The Illinois Family Institute’s David E. Smith and Andrew Willis have used their incredible wisdom and logic to poke a hole in the idea that gay and lesbian couples in Illinois really want to get married.

Here’s how their argument goes: According to the census, very few gay and lesbian couples in Illinois got “civil unionized” in 2012. Therefore, why would they fight so hard for marriage equality?!

In Illinois, only 0.45 percent of the homosexual population received a civil union in the first full year of availability, and only a fraction of a percent (0.0166 percent) of Illinois’ population got “civil unionized” in 2012. This is the response to all the enthusiasm and celebration that surrounded the passage of Illinois’ civil unions law?

The response to civil unions has been lackluster at best, and one should not expect these percentages to rise dramatically. The law came into effect June of 2011, so one would expect that homosexuals who had been committed to a partner would have formed a civil union by now, but the vast majority have not.

…

… Why the sudden political urgency for a same-sex “marriage” law in Illinois — when there seems to be so very little interest in forming civil unions? And there is absolutely zero evidence that same-sex “marriage” would be more popular in the long run than civil unions has proven to be in Illinois.

The short answers are these: Separate but equal is not equal. And for many gay and lesbian couples, they’re not settling for a watered-down version of marriage. They want to be treated the same as straight couples in the eyes of the government and that’s not going to happen until full marriage equality is achieved.

But back to the numbers. I’m trying to make sense of IFI’s statistics, but when they distort them this badly, it’s hard.

In any case, IFI claims what gay rights supporters really want is not equality, but power. Power and the destruction of society:

The ultimate goal is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and legal climate that promotes homosexuality as normal behavior. Redefining marriage in order to accommodate the unjustifiable demands of a tiny but politically powerful group will ultimately prove too costly.

There’s paranoid bigotry at its finest.

h/t: The Friendly Atheist blog at Patheos

During a sermon last October, Virginia GOP Lt. Governor nominee E.W. Jackson added to his long list of virulently anti-gay remarks by warning that marriage equality for gays and lesbians will result in the legalization of man-animal unions. Jackson warned the crowd that if they don’t stop “Adam and Steve” it is going to “soon be Adam and a bull,” arguing that their family, school and community may be “overwhelmed by the torrent of wickedness” if they don’t stop same-sex marriage.

H/T: RWW

Like her fellow Minnesota-based conservative talk show host Bradlee Dean, End Times broadcaster Jan Markell is warning that Minnesota is about to experience divine punishment over the state’s new marriage equality law. She told the American Family Association’s news service that gay people and Muslims have turned Minnesota into “the occult capital of America,” noting that “God destroyed cities in the Bible over homosexuality.”

Jan Markell, founder and director of Olive Tree Ministries, laments that The North Star State has become a mecca for many unpleasant things.

“We’re the occult capital of America,” she tells OneNewsNow. “We certainly have more Islamic influence probably than any other place, other than Dearborn, Michigan. We’re certainly one of the gay capitals, and now with homosexual marriage a reality, many Christians, solid pro-family-type people — we don’t know where to run to.”

And Markell believes Minnesota Christians are concerned about God’s judgment on the state.

“Whether it be economically or some weather-related kind of a tragedy, but God destroyed cities in the Bible over homosexuality; He speaks out on this issue in a very clear manner and calls this an abomination,” the Olive Tree Ministries founder warns.

H/T: Right Wing Watch

The Virginia Republican Party this weekend nominated for lieutenant governor a minister who has a history of virulent anti-gay statements, accuses the Democratic Party of enslaving African Americans, and criticized President Obama for having “Muslim sensibilities.” The former Senate candidate ,who in 2012garnered less than 5 percent of the vote in the Republican primary,bested six other candidates during the Virginia GOP convention, and will join conservative Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on the Republican ticket. He is the first black candidate the state party has endorsed since 1988.

Here are some of the most alarming facts you need to know about E.W. Jackson:

• He has said gays and lesbians are “very sick people, psychologically and emotionally” whose minds are perverted. He has also said homosexuality “poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies”
• He called alleged Democratic Party ties to Planned Parenthood “more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was” and thinks blacks who join the Democratic Party arevoluntarily selling themselves into slavery.
• He has equated Islam with anti-semitism, and criticized President Obama for having “Muslim sensibilities,”
• He led an “Exodus Now!” movement encouraging African Americans to leave the Democratic party because opposition to same-sex marriage and government endorsement of religion means “Democrats are engaged in a concerted effort to do away with all symbols of our Judeo-Christian culture.”
• He rallied against hate crimes legislation as a “virulent strain of Anti-Christian bigotry and hatred.”

h/t: Nicole Flatow at Think Progress

Minnesota-based Religious Right activist/rock star Bradlee Dean went ballistic on his radio show yesterday in response to his state’s new marriage equality law. Dean warned that Gov. Mark Dayton, who signed the same-sex marriage bill into law, is at “war with God” and is “about to find out what it’s like as to what the fallout is when you throw rocks towards God, he’s going to learn how gravity works.” He added that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who backed his state’s marriage equality law, and other pro-gay rights “criminals” will face divine justice as well.

Dean even seems to believe that every gay person in the country showed up for yesterday’s celebration of the marriage equality law in order to “push their propaganda and their agendas on the American people,” just as Saul Alinsky commanded.

“They come from all over the country to do this so what you’ve seen was probably the whole lump of the population of the homosexual community in the United States of America,” Dean said.

After lamenting about the “pansies” in the Minnesota legislature, Dean and his co-hosts began discussing the “Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act,” an LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying bill, which he said is proof that “radical homosexuals” are part of a “UN global agenda” to “destroy the family.”

Dean then channeled his inner-Antoine Dodson and claimed that gays are coming after your wife and kids: “Go home, look at your wife and look at your kids, because now that’s what they’re coming for.”

He even lashed out at “my good friend Alex Jones,” who is apparently not anti-gay enough for Dean, despite his belief that chemicals in juices are turning kids gay.

h/t: Right Wing Watch

On today’s “Faith and Freedom” broadcast, Matt Barber explained that the push for gay marriage is really an effort by Satan to get the United States to officially embrace sin.

Since man-woman marriage is a metaphor for Christ and the Church, Barber explained, “Satan hates the institution of natural marriage and wants to see it watered down.”

“What is central to so-called gay marriage?” Barber asked. “Homosexual sin. So therefore gay marriage is, in and of itself, sin.  And so if they can get the government to put its official stamp of approval on counterfeit same-sex marriage, then that is the government shaking its fist at God and saying ‘we know better than you do.’”

h/t: RWW

Linda Harvey of Mission America is worried that “homosexual news blogs” and other websites “that are sympathetic to the social and political goals of the homosexual movement” may actually trick young people, who could simply be visiting such sites in order to research the debate on same-sex marriage, into becoming gay by putting them in close reach of “homosexual-themed pornography.”

“Schools, Hollywood and even the top leaders in our country are all busy selling homosexuality to kids,” Harvey warned, adding that pornography and other “deceptive influences” are also “convincing [kids] to believe they are gay.”

h/t: RWW

Last week, Matt Barber and Shawn Akers were discussing the current Religious Right myth that the military was going to start to court-martial soldiers for sharing their faith.  It is not true, of course, but that isn’t about to stop Barber and Akers from repeating it and complaining that the Obama administration is implementing a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”-like program for Christianity in the military.

“We have people controlling the reins of government, right now,” Barber said, “particularly out of the Oval Office, who are calling evil ‘good’ and good ‘evil.’ They are elevating and celebrating deviant sexual behavior in the ranks of the armed services, which is in direct conflict with clear biblical admonitions against sexual sin in both the Old and New Testaments.”

H/T: RWW

The former British colony of Belize is now in the news, as Belizean LGBTQ activist Caleb Orozco is attempting to overturn the country’s ban on sodomy.

Zach Beauchamp at Think Progress LGBT:

Caleb Orozco is an openly gay man in a country that criminalizes his existence. Belizean law says that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years;” the statute defines sex between between consenting same-sex adults as being one such unnatural act. Orozco and his organization (the United Belize Advocacy Movement) succeeding in pushing a legal case against the ban on same-sex activity to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday.

While neighboring Mexico has constitutionally mandated marriage equality, the LGBT communities in Belize’s other neighbors — Honduras and Guatemala — have been frequent targets of anti-gay discrimination and violence. But even those two countries don’t ban same-sex sexual activity.

The Guardian:

Caleb Orozco has been denounced as the antichrist, received death threats and had a beer bottle smashed into his face. Next Tuesday, the gay rights campaigner will face a very different kind of challenge, when he comes up against the attorney general of Belize and the leaders of the country’s churches.

Belize’s churches have been at the forefront of those condemning the legal challenge. The most outspoken opponent is Pastor Scott Stirm, a Texas evangelical missionary who runs Belize Action; he has praised the existing legislation as “a good law that protects human dignity” on the grounds that it is often used in sex abuse cases.

Section 53 declares that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years”. Like so many laws around the world criminalising homosexuality, Section 53 is a legacy of imperial rule from London. Buggery with consent and bestiality were deemed merely to be “public nuisances” when the criminal code of Belize came into force in 1888. The offence was re-categorised as an “unnatural crime” during the second world war.

Hopefully, common sense should prevail in Belize… with its anti-sodomy laws going in the trashcan.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Right-wing rock musician and radio host Bradlee Dean, a Michele Bachmann ally, was part of a panel on the Millennial generation at Liberty Counsel’s recent Awakening conference. Dean’s You Can Run But You Can’t Hide ministry, designated an anti-gay hate group last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center, works to book Dean’s right-wing-values presentations into public schools.

Dean – who has suggested that the federal government was behind the shootings in Sandy Hook, Aurora Springs, and Columbine, along with the Oklahoma City bombing and 9-11 – not surprisingly pushed conspiracy theories about public education, including the notion that the rigorous International Baccalaureate program is part of a global scheme to disarm Americans and indoctrinate students into a homosexual agenda.

During the Awakening panel, Dean ranted that public school students know nothing about the Constitution and said that Christian parents have no excuse for having their children in public schools. He cited the Common Core, a curriculum standard developed by state education officials, as evidence that President Obama is acting like Mao Tse-Tung. He said Supreme Court rulings on church-state issues had opened the door to Satanism.   

h/t: RWW