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).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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 21^st 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.

Here is Rick Perry talking to New Hampshire voters. Draw your own conclusions. I like the part where he gets really gay, around 2:45.

Note from Wayne: If you are a man and you have slept with Rick Perry or you can prove that Rick Perry hit on you, please contact me immediately at wbesen@truthwinsout.org. That little gay part that Evan alludes to at the 2:45 mark was just too much. It seemed like an unintentional crack in the alleged closet door. I heard many rumors down in Texas when I was recently in Houston. If you can confirm them, we’d like to hear from you.

[h/t Blue Texan]

Herman Cain with CNN’s Piers Morgan (h/t: Rex Wockner)

On issues from evolution to climate change, the members of the GOP presidential class of 2012 (with one notable exception) have demonstrated a shocking contempt for science, dismissively tossing aside research-tested, reality-based scientific consensus and deciding instead to stick their collective heads in the sand in order to please their increasingly deranged, reactionary base. Concerned people from across the political spectrum, from Jon Huntsman to Paul Krugman, are alarmed by a Republican Party that is, to quote Mr. Krugman, “aggresively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge.”

This certainly holds true where LGBT issues are concerned. The current crop of Republican candidates have practically tripped over themselves in a quest to outdo each other in the homophobia department. Michele Bachmann, who has made opposition to LGBT rights the central pillar of her entire political career, co-owns a clinic that claims, in the face of the overwhelming medical and scientific evidence to the contrary, to be able to “pray away the gay.” Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry are both enthusiastic supporters of the American Family Association, a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group that actively promotes the idea that sexual orientation can be changed. Rick Santorum, whose name will be forever linked with homophobic bigotry thanks to Dan Savage, most recently raised the horrifying specter of gay soldiers showering with other soldiers as a reason to reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and publicly embraced “ex-gay” propaganda.

The GOP’s current flavor of the month, Herman Cain, has eagerly jumped onto the anti-science, gay-hating bandwagon. Earlier this month, Cain told The View’s Joy Behar that he believes homosexuality is a personal choice and issued a challenge:

“You show me the science that says that it’s not [a choice], and I could be persuaded. Right now it’s my opinion against the opinion of others who feel differently. That’s just a difference of opinion.”

Truth Wins Out, Think Progress, and other groups hit back with the facts: sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be changed. Ours isn’t an opinion, but scientific fact.

But apparently, to Cain, facts don’t matter — he’d rather cling to his anti-gay bigotry, thank you very much. In an interview last night with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Herman Cain reiterated his Stone-Age, anti-science views on homosexuality: “Although people don’t agree with me, I happen to think that [homosexuality] is a personal choice.” When Morgan told the candidate that his comments were just as ridiculous as a gay person telling Cain that he chose to be black, Cain bristled: “You know that’s not true. I was born black;” he added that race “doesn’t wash off.”

Herman, Herman, Herman. I, along with most LGBT people I know, happen to be a big fan of regular bathing. Trust me: I’ve bathed over 9,700 times in my 26 years and it hasn’t washed off — I’m still gay.

Mr. Cain thinking he’s entitled to an opinion on a matter of scientific fact is quaint at best. When one considers that he’s a member of an oppressed minority group turning around and contributing to the oppression of another minority group, Mr. Cain’s bigotry seems tragic, hypocritical, and profoundly sad. When one remembers that Herman Cain is seeking the office of the Presidency of the United States, it becomes a cause for alarm. His dangerously unscientific views about LGBT people render him unfit for that office.

This is pretty funny, even by the standards of whiny conservative rants against liberals. Herman Cain argued in a column a while back that it was the liberals who killed Jesus. Also, Jesus, who fed the poor and whatnot, was the world’s greatest conservative:

He helped the poor without one government program. He healed the sick without a government health care system. He feed the hungry without food stamps.

[...]

For three years He was unemployed, and never collected an unemployment check.

I think a lot of Christian theologians would take exception to the idea that Jesus was, ahem, “unemployed.”

The liberal court found Him guilty of false offences and sentenced Him to death, all because He changed the hearts and minds of men with an army of 12.

Great, the liberals killed Jesus. Wait, being sentenced to death on false charges is a “liberal” thing? Rick Perry would beg to differ, I think!

[h/t bernardpliers and Joe]

Shut up, Lindsey Graham:

GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (TX) has faced severe backlash this week as the result of stories that he had opposed a campaign to remove the Confederate battle flag from statehouses across the South and that he had hosted family and friends at a West Texas hunting camp that once read “Niggerhead” on its entrance gate. Yesterday on Mike Gallagher’s radio show, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) defended Perry. “Rick Perry is not a racist,” Graham said, saying the Texas governor is the victim of an “intimidation” campaign. “You know if you’re a southern white guy, it is part of your life,” Graham complained.

I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lindsey Graham has experienced at the hands of poor black people. Maybe one day he will dramatize it for us, in sequins, so that we may understand.

If you want to hear the audio version of this particular malarkey, click the above clicky.

You might have heard about this moment from last night’s clown circle-jerk Republican debate, where, when a question was posed to Ron Paul about whether we should let a person who chooses not to have health insurance die, the audience of Teabaggers decided to answer for Paul by screaming things like “Yeah!” and “Let ‘em die!”  They are, in short, monsters.

Gabe at Videogum points out that this is an echo of last week’s debate, where the audience got just a lil’ bit too excited about how many prisoners Rick Perry had killed as governor, even though one prisoner executed during that time was almost certainly innocent. Yeah! said the teabaggers, excited about killin’ people ‘n’ stuff. Yeah! said the teabaggers, about lettin’ people just cold die because they don’t have health insurance! Boooooooo, abortion, though!

Anyway. Of course, leave it to a comedy writer like Gabe [motto these days of comedy writers: Mostly Better Than Actual Journalists] to explain how ludicrous what Paul said, and what Teabaggers seem to think [I'm usin' the word "think" loosely, y'all], about the uninsured, really is:

This brings us back to Ron Paul’s argument that not buying health care is exactly the type of risk vs. reward scenario expressing PURE FREEDOM that his libertarianism supports. Neat! The problem with this, of course, is that it borrows the George W. Bush catch-phrase banner slogan down-with-Osama-Bin-Laden branded “FREEDOM” and uses it in the place of “ANARCHY.” I don’t mean that in a facetious or sensationalized way, I mean that libertarian philosophy quite literally represents an anarchistic distrust of the state and a desire to see it abolished. Freedom sounds nice when you think it just means that you can buy Kettle Chips in every imaginable flavor at your local bodega and stay up as late as you want. It’s not as nice when it means there’s no such thing as the fire department and if you want to have surgery you have to take competing bids from your local Organ Contractors. The reality is that we live in a world of rules that sometimes get confusing but that are, for the most part, the best attempt we’ve achieved so far at making this place as close to livable for everyone as we can. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t use some work, and I bet there are a lot of poor, disenfranchised people who might argue that it’s not so livable (although I don’t think those people are libertarians), it just means throwing the baby out with the bath water and then also throwing out the bath tub itself and hoping that it dies because the bath tub opted not to buy “Get Thrown Out Insurance” doesn’t seem like a useful step in the march towards progress.

But, OK. If that’s how Ron Paul feels, I can totally respect that. It’s a hard line to take, but I respect hard lines (that is what she said).

Indeed. Read the whole damn thing.

Why am I writing about this on Truth Wins Out? Oh, just because one of these goons [Rick Perry] is going to get the GOP nomination, and if liberals and gays don’t get out there and vote and stop complaining about how they haven’t been gifted with glitter ponies by the Obama administration, one of these goons [Rick Perry] could actually be elected, and that would open up a whole new can of hell for this country, including LGBT people.

Also: What The Rude One said.

Therapist Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D. examines the Christian Right Dominionists and what they would do to gays if U.S. law allowed it. Dominionists, remember, have ties to Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and many other powerful people and organizations in the United States. They want a theocracy and they are working hard to get it. They are to be taken seriously.

[h/t Ex-Gay Watch]

This entire column from Richard Dawkins is worth reading:

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

[...]

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

It must be strange to be an educated European looking across the pond at the mess the United States has made of its political system, to marvel at the simple fact that, as Dawkins points out, for one of the major parties, willful stupidity is a prerequisite for higher office. Anyone who “doesn’t believe in” evolution (quotes because it’s not a belief) is either woefully misinformed or a fool.

In other Rick Perry news, he apparently wrote in his book that being gay is just like being an alcoholic — that it’s “your choice” whether or not to partake in either spirits or gay. (More willful stupidity.) I just find that comparison interesting, because the Cabaret at La Te Da in Key West, Florida, is a good place to buy some drinks, and considering it’s a gay establishment, might be a good place to meet a gay for sexytime. Rick Perry, or someone on his staff, ran up a tab of $78.26 back in 2009 at that fine gay bar. Maybe the two are linked in his mind?

[h/t Pharyngula]

In an exclusive interview on ABC’s “This Week,” presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said “there’s a serious problem” with comments made by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in New Hampshire last week calling man-made global warming “a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question” while claiming scientists have “manipulated data” on the issue. Here is what Huntsman said:

“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party — the anti-science party, we have a huge problem,” Huntsman told ABC News Senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper. “We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.”

“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said … about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position,” Huntsman added.

It might be too late. The Republican Party has rejected science for quite some time. Who can forget a George W. Bush aide that once derided Americans who lived in the “reality based community” in the New York Times magazine?

Jon Huntsman and Fred Karger may be the only two sane Republicans running for President of the United States. Unfortunately, it seems GOP primary voters prefer candidates that belong in padded cells. Nevertheless, it was encouraging to hear a Republican finally stand up to the medieval views that pass for reality in the Republican Party. Why won’t more mainstream Republicans stand up, speak out, and take their hijacked party back from extremists?

If there is no place for people like Huntsman and Karger in the GOP, then there is really no room for the Republican Party in American politics. We are flirting with economic, moral, financial and social disaster if one of our two parties rejects science in favor of superstition.

Hopefully, Huntsman’s comments will gain traction for his campaign. But don’t hold your breath because the GOP is now dominated by people who think Sarah Palin is worldly and believe that Michelle Bachmann is wise.