A vote for Romney is a vote against abortion rights

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitt may be playing to the center with his usual shameless pandering for votes, but everything about him, from his own stated views to his own party's platform to his selection of anti-choice extremist Paul Ryan as his running mate to his appointment of far-right Supreme Court justice, if elected, says that he'd work hard to overturn Roe v. Wade.

And it's telling that the anti-choice extremists who run the theocratic wing of the party, with theocracy rampant all throughout the party, aren't at all concerned about his recent remarks. Because either they know he's lying or they're confident they'd be able to control him in office and get their way. From TPM:

Anti-abortion groups are thoroughly convinced Mitt Romney is still one of them, despite his remarks Tuesday in Iowa that abortion would not be a part of his legislative agenda if elected.

"No alarm bells here," Tony Perkins, president of the anti-abortion Family Research Council, told TPM on Wednesday.

Perkins said the Romney campaign called him soon after Romney's remarks were published by the Des Moines Register and assured him it didn't represent a shift by Romney from his support for pro-life issues.

*****

Other anti-abortion leaders on Wednesday chalked up Romney's remarks as yet another foot-in-mouth moment from the Republican presidential nominee or as simply a case of getting caught off guard punting on a topic he doesn't discuss much.

"This is clearly not a good moment on this issue [for Romney]. It's a hiccup," Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, told TPM.

But none of the groups reached by TPM were alarmed by the remarks or treating them as a betrayal of their cause.

"We wouldn't have endorsed him if I didn't truly believe he’s truly pro-life and has that conviction," Dannenfelser added. 

Remember this when you vote. 

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For more, see Andrew Rosenthal at the Times:

[On Tuesday], Mitt Romney told the editorial board of the Des Moines Register: "There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda."

It sounded like Mr. Romney was trying to distance himself from the anti-abortion position he took during the primaries, when he called himself "an avidly pro-life governor" and said Americans could "count on me, as president, to pursue a policy that protects the life of unborn." It sounded like yet another flip-flop.

Fortunately, the campaign came to the rescue. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, later told the National Review Online that "Governor Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life."

In other words, he would make "legislation with regards to abortion" part of his agenda. Perhaps Mr. Romney just meant he did not know of any specific bills that would restrict abortion. But he might want to check in with his running mate, Paul Ryan, who co-sponsored the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," and helped introduced the term "forcible rape" into the national conversation.

Mr. Romney has said repeatedly that, given the opportunity, he would appoint a Supreme Court Justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade...

It's Romney vs. Romney again, the candidate contradicting himself over and over again. On abortion, though, he has repeatedly embraced right-wing Republican orthodoxy, and it's pretty clear that's what he'd push for if elected. Which is why the theocrats are fully behind him now.

The Family Research Council is "helping" Todd Akin

By Richard K. Barry

Yes, Mr. Perkins. Let's make this election about
social conservatism. Smile!

I'll bet Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan didn't need their good friends over at the Family Research Council (FRC) coming to the defence of disgraced GOP Missouri Senate nominee Todd Akin, now infamous for his comments about "legitimate rape" and abortion. Too bad, because that's what they've done. According to CNN, the group, one of the most prominent conservative organizations in the country, has said this whole thing is nothing but a Democratic smear.

According to Connie Mackay, head of the group's political action committee:

We feel this is a case of gotcha politics. [Akin] has been elected five times in that community in Missouri. They know who Todd Akin is. We know who Todd Akin is. We've worked with him up on the hill. He's a defender of life.

Todd Akin is getting a really bad break here. I don't know anything about the science or the legal implications of his statement. I do know politics, and I know gotcha politics when I see it.

Why am I not surprised that a spokesperson for a conservative Christian group admits to knowing nothing about science? Sorry, but Todd Akin is getting the break he deserves.

Interesting that the Family Research Council has chosen their targets carefully. On the one hand, they've blasted Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown for saying Akin should step down, and, on the other, have shied away from criticizing Mitt Romney, who has also denounced Akin, calling his comments "inexcusable."

According to FRC President Tony Perkins:

The Romney campaign as well as now Paul Ryan have made very clear where they stand in the issue of life. We are not going to allow people to divide conservative voters in this process. We are going to keep our eye on the big picture.

I guess Brown, a Republican in a very liberal state, who sometimes acts like it, is not allowed to criticize Akin, but Romney and Ryan are. Yep, that's keeping your eye on the big picture.

Please, by all means, keep on "helping" Republicans.

Tony Perkins, theocratic bigot extraordinaire, comparies gay pride to adultery, drunkenness

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's hard to keep track of the anti-gay bigotry that is so widespread on the right, and throughout the Republican Party, but, thankfully, sites like Right Wing Watch do their best to document the various actions and utterings by conservatives.

Conservatives like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council -- or "Family" "Research" "Council," a leading theocratic organization with a great deal of influence on the right -- a conservative who appears all over the media spewing his bigotry with a facade of civility, a conservative who, like so many others of his ilk, hates gays and thinks they're destroying America.

We know what to expect from Perkins, but it's important to keep tracking his bigotry, if only to be able to point to it when refuting their various arguments against gay rights. (For example, Perkins and others try to make the case that opposition to same-sex marriage is really about religious freedom. To the extent that that's true, it's just about the freedom to institutionalize bigotry.) Last week, for example, came this:

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council filled in for Sandy Rios on her morning talk show last week on the American Family Association’s radio network and had to respond to a caller named J.R. who said that anti-gay activists like Perkins were promoting misconceptions about gays and lesbians while ignoring societal ills. Perkins tried to explain that equality for gays and lesbians has damaging consequences for society, warning that gay rights will end religious freedom and twist public accommodations laws.

He insisted that the Religious Right isn't overlooking issues like alcoholism and adultery since there aren't people advocating for "Adultery Pride Month" or "Drunkenness Pride Month" in the same way many recognize June as LGBT Pride Month. Later, another caller agreed with his assessment equating homosexuals with adulterers and alcoholics, and Perkins noted that "when it comes to drunkenness, we have laws that are trying to protect the rest of society."

Specifically, he said this:

The month of June is Gay Pride Month. Now, I have not yet seen where they have declared Adultery Pride Month, I have not seen where they have declared the Drunkenness Pride Month. Here's the issue, J.R. it's not a matter of whether or not someone can do what they want to do with their lives, God gave Adam and Eve a choice, but that's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about redefining the rest of culture and making others both embrace, celebrate and subsidize. We're talking about changing the laws that will influence what our children are taught in schools, it's already happening in those states that have legalized same-sex marriage or had it forced upon them by the courts.

See how he twists it around and tries to make it about freedom, as if same-sex marriage is part of some totalitarian plot? That in itself is ridiculous -- this is about rights, and of course anyone is still free to be a bigot and belong to a church that promotes bigotry, and it's not like legalizing same-sex marriage somehow interferes with "traditional" marriage, whatever the fearmongering from Perkins and his ilk about how gay rights will turn everyone gay, or something like that, whatever bullshit it is.

No, what's really going on here is bigotry. Perkins objects that children will be taught... what? That gays and lesbians are human beings with rights? Is he worried that children will... what? Choose the gay? Please. He's an idiot.

And when he comparies gay pride -- the self-respecting pride of a diverse community that throughout history, including recent history, including in the present as well, has suffered terribly at the hands of theocrats and other bigots -- to adultery and drunkenness, he's just exposing himself for what he truly is.

A man of ignorance and hate. Like so many on the right.

(image: The Daily Show's Perkins Cam)

Gays don't bother Tony Perkins, he just hates them and thinks they're destroying America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

We know that the opponents of same-sex marriage -- the overwhelming majority of them, anyway -- are bigots, and that their theocratic arguments are ridiculous, but it's rare for the news media to put them on the spot and press them to explain and defend their views. More often, they're just given platforms from which to spew their venom.

Well, CNN's Brooke Baldwin, to her and her network's credit (at a time when CNN deservedly doesn't get much credit for anything), was having none of it yesterday, challenging leading anti-gay bigot Tony Perkins of the right-wing Family Research Council with some fairly probing questions:

-- Why do homosexuals bother you so much? (They don't, he claimed.)

-- Have you ever been to the home of a same-sex couple? (No, he hasn't.)

-- Why are we talking about curriculum in the school when this is about love and the law and the ability to get married? (He responded with "religious freedom, parental rights, public accommodation," as if it's all about allowing people the freedom to be bigots.)

Obviously, she could have gone much further, but it was impressive nonetheless.

We need much more of this, and more. Well done, Brooke.

Women, gays, and Barack Obama's ears

By Ramona

The big news yesterday -- no, the HUGE news -- was President Obama's interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, set up specifically so that he could air his own personal views about gay people being able to marry their same-sex partners: After much soul-searching and a couple of decades of "evolving," he was finally ready to say out loud that he's all for it.

He did go on to say that it should be left to the states to decide their own policies concerning the legalities of such unions, but the die was cast, the mold was formed: a sitting president took a positive public stand, albeit a personal one, on the issue of gay marriage.

As might have been expected, the fundie leaders in the Right Wing Religiousphere took it hard. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was all over the airwaves protesting the president's comments. (Kudos to CNN's Soledad O'Brien, the product of mixed-race parents who married when most states outlawed such marriages, for turning an interview into a real debate, thus punching bloody holes in Perkins' many lame arguments:

Small-government advocate and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney came forward like the good soldier he is and said, no ifs, ands, or buts (for now) -- no, no, no to gay marriage, or even civil unions, or anything else that might require Big Government (that would be him if he wins) to step in and make more rules disregarding civil rights.

Leaders of states that probably weren't going to go Obama's way in November anyway jumped in to remind him that he was committing political suicide over this.

Some black church leaders voiced their opposition to Obama's views, sending a message that might possibly still resonate in November.

So, yes, even though his comments to Robin Roberts won't amount to a hill of beans in the legal world and won't change a thing in the states that are rabid about banning gay marriage (two days ago, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex unions), Obama's admission of his own personal feelings is the stuff dreams are made of. Both sides will see it as a world-class political haymaker.

But what made the president's comments so memorable was the fact that, while he would have preferred to sidestep this particular bombshell of an issue forever if need be, it appears it was his wife and his daughters who ultimately convinced him that, while he might be president of these United States -- an all-powerful position requiring the wisdom of Solomon and the unbiased judgment of, say, the theoretical Supreme Court -- his earlier published views on the subject were about as wrongheaded as it gets.

They talked to him about love and how it works in mysterious ways, and his daughters let him know how much it hurt them that, by his own admission, the best he could come up with was that he was still "evolving" on this particular issue.

There were many juicy quote-bites one could pull out of that interview, but this one got me right where my heart beats loudest:

You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. And I -- you know, there have been times where Michelle and I have been sittin' around the dinner table. And we've been talkin' and -- about their friends and their parents. And Malia and Sasha would -- it wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently. It doesn't make sense to them. And -- and frankly -- that's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change of perspective. You know, not wanting to somehow explain to your child why somebody should be treated -- differently, when it comes to -- the eyes of the law.

Okay, I'm a sucker for a good dad, no matter what kind of house he lives in, so it's understandable why I might latch onto that one particular part of the conversation. But I watched the entire interview; I watched the body language and listened to the tone of voice. I saw an everyman wrestling with his ethos, not a politician striving to convince, and I rejoiced.

**********

So, okay again: It didn't hurt that Joe Biden, our beloved, wacky veep, got to gushing about his own feelings on gay marriage on Sunday's Meet the Press. The next day, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank called it a "gaffe" (a word that seems to cling to Biden as tightly as his own shadow) and the press took off running. (Note to Joe: It's far better to be gaffe-prone than to be mean-prone. So far, you're okay, man.):

The vice president said he is "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage, committing the classic Washington gaffe of accidentally speaking the truth. This bit of straight talk made Obama's position — neither for nor against such unions but in an evolutionary state, not unlike the Galapagos finch — all the more untenable. On Monday, Biden took off for a campaign event in Tennessee, leaving Carney on cleanup duty. But the more Carney swabbed the mess, the more it spread.

I frankly don't get it. How exactly did Joe Biden's own personal views on gay marriage conflict with anything the president might have said about that same issue? There is no actual blending of the pair simply because they're Leaders One and Two. They aren't contractually obligated to agree personally on all issues. I didn't see it as "one-upping" the president, I saw it as Biden being Biden. Especially when he got to the part about Will and Grace. (Debra Messing, "Grace," says it's right up there in the top five moments of her life, so you see it's striking chords everywhere.)

Well, apparently even the president felt that Joe had overstepped "his skis" or some such. But publicly he's okay with it, and I get the feeling that he, like me, loves old Joe, gaffes and all. (And who wouldn't?)

Immediately after the Sunday news shows, it was out there, people were talking, and the entire White House had to grind to a halt and address the elephant in the room. Does the president support gay marriage or doesn't he? So on Wednesday, President Obama sat down with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts and talked at length about the issue he had so studiously worked to avoid:

Yes, it was calculated and ultimately political, but the essence of it, the way the president chose to address it, was as much heaven to me as it had to be hellish for his political opponents, those so intent on ousting Barack Obama they have no problem casting him as evil incarnate -- the devil himself.

I saw a man who might finally understand that there are times when it's not only essential but soul-satisfying to separate the thoughts of the person from the decisions of the presidency. That "evolution" doesn't work as a handy substitute for equivocation. And that sometimes political expedience isn't all it's cracked up to be.

My mother was Finnish-Lutheran and my father was Italian-Catholic. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary just nine months before my mom died, and they loved each other to the end. What if the powers-that-be had arbitrarily decided that Finns and Italians couldn't marry? Or that Lutherans and Catholics couldn't marry?  How different is that from deciding that blacks and whites couldn't marry or that same-sex partners couldn't marry? They're all consenting adults with the capacity to love one another, and if marriage is the desired tie that binds, it's a sad and sorry law that seeks to outlaw fidelity instead of celebrating it.

I think the president always got that. He only just now, thanks in part to the women in his life, found the cojones to say it out loud.

Newsflash: Social conservatives don't like Mitt Romney

By Richard K. Barry

Tony Perkins

It seems that 150 or so social conservatives are going to get together in Texas over the weekend to consider presenting a united front in the race to crown a Republican presidential candidate.

In one report, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins says that:

Many of the evangelical, Catholic and fiscal conservatives are looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney, but fear their influence will be diluted if they remain divided.

Surrogates for all the campaigns will speak to the gathering before, according to Perkins, conservative leaders discuss whether or not they should get behind one candidate.

While Romney certainly has the momentum coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire, it is amazing how ambivalent so much of the conservative base remains about his candidacy.

I don't know how many times we can say this, but just the fact that social conservatives are getting together this late in the campaign would suggest that, even should Romney get the nod, there won't be a lot of love for him from this key constituency. In fact, for someone most people think is going to win the nomination, he's not very popular.

Good thing for Romney so many of his opponents are too pig-headed to get out or he might actually have real difficulty securing the nomination against a challenge by one credible conservative. But, as we know, that person doesn't exist.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)