The FAMiLY LEADER, a right-wing group in Iowa, is offering a "Marriage Vow" pledge to candidates. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is the first to sign on. Among the pledge's supporting data:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.
This is really quite objectionable, and over at Jack & Jill Politics, Cheryl Contee objects. "Given that families were broken up regularly for sales during slavery and that rape by masters was pretty common, this could not be more offensive," she writes. "I mean, putting aside the statistics on this, which are likely off-base, I could not be more angry. When will Republicans inquire with actual Black people whether or not we're ok with invoking slavery to score cheap political points?"
You can find the complete pledge here (pdf). The footnotes alone are several notches past amazing, including a lengthy, explicit list of STDs and related miseries. You'll also find several condemnations of homosexuality and Sharia Islam, followed by protests that "over the long run" persecution of "Jews, Christians, blacks, artists, feminists, gays, freethinkers and non-conformists poses a threat to Western human rights in general and American liberty in particular." But in the short run, please sign our pledge.
After the jump, a couple of favorite bits.
Footnotes 11 and 12:
11 It is no secret that a handful of state and federal judges, some of whom have personally rejected heterosexuality and faithful monogamy, have also abandoned bona fide constitutional interpretation in accord with the discernible intent of the framers. In November, 2010, Iowa voters overwhelmingly rejected three such justices from the state Supreme Court in retention elections. Yet, certain federal jurists with lifetime appointments stand poised, even now, to "discover" a right of so-called same-sex marriage or polygamous marriage in the U.S. Constitution.12 Justice Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZD.html) holds that laws against such things as bigamy/polygamy, prostitution, bestiality, adult incest -- customs historically rejected within the United States -- may become Constitutionally-inevitable under U.S. Supreme Court logic which could be used to invalidate the Defense of Marriage Act and laws, in the overwhelming majority of states, against so-called same-sex marriage and near-equivalents. This is particularly problematic with regard to polygamy, a demographic and strategic means for the advancement of Sharia Islamist misogyny, for attacks upon the rights of women, for the violent persecution of homosexuals, for the undermining of basic human rights, and for general religious and civil intolerance for Jewish, Christian and other non-Islamic faiths under Sharia law.
From footnote 19:
Over the long run, Sharia polygamy, multi-partner childbearing, demographic jihad and the persecution of Jews, Christians, blacks, artists, feminists, gays, freethinkers and other non-conformists poses a threat to Western human rights in general, and to American liberty in particular.