Justin's Political Corner

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association hosted Fox News correspondent Todd Starnes today where they discussed a brochure [PDF] from the group DOJPride, a group representing LGBT employees at the Department of Justice, which they said was a sign that the U.S. is turning into the Soviet Union.

The brochure was simply a list of tips on creating an LGBT-inclusive work environment and has no enforcement provisions, but those plain facts didn’t stop Starnes from arguing that the DOJ now “require[s] managers to post a symbol, an emblem, showing that they are pro-gay in their office.”

“This makes it clear that it’s not enough to give so-called equality, any objections must be eradicated and this is our future if we allow this to continue,” Rios warned, while Starnes called the brochure “un-American.”

Rios even claimed the LGBT rights movement is transforming America into the USSR: “When I was a girl the Soviet Union was such a great threat to the world, the spread of Communism, and those of us that remember that era we have not forgotten, we just never thought it would happen in our country. I’ve had callers to the radio show who grew up in the Soviet Bloc countries, I’ve had them call weeping to see what’s happening to our loss of freedoms.”

From the 06.04.2013 edition of AFR’s Sandy Rios In The Morning: 

h/t: RWW

With Republican Party leaders pushing a plan for the GOP to broaden its appeal by softening its stance on social issues, a group of leading social conservatives sent a letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus promising an exodus from the party if it stops opposing gay marriage.

But in the letter, the signatories — who included Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson — also expressed indignation that anyone would suggest they haven’t been nice to gays — or “homosexuals,” as they say.

“We deeply resent the insinuation that we have treated homosexuals unkindly personally,” they wrote.

So, of course, we had to dig through the archives to find some of the uniquely kind things these conservative activists have said about gays and lesbians over the years.

Schlafly, who has a gay son, may believe she’s kind to homosexuals, but she doesn’t respect them. She made that clear in a 2010 interview where she outlined her opposition to gay marriage, something Schlafly and many of the others who signed the letter to Priebus have fought tooth and nail.

step further. Not only does he not respect gays, he doesn’t want them to respect themselves. Wildmon made this clear in a 2010 statement criticizing a Gay Pride parade that had a 10-year-old grand marshal.

“There is nothing about homosexual conduct to be proud of, and much to be ashamed of,” said Wildmon.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who also signed the letter, is also not a fan of Gay Pride celebrations. He made this clear in a 2012 broadcast on the AFA’s radio network in which he implied being gay is similar to being an alcoholic or unfaithful to one’s spouse.

“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,” Perkins said. “Whether it’s adultery, whether it’s any type of sexual immorality it’s a problem, but we’re not celebrating those other forms as a society, we’re not promoting it and teaching it as normal in our schools.”

How kind!

The signatories of the letter have also blamed gays and lesbians for all sorts of societal ills. An2012 “action alert” from the AFA said gays are damaging to your health.

“Homosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” the alert said.

Another AFA radio personality who signed the letter, Sandy Rios, used her time on the organization’s airwaves to blame gays and lesbians for all sorts of societal ills. In February 2012, she said gay friendly school programs were responsible for falling test scores.

“Whether they are teaching radical environmentalism or homosexuality. Can you imagine that they are teaching this instead of math and science? … That’s the reason our test scores are so shockingly low compared with the world.”

Just under nine months later, Rios upped the ante.

“They are clamoring for gay marriage,” said Rios of LGBT activists. “Of course it isn’t just gay marriage, it’s instruction, explicit instruction in public schools, it’s really I think the rape of our children’s innocence.”

Dobson, ever so kindly and politely, of course, managed to accuse LGBT activists of causing something even more dramatic than raping young minds — the total destruction of our world.

“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage, Dobson said at a 2004 rally in Oklahoma. “It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”

The signatories have also accused gays and lesbians of wanting to attack American values. InMarch of this year, Wildmon said gay marriage could have a disastrous effect on the founding fathers’ vision for this country.

“Condoning sexual immorality and same-sex marriage may be a good way to make political friends, but it is diametrically opposed to the Word of God. The American Family Association is concerned more about the future of America and how moving away from God’s purpose and intent for marriage destroys the foundations of our Republic.” 

Another signatory, Reverend Louis P. Sheldon, authored a book on the “homosexual plan to change America” in 2005 that described the gay “deathstyle” as being driven by angry, unpatriotic individuals.

Perhaps the kindest words of all came from Bauer in 1999 after the Vermont Supreme Court ruled gay couples should have the same legal protections afforded to married couples.

“I think what the Vermont Supreme Court did last week was in some ways worse than terrorism,” Bauer said.

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association on Friday said that she isn’t surprised that a large majority of young people support marriage equality because “our children, for the most part, have heard nothing but positive things about homosexuality and its effects.” She blamed TV shows like TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress” for making homosexuality seem “kind of fun,” saying they’ve “only painted [it] with a positive brush.”

However, Rios claimed that “those of us that have been involved in issues related to this know that there’s a very dark side” to the gay community and understand that homosexuality is a “destructive force.”

She maintained that gay rights advocates are “forcing little children to be educated, they call it educated, I’d say sexually abused by information their little ears are not ready to hear,” and once again warned that “homosexual advocacy” brings about “the raping of the innocence of our children.”

Later, she mocked media coverage of her latest statements where she speculated about Hillary Clinton’s sexual orientation by facetiously asking why people were offended by her remarks since schools now teach that homosexuality is “wonderful.”

Rios even said that we are telling children to “engage in experimental sex with their friends, you know encouraged to act out sexually with their girlfriends if they are girls and their boyfriends if they are boys,” and that Bill Clinton “loves all things sexual in general I think, homosexual or heterosexual.”

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

After wondering about UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s sexual orientation, American Family Association radio host Sandy Rios is now floating rumors that Hillary Clinton may be a lesbian following the former Secretary of State’s statement expressing support for marriage equality.

Citing Dick Morris, naturally, Rios speculated that Clinton may be a lesbian even though she “can’t confirm or deny anything.”

She added that Clinton has a “love of homosexuality” and consistently “endorsed and embraced all things lesbian and gay.” “We are being caught in this vortex of homosexual advocacy, it’s just amazing,” Rios concluded.

H/T: Brian Tashman at RWW

The topic of discussion on Sandy Rios’ American Family Radio program Wednesday was diversity among federal judicial nominees. The Washington Post published a story over the weekend detailing President Obama’s largely successful effort to appoint more women, people of color and openly LGBT people to federal judgeships. The voice of dissent in the article was that of the Committee for Justice’s Curt Levey, who told the Post that the White House was “lowering their standards” in nominating nonwhite judges. So naturally, Rios invited Levey on as a guest and explained to him why she disapproves of President Obama’s diverse judicial nominations.

In particular, Rios disapproves of Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, respectively the third and fourth women ever to sit on the high court. Sotomayor and Kagan, Rios says, have been forgetting their place and behaving “rudely,” “interrupting” and “speaking inappropriately” to, of all people, Justice Antonin Scalia.

While Levey correctly notes that “Scalia can give it out as well as take it,” he agrees with Rios that Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s first Latina justice, “has occasionally, at least, stepped over the line.” In particular, he says Sotomayor – who he once accused of supporting “violent Puerto Rican terrorists” — “sort of lost it” during arguments on the Voting Rights Act, when she contradicted Scalia’s stunning assertion that the law represents a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

In fact, while Scalia’s bombast provoked audible gasps in the hearing room, Sotomayor waited several minutes before calmly asking the attorney challenging the Voting Rights Act, “Do you think that the right to vote is a racial entitlement in Section 5?”

h/t: Miranda Blue at RWW

On her radio program today, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios read listener responses to her recent interview with anti-gay activist Brian Camenker, who claims that bullying-prevention programs and LGBT-inclusive curricula are ruining American education.

Rios praised one email from “Margaret,” who wrote that “basic skills” like reading and writing are being “pushed aside in favor of teaching moral choices and left-wing agenda. It is no wonder American students have fallen so far behind other nations.” Margaret lamented that schools “rob the innocence of children through forced instruction of alternate lifestyles,” adding: “When two percent of America’s population seeks to dictate to the rest of us how our children should be educated, we have truly sunk into a pit of moral decay.”

According to Rios, it all goes back to a plan of Bill Ayers to “radicalize” teachers and the National Education Association’s goal of “promoting homosexuality in every discipline in public schools.”

H/T: Brian Tashman at RWW

Today, the Boy Scouts of America board said that it will postpone a final decision on the future of the ban on gay members until May. Two days before the announcement, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios said that gay men are child predators by nature and consequently should be banned from Scouting.

While responding to an email she received from a listener named David who opposes the current prohibition on gay Boy Scouts, Rios argued that gay men “like youth, most of them like young men” and go into professions like teaching and coaching so “they can be around boys.”

Like other supporters of the ban, Rios cited Jerry Sandusky, who is married to a woman and wouldn’t have been affected by the ban on gay members.

“These are our children and their safety and well-being trumps any desire of any gay man to be a Scout leader or a gay boy to be a Scout,” Rios said. “If you want to be that and you can’t I’m sorry but we can’t all be what we want to be, we can’t put others at risk just because we want something.”

Meanwhile, Buster Wilson of the AFA went on another anti-gay diatribe, insisting that parents “are not going to allow their boys to go on camping trips with a gay Scout leader.”

h/t: Brian Tashmann at RWW

The Violence Against Women Act expired this year after House Republicans blocked a reauthorization that boosted protections for Native Americans, immigrants and the LGBT community. This development has overjoyed Religious Right activists, who have long opposed the anti-violence law.

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, speaking today with Ed Bartlett of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, criticized the indisputably effective law and attacked Vice President Joe Biden, warning that “if we knew Joe Biden’s private behavior with women it might not be a pretty picture.” Rios stated that Biden’s “crassness, crudeness and disrespect for women” raises doubts about his work on VAWA while Bartlett used Biden’s own admission that abuse occurred in his household when he was younger as a reason to block the law.

Rios was also upset that VAWA may soon include protections for the LGBT community. Bartlett contended that these new protections prove VAWA is too easy on women since “studies have shown that lesbian-perpetrated domestic violence is higher than violence among heterosexual couples.”

However, according to the Center for American Progress, “Studies have found that domestic violence occurs among same-sex couples at comparable rates to straight couples.” While Bartlett admits that domestic violence is a concern among same-sex couples, he and Rios seem to believe that is a reason to oppose the inclusion of LGBT protections in VAWA.

Rios even argued that the law has had “an extremely detrimental, unfair, tilted, bad effect on men.” Bartlett dismissed reports that women face disproportionate rates of domestic violence and said that VAWA was actually passed by those seeking “to undermine family stability.”

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

We were expecting conservatives to immediately blame their election defeats on voter fraud, and predictably their claims don’t have a leg to stand on. Yesterday, Buster Wilson of the American Family Association on AFA Today said that Rep. Allen West lost his campaign for re-election because of Democratic voter fraud, a point also made by AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer. Just like when Wilson thought he discovered Obama’s student ID proving he wasn’t born in the U.S. or exposed the militarization of the National Weather Service, Wilson now believes he uncovered massive voter fraud in Florida.

But Wilson’s claim, which is also touted on conservative sites like Townhall and WorldNetDaily, that a county in West’s district had “141 percent of registered voters voting” is not true.

The number Wilson points to is actually the percentage of “cards cast.” Since the ballot contains two cards, or the number of pages on the ballot, the voter turnout rate is approximately half of the cards cast [PDF].

UPDATE: Wilson’s colleague at AFA Sandy Rios also claimed on her radio show that the presidential election and West’s race were “stolen,” making the same exact false claim that in “Allen West’s congressional district, initially on the first count, I think 140 percent of the people registered to vote, voted.” Rios added that the overwhelming support Obama received in inner-city precincts is proof of fraud, even though such overwhelming margins are neither without precedent nor evidence of fraud.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

According to the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios, the 2010 health care reform law may be “the beginning of dhimmitude.” Rios, who spent much of her Friday radio program defending Michele Bachmann’s remarks on her show about Muslim Brotherhood “deep penetration” of the US government, warned that Muslims intend to “overpopulate and overtake” communities in order to establish “dhimmitude.” After discussing a tax that Christians and Jews could pay to receive protection and religious autonomy under Muslim rule, Rios claimed that the health care reform law “says that Muslims will be exempt from the government mandate to purchase insurance.”

Of course, this is not true.

According to FactCheck.org, the law does include religious exemptions for groups that are “currently considered exempt from Social Security payroll taxes,” such as the Amish, and “no Muslim group, and indeed no non-Christian group, has ever qualified for an exemption under the statue used to define exempt religious groups in the health care law.”

Do you know what dhimmitude is? I wish I could see your hands. How many of you know what dhimmitude is? Dhimmitude is the system under Islam where Muslims go into communities and at first operate within a system and then overpopulate and overtake, and when they become the majority they begin to exercise dhimmitude, which means dhimmi, which means that everybody—the other—anybody that’s not Muslim will be subservient to them in terms of taxes that you would have to pay, taxes as non-Muslims in exchange for being allowed to live there with them, so that’s part of dhimmitude. I’ve heard this before but somebody just sent it to me again, on page 107 of the Obama health care bill it says that Muslims will be exempt from the government mandate to purchase insurance because they believe insurance is gambling and risk-taking, so they will not have to buy it but the rest of us will, and the accusation is that this is the beginning of dhimmitude.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

Michele Bachmann took her propensity for promoting conspiracy theories to another level this week while speaking with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios, after warning of not just a media plot to use “flattery” to sway the Supreme Court decision on health care reform but also new claims about the Obama administration and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. She told Rios that Obama undercut the Magna Carta and “spit at the Constitution and at the will of the American people” with his move to block the deportation of some younger undocumented immigrants, proving that he is “the most dangerous President we have ever had in the history of the United States.” 

Later in the interview, Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood” and that security agents are no longer allowed to learn about terrorist attacks, apparently referring to efforts to stop using discredited, anti-Muslim material.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

The extremist group ACT! for America has combined the far right’s loathing of public schools and animosity towards Muslims into a new report, warning that public school students are “indoctrinated in Islam” through their history textbooks which have turned classrooms into “recruiting grounds for Islam.” Yesterday, we noted that ACT! for America’s Executive Director Guy Rodgers and Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly urged parents to imitate notorious textbook censor Norma Gabler. Today the organization’s president Brigitte Gabriel appeared on the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios in the Morning where she claimed that their new “shocking” report reveals that textbook publishers and Muslims are using the same tactics as Adolf Hitler to indoctrinate students:

Later in the show, Rios, who earlier said that secular Jews have been “the worst enemies of the country,” asked Gabriel why “Jewish leftists in this country” such as Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman “are eager to embrace Islam.” Gabriel, of course, blamed universities for teaching “anti-America and anti-Israel” material with the help of Saudi oil money.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW