The Family Leader’s founder and author of the controversial anti-gay, anti-porn, anti-Islam, pro-slavery “Marriage Vow,” Bob Vander Plaats, loves a good fag joke, as you can see from this video captured in March, obtained by the good folks at ThinkProgress.
Vander Plaats regularly compares same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest, and the group’s pledge requires candidates to affirm that being gay is a choice and that homosexuality is a public health risk.
But in new video footage obtained by ThinkProgress, Vander Plaats goes even further in cementing his strong dislike for gay people. During an event in Audubon, Iowa in March of 2011, Vander Plaats explained that many Iowans were concerned about the state becoming “the butt of jokes†in the aftermath of a state Supreme Court decision which found that a law prohibiting same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. He was then interrupted by an attendee who recalled a joke his wife tells about the “fags†marrying in Iowa law. Vander Plaats erupts in laughter:
ATTENDEE: You know what my wife says? She says: Iowa, the state where you can’t smoke a fag, but you can marry one.
[Laughter]
VANDER PLAATS: Oh shoot, that’s pretty good, that’s pretty good. Oh shoot.
Anti-gay extremist Michele Bachmann and the equally hate-filled homophobe Rick Santorum rushed to sign the “Marriage Vow,” but all other candidates have refused or ignored it.