Conservative 'Values' Voters

We hear so much about America's strong 'values' (which now includes torture) and how liberal politicians should so do more to reach out to 'values voters'. This was especially true after the 2004 election, in which reporters were obsessed with the 'values voters' (read: the ones who showed up to condemn gay marriage) who helped guarantee the win for President Bush. I hate these people. No, not the religious and moral in general. They are good people and I don't want to badmouth them because of their fringe. But I mean the faux-'values voters' in the far-right who speak for them and whom the media and politicians insist we take seriously.

This past weekend was the conservative Values Voters summit, which summed up how vile and backwards these people are. Right up front, I want to make it clear, that this wasn't a group of the fringe.... this was the mainstream of today's Republican party. Among those attending the summit: Tony Snow, Attorney General Gonzales, Senator George Allen, Governor Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Keep that in mind.

Here is a sample speech from a speech by Bishop Wellington Boone, founder of the Wellington Boone Ministries-

"This matter of gay — I want the gays mad at me. I’m not on enough of their hit lists ... But I want to tell you something is, they don't know, we're driven by God to deal with this stuff, and I want to say to you that, in this regard, I'm not playing with you. That when it comes to the matter of this gay stuff, I know that a family is not a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It's a man and a woman. That's the creative order, and I'm not backing down. I'm standing flat-footed on that right there. [Applause]

Everywhere I get to speak, I am guarded by the grace of God, being strong on it. Now they're fussing on it, they're saying a few things, but they don't have me, you know, in their, you know, on their web sites. They're not coming at me strong, and I would say this. Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don't stand strong on principle, we call them 'faggots.' A punk is — and our people, I'm from the ghetto, so sometimes it does come out a little bit. I got another one I'm gonna say in a minute — [laughter] — that don't stand up for what's right, we say, 'You're sissified out!' 'You're a sissy!' That means you don't stand up for principles. And I just believe that God hasn't called us to be sissies on a principle level. We're called to be, to stand up and be men. I'm not talking about as in gender. I'm talking about man of God, men in the marketplace, and when a U.S. senator or congressman says that he wants me to vote for them, and he's not biblically based — if he doesn't have God as his Lord, how can somebody that doesn't feel the need for God lead me?"

VALUES!!!

And here's a speech by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) (link has video)-

"...But, you know, when I was in the last weeks of my last campaign [talking about gay marriage], you know what I was thinking? Where’s our side? What are they doing? And I believe that when you’re in a cultural war like this, you have to respond with equal and hopefully greater force if you want to win this battle. But this battle is the most important issue that we face today, and what an honor it has been to serve in the United States Congress and carry the Marriage Amendment.

Last time, we were 54 votes short in this legislative session. That’s 9 votes more than we had last year. But there is much work to be done. So I hope that you will realize how high the stakes are. The future is grim unless we do what we need to do to win this battle. We need to elect people to positions of authority in the states and in the United States Congress, and we need to fight the good fight for our children and our grandchildren. Thank you very much."

MORE VALUES!!!!

Gosh, why can't all politicians reach out to these wonderfully moral people more? :)

A reader to Andrew Sullivan's blog summed up his experience at the summit-

I went to the Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit this weekend at the Omni.

It is much, much worse than we know.

The first woman I spoke to (from Erie, PA) railed on about how Chuck Hagel is a flaming liberal and John McCain should be tried for treason. I thought that maybe I'd run into an isolated crazy. Oh no - it only got worse from there. The level of contempt for anyone who diverges from the Holy Word of W is beyond description. I was sort of 'undercover' so I could just let people talk to me, not leading the conversation, not baiting, and it horrified me to hear how many were perfectly comfortable with any form of torture in the name of patriotism if the Commander In Chief gave it the ok.

Meanwhile, in the plenary I got to hear from George Allen on how he's been done wrong by the media and watched a ballroom of about 1,700 people seem to feel permission to let their hate for The Gays run wild every time a black minister hit the stage. (I have my own copy of the very popular brochure, "The Rape of the Civil Rights Movement: How Sodomites Are Using Civil Rights Rhetoric To Advance Their Preference For Sexual Perversion.")

There is no room for disagreement, because it is tantamount to evil. Dissent is the same as blasphemy, and everything is approached in orthodox terms. I've always been a conservative because I believe that there is such a think as good and evil and that moral relativism is a crazy road on which logic can rarely stick. I believe in limited government and individual liberty. I know I can do things better than any bureaucracy ever will. But what conservatism has become with these people is horrifying. They'd trade liberty for a handshake from W., compassion for power. And they've got one amazing plan in place to make sure that future generations have a tighter, more limited, and clearly more hostile worldview. I went there hoping to prove myself wrong about what I thought was happening, but I just couldn't do it.

This is the Republican Party's base.

This is who is in charge of America.

Had enough?