The leader of a powerful and well-funded Christian group is calling on 100,000 pastors to dig up dirt on Republican candidates and staffers in an anti-gay ideological purity litmus test.
Some Christians are so anti-gay they would have tried to prevent George W. Bush – the man responsible for dozens of gay marriage bans across the country – from becoming president. Why? Former First Lady Laura Bush years after leaving the White House said she supports same-sex marriage. Ken Mehlman, the former Chair of the Republican National Committee who helped the Bush campaign attack the LGBT community but who years later revealed he is gay, also would have been blocked if they had their way.
These Christian extremists will stop at nothing to win their war against LGBT people.
Who are these anti-gay activists?Â
The American Renewal Project, headed by silent GOP king maker David Lane.
Lane, who has headed trips to Israel for Tea Party Republicans including Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and many others, is funded by the millions of dollars ($20 million in 2013) the American Family Association receives each year. Those millions are amplified by the fact that the American Family Association operates as a Christian ministry – despite appearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of active anti-gay hate groups – and thus, it is tax-exempt.
Lane, who has also worked as Rand Paul’s outreach director, and whose daughter also works for the Kentucky Senator, is now calling pastors and anti-gay activists to dig into the backgrounds, histories, and relationships of all GOP candidates, their staffers, and, if his examples are any indication, even their families, to expose anyone who might be gay or an ally of LGBT equality.
“Evangelicals have no choice but to investigate which consultants and operatives are behind each of the candidates,” Lane writes in an op-ed at Western Journalism, a home for anti-gay right wing conservatives. He adds, “decisions about personnel provide evidences about policy.”
Of course, that’s blatantly false, as the examples above – which come from Lane’s op-ed – prove.
“Personnel is policy,” Lane repeats.
How extensive is this inquisition?
“The Washington Examiner‘s Paul Bedard reported on Monday that David Lane’s American Renewal Project had asked ‘100,000 pastors’ that it was working with to mobilize Christian voters to also dig up dirt on people connected to presidential candidates,” Raw Story’s David Edwards today reports.
In 2013, Lane wrote an op-ed, “Wage war to restore a Christian America,” that called for “war” against the “pagan onslaught imposing homosexual marriage.”
Tax exempt issues aside, is this what the religious right calls “religious freedom”?Â
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Related:
Evangelical ‘Kingmaker’ Working To Vote 1000 Christian Pastors Into Political Office
Likely GOP Presidential Candidates Team Up With Anti-Gay Hate Group To Get Christians To Polls
Watch How Rand Paul And Ted Cruz Have Been Trying To Woo The Anti-Gay Religious Right
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Hat tip: Raw Story
Image by elycefeliz via Flickr