Evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress came to notice the other day when, soon after introducing presidential candidate Rick Perry at the conservative Values Voters Summit, he trashed the Mormon religion as a "cult." Turns out, his views on gays and lesbians are … about what you'd expect. In sermon in August titled "What to Say to Those Who Are Gay" he sought to dispel the "myth" of monogamous, comitted gay relationships. Citing a questionable study from the Netherlands, he claimed that the average duration of a homosexual relationship is apparently a year and a half. This figure leads Jeffress to surmise that "it is a myth that homosexuals engage in the same kind of monogamous healthy relationships as heterosexuals." In the past, Jeffress has claimed that gays and lesbians are using "brainwashing techniques" to “inject homosexuality” into the culture and that “homosexuality is being crammed down our throats." [Right Wing Watch]
Wingnut Watch
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Rick Perry-Backing Pastor: Gays Use ‘Brainwashing Techniques’
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Rick Santorum: Gay Solders ‘Cause Problems For People Living in Close Quarters’
Appearing on Fox News Sunday this weekend, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum brought the hate and ignorance, sharing his oft-stated view that ending Don't Ask Don't Tell will hurt military "recruitment and retention," seeing as how gay soldiers engage in "activities that would cause problems for people living in those close quarters." When host Chris Wallace pushed back, comparing Santorum to the good folks who opposed ending racial segregration in the military in 1941, the former Pennsylvania senator shot back that being black isn't a choice or a malady, which being gay clearly is, as demonstrated by the "plenty" of people who've recovered from gayness through therapy. [ThinkProgress]
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Herman Cain: ‘Some People’ Trying to Bring Sharia Law to America
In a recent appearance on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, GOP presidential contender Herman Cain repeated his view that "some people" want to "infuse Sharia law" in our court system. "It's not going to be some grand scheme," he told an incredulous Amanpour. "Little by little. I honestly believe that." [Crooks & Liars]
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Jerry Boykin: ‘God Told Us to Occupy’ America
In a recent appearance on Christian TV, former U.S. Lieutenant General William G. ("Jerry") Boykin, a major player in George W. Bush's "War on Terror," called on Christians to rally and become more politically active, “so that the Church emerges as the dominant influence in America." The born-again Boykin, who recently demanded that mosques be banned in America, added that "we absolutely can take this nation back and I refuse to believe that we can’t, because God told us to occupy." [Right Wing Watch]
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Rick Perry: Supernatural Events Guide My Life
In a recent speech at Liberty University, presidential candidate Rick Perry shared his belief that God is directing his life. He explained that “all through life there have been these supernatural events” in which God sent him signals. “You go through my life and there have been so many of those events that occurred and I don’t get confused, it wasn’t coincidence," he said during the speech. "It was God’s hands on my life, guiding me in the ways He wanted me to be, and I truly believe He has me here at a time such as this." [Right Wing Watch]
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Sheriff Joe Arpaio Investigates Obama’s Birth Certificate
After meeting with birther extraordinaire Jerome Corsi and a host of Tea Party members in August, Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio, best known for his draconian anti-immigration tactics, has taken it upon himself to revive the moot debate about the details of Barack Obama's provenance, assembling a crack "Cold Case Posse" to investigate the president's birth certificate. "I gave the Cold Case Posse the authority to investigate, but the results of their investigation ultimately come to me and I will then decide how best to proceed from there," he says. [Phoenix New Times]
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Michele Bachmann: Extreme Anti-Feminist Phyllis Schlafly ‘the Most Important Woman in the United States in the Last 100 Years’
During a recent Tea Party Cyber-Town Hall event, Michele Bachmann spoke adoringly about her "heroine and example as a forerunner," conservative lawyer and activist Phyllis Schlafly. Among Schlafly's views, notes Right Wing Watch, are that feminists are "bitter, unhappy and not successful women"; that men should not marry "career women"; and that wives, having by definition consented to sex, cannot be raped by their husbands? To Bachmann, however, Schlafly is "the most important woman in the United States in the last one hundred years." [Right Wing Watch]
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Michele Bachmann: Wall Street Reform ‘Killing the Banking Industry’
At a Southern California campaign stop in September, Michele Bachmann told a crowd about her plan to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act if elected president. She said the financial reform legislation is "killing the banking industry." Ironically, Bachmann's speech took place almost exactly three years after the 2008 financial crisis began with the failure of Lehman Brothers. [ThinkProgress]
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Andrew Breitbart’s: Liberals ‘Cannot Win’ Because ‘We Have the Guns’
Conservative activist/provocateur Andrew Breitbart kicked his usual crazy rhetoric up a notch with this rant at a September 17 Tea Party event. He says that he's "under attack all the time," but that he doesn't truly worry because conservatives and Tea Party types "have the guns." Brietbart goes on: "They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country…. And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, 'Thank you for what you're doing, we've got your back.'" [Daily Kos]
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Rick Santorum: ‘Honoring God’ Essential to National Security
Before the Republican debate in Florida September 22, the candidates attended a rally sponsored by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, where former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum tried to out-Christian the other contenders, saying that belief in God is essential for the country's "national security." "This country is a moral enterprise," he said, "and unless we honor God, our country will not be held up by God and protected in any way. Whether it’s from foreign aggression or from problems here within."[ThinkProgress]
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Rep. Joe Walsh: Media Protects Obama Because He’s Black
Asked in a recent interview if the national media were perhaps "aiding and abetting" Obama by failing to expose his "class-warfare and race-warfare games," Freshman Republican Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois shared his view that journalists are "so vested in our first black president not being a failure," that they'll do anything to "protect him." [ThinkProgress]
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NRA Chief: Obama Orchestrating ‘Massive Conspiracy’ to Take Away Guns
Liberals gripe that the Obama administration has been a disaster on gun control, having actually expanded the right to bear arms. National Rifle Authority honcho Wayne LaPierre isn't buying it. Obama's strategy of going easy on gun owners is actually a "massive conspiracy" to hoodwink voters and "hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country." Speaking at a conservative conference, LaPierre went on, "Before the president was even sworn into office, they met and they hatched a conspiracy of public deception to try to guarantee his re-election in 2012." [ThinkProgress]
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Christian Activist Richard Land: Gays Seek ‘Sexual Paganization Of Society’
Influential Christian-right leader Richard Land warned during a recent episode of his radio show that gay activists want to "reduce [Christians] to the level of the Ku Klux Klan" so they are ostracized by society, the better to bring about the "outright sexual paganization of society." [Right Wing Watch]