Religious Right Watch

Former Adviser Says Vander Plaats "Obsessed With The Gay-Marriage Issue"

On the heels of the successful campaign to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices because of the court ruling in favor of marriage equality, Bob Vander Plaats has made it his mission to get the four remaining justices removed as well and begun raising money for that purpose.

This, in turn, has prompted Dan Moore, a former adviser on three of Vander Plaats’ campaigns, to pen a guest column for the The Des Moines Register accusing Vander Plaats of becoming so "obsessed with the gay-marriage issue" that he is out to destroy the judiciary:

As a friend and former adviser on three of Bob Vander Plaats' campaigns, I understood from Bob that he was done with campaigning against the courts after the retention vote Nov. 2. Yet his senseless attacks on the courts continue.

Bob is obsessed with the gay-marriage issue. He is so obsessed that he would rather see the Iowa judicial system destroyed, instead of pursuing a change in the law within the channels provided (a constitutional amendment).

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Mat Staver Claims that Obama’s “Radical” Support for Same-Sex Partner Benefits Led to “Tidal Wave Against Him”

Liberty University Law School Dean and Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver joined David Barton and Rick Green on WallBuilders Live to denounce Obama and the Justice Department for failing to win cases on Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA)....
.....
a September poll conducted by the Associated Press shows that 58% of Americans agree that “couples of the same sex [should] be entitled to the same government benefits as married couples of the opposite sex,” and 52% even support federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Staver may be using Barton’s tremendously flawed reading on how opposition to same-sex marriage impacted the midterm election, while in reality “only 1%” of voters said “same-sex marriage was the single most important issue.”

Barton’s co-host Rick Green goes on to laud Staver for his role in training Religious Right activists at the Law School of Liberty University, which was founded by the late Jerry Falwell, to use the “right Biblical worldview” to shape government, politics, and the courts

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Barton & Scalia To Teach Bachmann's Inaugural Class On The Constitution

Last week [Right Wing Watch] noted that Rep. Michele Bachmann intends to have David Barton as one of the instructors for the weekly class on the Constitution that she is organizing for members of Congress.

On Friday, she told Lou Dobbs that Justice Antonin Scalia had agreed to teach the inaugural class

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Fanatics Defame Murdered U.S. Soldiers

A small group of fanatics plan to hijack a memorial event on Sunday ostensibly dedicated to the memory of soldiers who died in an attack last year at Fort Hood, Texas. The event will feature speakers with a long history of vicious anti-Islamic bigotry and rhetoric that targets not the actions of terrorists but rather condemns the religion of Islam itself.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Obama’s Supposed “Religion Dilemma” and American Exceptionalism

As I've reported recently, conservatives, spurred by the ahistorical renderings of Newt Gingrich and others, wrap the exceptionalism narrative into a pat us-versus-them package: that Obama doesn't understand the divine roots of the American founding, probably because he's not really a Christian and not really an American, and only by electing the likes of Michele Bachmann or Jim DeMint can we ensure that the Christian nation ship can be righted again.

By framing the confrontation of this narrative as an "uphill battle," Democrats make the enormous and unnecessary mistake of placing themselves in the position of the counter-cultural underdog. The conservatives have no special right to own the American exceptionalism narrative, and Democrats shouldn't yield that ground to them. They need an America narrative of their own, one that is just as forceful and unapologetic as the right's.

via www.religiondispatches.org

Rendering a legal decision is now the same as imposing immorality on free people

quote of the day from David Lane, executive director of AFA Action, responding to the win in Iowa: "For those who impose what we perceive as an immoral agenda, we're going to take them out" ... He said the group would do so again wherever judges "impose their will on free people."

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Yes, perhaps a ruling allowing same-sex couples to wed is immoral (to some), just as allowing mixed-race couples to wed was immoral (to some).

Chuck Hurley: "We Did God's Will" By Removing Iowa Supreme Court Justices

Outside anti-gay organizations like the American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defense Fund, Faith & Freedom Coalition and National Organization for Marriage spent more than $1 million targeting three Iowa Supreme Court justices for defeat over the court's ruling in favor of marriage equality ...

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Judge Bus: Fighting the Shakespearean-Evolutionary Conspiracy To Warehouse Iowa's Children

The Religious Right's "Judge Bus" continues to roll through Iowa and participants just keep coming up with wilder and wilder explanations of why three Supreme Court justices need to be removed from office, like Rep. Steve King claiming that if they aren't, pretty soon we'll have a society in which children will be taken away from parents and raised in warehouses to be vicious warriors ... or something

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Roman Catholics strategizing to reverse gay marriage

Roman Catholic leaders in Iowa are urging voters to back a constitutional convention, saying the rare gathering would be the quickest way to overturn the court ruling that legalized gay marriage in the state, the Associated Press reports.

The Iowa Catholic Conference, which represents the state's four Roman Catholic dioceses, issued the statement Monday in favor of a yes vote on a Nov. 2 ballot question that would require a constitutional convention.

Gay marriage has been legal in Iowa since 2009, when the state Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that found a same-sex marriage ban approved by lawmakers violated the Iowa Constitution. Since then, about 1,800 same-sex weddings have been held in Iowa, most by couples who live in other states.

Tom Chapman, executive director of the Catholic Conference, said the group was part of a larger effort to encourage Iowa's roughly 500,000 Catholics to vote their conscience on a number of issues.

via weblogs.baltimoresun.com

Vote your conscience because the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church says so.

National Organization for Marriage drops $235K on Iowa TV campaign « Iowa Independent

New Jersey-based anti-gay marriage group the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) spent more than $235,000 on a statewide television ad campaign calling for the rejection of  all three Iowa Supreme Court justices facing a judicial retention election in November.

The figure comes from disclosure reports filed Tuesday with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. The ad is planned to run for two weeks.

via iowaindependent.com