity.

As so often happens when I read about what the Christian Right is up to, my head is proverbially slamming into the desk. And of course it’s the Eagle Forum, AKA The House of Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who is perhaps most known (at least on our side) for claiming that marital rape simply doesn’t exist.

So, according to Nancy Schaefer, the Mini-Schlafly of Georgia, child prostitutes, who, by the way, don’t tend to choose that profession, should be “disciplined.” She’s basically saying that even a child who’s kidnapped and forced into sex slavery is at heart an unrepentant whore who needs to be punished. The comment about “inviting pedophiles” into the state is just know-nothing concern trolling, because I highly doubt that child predators care whether the children they violate can be prosecuted or not. It’s a non sequitur, meant to deflect from the misogynistic B.S. coming out of her mouth. Her contention that failing to “discipline” child prositutes would lead to “more prostitution” is specious, as it assumes that there are hordes of little third grade harlots-in-training just waiting for the law to allow them to slut around for money like they’ve always wanted.

Again, how is this different from the slut-shaming mentality that exists within conservative Islam? How deep is the self-hatred that pervades the psyches of women trapped in these chosen extremist religious ideologies?

The answer is that is that it’s different only in degree, but it’s the same in spirit. It’s all part of the same story. Oh, of course, you’re not likely to see a Christian Fundamentalist in the United States blow his daughter’s brains out because she gets raped. Secular modern society has moderated that sort of instinct in even the most extremist faction of American right-wing Christian society. But absent that moderating influence, would they keep their hatred, shame and bigotry so subtle? My belief is that they would not.

Right Wing Watch points out that Eagle Forum is not alone in opposing this bill. They are joined by the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Georgia Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Nice line-up, y’all. I’m sure that’s how Jesus would’ve played it.

That’s my takeaway from her piece about the Massachusetts election. Every wingnut has an opinion on this, and they’re equally unformed, yet each is strikingly unique! Matt Barber, despite all polling evidence to the contrary, found it to be a rebuke of Obama’s healthcare reform plan, despite the fact that Massachusetts already has universal healthcare of a stronger variety than anything being considered in Congress.

Phyllis, though? Well, you see, it was because Martha Coakley is a feminist!

It was not so great when Coakley was disdainful about Brown campaigning in the cold outside Fenway Park, the fabled home of the beloved Boston Red Sox. It was not so great when Coakley dismissed one of the biggest Red Sox stars as a “Yankee fan.”

Those comments fit the profile of feminists who have contempt for men’s sports and therefore have eliminated hundreds of men’s teams from college athletic programs under a misinterpretation of Title IX. Howard University even canceled both wrestling and baseball on the same day, giving double pleasure to the hateful feminists.

Boston University is the largest school in Boston, but it no longer has an NCAA baseball team. Nationwide, feminist opposition to anything masculine has forced the elimination of more than 450 wrestling teams.

Brava, Mother Schlafly! Lady candidate makes a dippy gaffe about sports and Phyllis is able to tie it all back to the mean feminists who want to take the wrestling teams away from our burly manly men! But, Phyllis, how are you going to tie this to abortion?

Coakley insulted people with religious values by declaring that those who oppose abortion probably shouldn’t work in emergency rooms because an occasional patient might demand an immediate abortion. Feminists refuse to allow respect for a right of conscience because that might get in the way of their ideology that abortion is women’s premier right.

Oh, I see. That’s how it’s all about abortion. What does this mean, Phyllis?

It’s no wonder that non-college-educated men voted overwhelmingly for Brown against Coakley by a massive 27-point margin. The Democrats are lucky enough to elect some feminists, but feminists are just too unappealing when running against a masculine man such as Brown.

Faced with a hot guy, Massachusetts’ uneducated straight men go weak in the knees and forget all about the lady running for the seat. Tr?®s int?©ressant! Does Mother Phyllis back any of this up with polling data? Ha ha, of course not. But she still thinks she proved her case!

Commentary about Brown’s appeal to women is diversionary — it was male voters who overwhelmingly pulled the lever for him. Men are fed up with the feminist mindset and delivered a clear message in the Massachusetts election: give us a candidate who stands up to the feminists, and we will cross over from Democrat and independent to elect a Republican.

Gotcha. Men pulled their levers for Scott Brown because they’re fed up with ladies with minds of their own.

How this squares with the fact that Massachusetts repeatedly elected Ted Kennedy, who fought for feminist issues throughout his career, is beyond me, but it’s Phyllis. She doesn’t spend any time doing research on the issues she holds forth on, so why should we spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing Phyllis?

It’s a bit revelatory that wingnuts are finding such diverse reasons for the election of Scott Brown, all reflecting their own biases. Perhaps it’s because Scott Brown is exactly the blank naked slate I think he is.

Time for Peter to weigh in on how the Massachusetts election was a rejection of gays.

(h/t Right Wing Watch)