[Mister Bent]

Originally Posted by Ebon

I don't understand how they are not a joke like the Fred Phelps gang.

The sad thing is, even as a joke, they still do their damage. Phelps has his followers, and he won that suit brought against him by the family of one of the soldier's who's funeral he protested.

Michele Bachmann recently signed the pledge to uphold "traditional" marriage, which includes rejection of Sharia Islam, supporting legal advocacy for DOMA and

"Fierce defense of the First Amendment rights...especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy."

The pledge also manages to slip in that homosexuality is both a choice and a health risk and calls for banning female pornography "in an effort to protect women from 'seduction into promiscuity and all forms of pornography . . . and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.'" What's interesting about that to me (in the sense that I am interested in institutionalized hypocrisy) is that they condemn Sharia law and other "anti-woman...forms of totalitarian control" while reinforcing the notion that sexualized women are part of the problem with fidelity and the decline in "family values."

Unfortunately, while many of us can see that this is all serious crazy talk, there are enough people - especially among fundamentalist religious types - who think this is precisely what's required to "turn this country around" and so Bachmann's campaign coffers grow.