It all started with fireworks and a massive fundamentalist prayer rally in Houston’s Reliant Stadium — but by the time Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race today, he didn’t stand a prayer. Perry talked a lot about Jesus and the second coming, but who knew that he would turn out to be the second coming of Fred Thompson?
When Perry entered the race the pundits hyperventilated and immediately declared him the frontrunner. Then misfortune struck the campaign: Rick Perry spoke.
When people actually saw the man behind the myth they were so disappointment that they returned to Mitt Romney’s fold, then embraced a pizza guy who knew so little about foreign relations that he had nothing to say about Libya and was unsure if China had nuclear weapons. Once Cain’s campaign was hit with allegations of serial sexual harassment, the “family values” electorate flexed their moral muscle by lining up behind a serial adulterer in Newt Gingrich.
Once Gingrich petered out (he could still come back to life like a horror movie villain) the fickle GOP voters tricked with Rick Santorum, the admitted last man standing alone at the dance. When the voters woke up with a hangover, they turned over in bed, looked at who they were sleeping with and realized why Santorum had been jilted and standing by himself on the dance floor.
During the long, grueling campaign of clowns, the voters never returned to Rick Perry — even as he invoked Jesus more often that Pat Robertson. While the Texas governor looked great on paper, he was revealed to be a paper tiger. Now he joins Michele Bachmann as a Christian conservative candidate who bit the dust.
Lots of professional sports teams — mostly in baseball — have made videos for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project, but no NFL teams have stepped up to the plate yet. There’s a new petition at Change.org asking the Denver Broncos to be the first. I think this petition is wonderful and hilarious because Tebow.
Little Timmy Tebow is all the rage right now, idolized by Fundamentalist Christians for his willingness to show off his faith to everyone by kneeling and praying, AKA “Tebowing,” in the middle of the field. Also, his throwing style is quite unique, drawing comparisons to the throwing styles of six year-old girls. Indeed, people are talking about him so much that last night, his name was connected to two of the Republican candidates for losing the presidential election to Barack Obama.
9.16pm: Asked why he is so rubbish, Rick Perry claims that like star quarterback Tim Tebow – actually not a very good quarterback but he somehow still wins games – he can be better than he looks. “I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses,” says Perry. Perry will be lucky to be the Forrest Gump of the Iowa caucuses.
Rick Santorum reached the milestone of visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties in November, and he’s making return trips now — by car and minivan, rather than bus. Chuck Laudner, a Santorum backer, has been involved in many Iowa campaigns. Laudner suggests Santorum is a bit like the underestimated quarterback of the Denver Broncos who has led the team to a string of surprising victories.
“They’re watching the Tim Tebow of the Republican process out there, working all the way through the 4th quarter,” Laudner told Radio Iowa this morning.
Uh, yeah, wow. Both of those links come from Tbogg by the way.
So yes, I want an “It Gets Better” video from Tim “Aren’t You Glad I Wasn’t An Abortion?” Tebow and his team. And maybe it will even make Timmy himself feel better, next time he’s having one of those games that causes him to cry. It gets better, LGBT kids, and it gets better, Tim Tebow!
Joshua Green at the Boston Globeargues that he did, with his silly Brokeback Mountain jacket-wearing “I am victim, hear me roar!” ad, which garnered hundreds of thousands of dislikes on YouTube:
[The ad] put him back in the headlines, but not in the way he intended. The response was swift and dramatic. On YouTube, where political ads are judged and debated, sentiment was startlingly negative: People hated the ad, and in record numbers. In just a few days, “Strong’’ registered 6 million views and more than 650,000 “dislikes’’ – four times the number prompted by the latest Justin Bieber video. A YouTube spokesman told the website Talking Points Memo that the ad was the “most viewed video in America.’’
Obviously, this is bad news for Perry. But it could be a blessing in disguise for the legions outraged by his remarks. In the process of killing off his own campaign, Perry may have brought an end to the use of explicitly anti-gay rhetoric as a political tactic, at least for any candidate with national ambitions.
Perry’s mistake was twofold. First, public opinion has been moving rapidly toward greater acceptance of gays and lesbians. In September, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy was lifted with bipartisan support. A CBS News poll the next month showed that only 15 percent of Americans “strongly oppose’’ allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. National polls also now routinely show majority support for same-sex marriage. Furthermore, it is legal in the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and efforts to overturn it have failed. Perry may motivate some voters, but their number is shrinking fast.
I think Green is partially right. The response to Perry’s ad was pretty much across-the-board ridicule and condemnation. That being said, it’s useful to remember that GOP primary voters and their candidates don’t live in the normal world with the rest of us. Religious Right leaders are still clinging to outdated poll numbers from not so long ago, when a majority of Americans opposed marriage equality. There is a general feeling among these sorts of people that if the polls don’t say what they want them to say, that they must be wrong or biased. Even when every single mainstream poll is now showing majority support for marriage equality, they will continue to believe otherwise, and they’ll moreover use that to shore up their continued victim status. Everybody is out to get them, everybody is against Real Americans, etc.
So I doubt that this is the end of the overt gay-baiting in the GOP primaries. Now, when the general election comes? That’s where you might see a shift in tone, and that, as Green says, would be good news indeed.
This past week hasn’t been good for GOProud. And now, this: GOProud Co-Founder and Board Chairman ChrisBarronannounced today that he was stepping down as head of the masochistically self-loathing conservative LGBT organization:
Today GOProud, an organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights, announced that they were restructuring their Board of Directors. “Given the tremendous growth and success of GOProud in our first two and a half years of operation, we are restructuring and expanding our Board to meet the needs of a bigger organization,” said Christopher R. Barron, co-founder and outgoing Chair of the GOProud Board. Barron’s term as Board Chairman expires on December 31, 2011.
But don’t go crying in your soup just yet:
“My role in the day to day management of GOProud will continue as the organization’s Chief Strategist and I will remain on the Board as Chairman Emeritus,” continued Barron. “It is with great excitement that I announce that conservative coalition builder and former CPAC Director Lisa De Pasquale has been elected interim Chairman of the GOProud Board of Directors. Lisa brings a lifetime of experience within the conservative movement and is the perfect person to oversee the expansion and restructuring of GOProud’s Board, as well as to help in refining GOProud’s mission and to aid in building a bigger, better and stronger organization.”
So it looks like Chris will still be around, but he’ll be taking orders from De Pasquale, an event planner and former CPAC chair.
What do you think: is the sun setting on GOProud, or will they be back, better than ever, and ready to fight in 2012 under their new board chair?
This is why his weird ad about how much he hates gays and how he will stand up against the pretend war on religion means so much to him. I’d spend time rebutting him, but it’s all crap.
Help! Barack Obama is taking away our religious faith!
Dear Rick Perry and other fundamentalists: if you feel that your faith is being threatened by Barry Obama, then your faith is pathetically weak. Your problem, not mine and definitely not Barry’s.
To correct the idiot and any of the lowest common denominators in the GOP base who believe him, though: kids can openly celebrate Christmas, and they can pray in school all they want as long as it’s not disrupting other students. What these dolts want is school-sanctioned prayer, which is a SPECIAL RIGHT, not a constitutional right.
The weirdly named Iowa hate group “The Family Leader” came out with a purity pledge a few months ago for GOP presidential candidates to sign. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum were the only ones to sign the anti-gay document, and we all know where their campaigns are now. Rick Perry’s campaign should basically be over at this point, so he’s gone ahead and signed the wingnut thing:
The pledge advocates several issues, including the Defense of Marriage Act, personal fidelity to the signee’s spouse, appointment of “faithful constitutionalists” as judges, and reformation of anti-marriage elements in divorce, tax and welfare laws.
Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats has said signing the pledge will be a prerequisite for the group’s endorsement, one coveted among candidates seeking to nab the evangelical vote.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum have both signed the vow. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has indicated he would sign it if he could make a few modifications.
Ha ha, he probably doesn’t like the part about “being faithful to spouses who are currently having cancer.”
As they say in Texas, Rick Perry is “All hat and no cattle.” As they also say in Texas — Perry clearly tried to cram “10 pounds of manure into a 5 pound bag.” He seems like another George W. Bush, without Karl Rove and his family to bail him out. Perry can’t debate and has a shorter memory than a drunk at dawn.
After the latest debate snafu he should turn out the lights. The (Republican) party’s over (him).
Contact: John M. Becker, Communications Director
Phone: 920-265-6023
Email: john@truthwinsout.org
TWO Tells America to Hang Up When they Get ‘The Call’
DETROIT – Truth Wins Out will be in Detroit, Michigan this weekend monitoring Lou Engle’s The Call prayer rally at Ford Field. The event’s objectionable goals are to convert Muslims to fundamentalist Christianity and to demean LGBT Americans.
“Lou Engle’s offensive Call is a gay bashing and Muslim trashing event that no decent person should answer,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Engle’s divisive beliefs and incendiary rhetoric are repugnant to the vast majority of Americans and have no place in the religious and political dialogue of the 21st century.”
Engle and other event organizers have attempted to soft-pedal the rally’s dangerous aims when speaking with the mainstream media, portraying it as an ecumenical gathering of concerned Americans praying for Detroit’s economy. However, when speaking to supporters like the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group, his true intentions become clear – The Call: Detroit is being held to counter what Engle describes as “the rising tide of the Islamic movement” and to cause “God [to] invade the heavens over Dearborn and [cause] Muslims [to] have dreams of Jesus.”
“At a time when Americans are looking for ways to come together, The Call is doing everything it can to tear them apart,” said Truth Wins Out’s Communications and Development Director John M. Becker. “This event is not about the Bible, but injecting bile into the public discourse in an effort to demean and demonize minority groups.”
Lou Engle is a notorious anti-LGBT extremist who frequently uses violent imagery in his tirades against homosexuality. In 2010, Engle brought The Call to Uganda, where the legislature was already considering the infamous “Kill the Gays Bill.” His rally stoked the fires of homophobic hatred and helped to create an even more frenzied climate of intolerance in that country.
The Detroit rally is intimately connected to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s controversial The Response Houston prayer rally in August. Perry’s rally was organized by the International House of Prayer, an organization that employs Lou Engle, and many of the same religious leaders who spoke in Houston will also speak in Detroit, including Cindy Jacobs, a self-styled prophet who blamed a massive bird die-off in Arkansas earlier this year on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” These leaders are part of a radical movement known as dominionism, which seeks to overthrow secular government in America and install a government of, by, and for conservative Christians in order to help usher in the End Times.
“It is ironic that The Call’s answer to the alleged threat of Muslim sharia in America is imposing a form of Christian sharia that would shred our beloved Constitution,” said TWO’s Besen. “Truth Wins Out will continue monitoring gatherings of religious fundamentalists like The Call: Detroit in order to unmask their true agenda.”
Truth Wins Out (TWO) is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism, monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
It all started with fireworks and a massive fundamentalist prayer rally in Houston’s Reliant Stadium — but by the time Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race today, he didn’t stand a prayer. Perry talked a lot about Jesus and the second coming, but who knew that he would turn out to be the second coming of Fred Thompson?
Muslims to fundamentalist Christianity and to demean LGBT Americans.
