Mother Jones magazine reports that Quist is locked in a battle for the Republican nomination for a Minnesota congressional seat. TFN Insider also reported about Quist here two years ago.

The new Mother Jones piece reviews Quist’s rather bizarre history. The anti-gay fanatic’s obsession with homosexuality is so great that he once went “undercover” at a gay bookstore and a bathhouse to “prove” that gay people were having sex:

Quist’s almost singular focus on sexuality didn’t go unnoticed. “At one point,” the St. Petersburg Times reported in 1994, “a Senate leader suggested he had an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, having devoted 30 hours to it in a single session.”

MJ continues by noting how Quist has — among other things — argued that abortion should be criminalized as a first-degree homicide, that women are “genetically predisposed” to be subservient to men, that dinosaurs and humans may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century, that dragons really existed and that the Bible’s Book of Job should be taught as a science lesson. He also once called President Obama a “power hungry arrogant black man.”

Perhaps Quist’s leading political ally? From the MJ piece:

Quist’s platform and ideology bears a close resemblance to another Minnesota conservative with a huge family and a love-hate relationship with modern science—Rep. Michele Bachmann. That’s no coincidence. Beginning in the late 1990s, the duo worked together to take down Minnesota’s state curriculum standards, which they considered a gateway to a totalitarian society built on moral relativism. He helped make her rise possible; now he wants to join her in Washington.

Bachmann is now helping Quist raise money for his congressional campaign, which has been boosted by support from backers of Ron Paul’s presidential bid.

Among his past campaigns for office, Quist challenged Minnesota’s Republican incumbent governor Arne Carlson in 1994. From Mother Jones:

If Quist does make it through the primary, though, at least one Minnesota Republican will be supporting the moderate Democrat [Tim] Walz [the incumbent]: Carlson. “When he ran, obviously we looked him up—a very bizarre record. I mean really bizarre,” Carlson says, recalling the ’94 race.

“Unfortunately,” Carlson added, “what was bizarre in the ’90s is becoming the centerpiece of this new Republican party.”

And that makes even more alarming the fact that arch-creationist and Joseph McCarthy fan Don McLeroy almost succeeded in giving Quist substantial influence over the rewriting of the social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. The standards eventually adopted by the State Board of Education were awful enough — but consider how even worse they could have been. And given that textbooks written to conform to the Texas standards end up being sold around the country, the damage to public education wouldn’t have been limited just to the Lone Star State.

Because of redistricting, all 15 seats on the board are up for election this year. That means your vote will help shape public education in Texas for a generation.

Why is this important? In recent years politicians on the Texas SBOE have:

• Censored what students will learn in their history classes
• Rejected established science
• Ignored the recommendations of teachers and respected scholars

So visit the TFN Education Fund’s SBOE campaign webpage to find the resources you need to help you make an informed decision. And go to VoteTexas.gov to find a polling location and much more information on the May 14-25 early voting period.

“Evolutionists would say that we progressed to this point through a series of unplanned, random circumstances and random events. I don’t believe that tells the whole story. I think there is more to our creation that indicates an intelligent being that has played a significant role.”

Rowley goes on to argue that science students should learn “competing theories” and what he considers the flaws of evolution.

Rowley’s opponent in the GOP primary, Amarillo school board president Anette Carlisle, told the newspaper that the science standards should be based on the recommendations of teachers, scientists and other experts. She also worries that teaching about religious beliefs in the classroom will be divisive:

“We have multiple belief systems in our student population, and we have to be respectful of that and not try to force any one person’s belief system on other students.”

In the same article, Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior director of the High Quality Standards Project at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, warns that “intelligent design”/creationism isn’t science.

“Intelligent design is not scientific content, whereas evolution is scientific content.”

The article doesn’t quote Democratic candidate Steven Schafersman, D-Midland, who isn’t opposed in his primary. Schafersman is president of Texas Citizens for Science, which opposes teaching creationism and creationist-inspired “weaknesses” of evolution in science classrooms.

Read the full Globe-News piece here.

You can find a list of State Board of Education candidates, links to campaign websites, maps and data for state board districts, and other election information at tfn.org/sboe2012.

Satirist Stephen Colbert, quoted in an article on Gov. Rick Perry and God.

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

Read the full article

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Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, on pushing for the dismissal of openly gay Richard Grenell from the Mitt Romney presidential campaign.

We got Romney’s attention with Richard Grenell. We spooked him. Scared him straight.

Read the full article

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A group of 12 Texas lawmakers, in a letter opposing a proposed marker on the Texas Capitol campus recognizing the Confederacy.

Confederate apologists have spent almost 150 years trying to change the Civil War into something that it was not. Here’s what it was: an insurrection against the United States government with the main goal of maintaining the institution of African slavery.

Read the full article

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President Barack Obama.

At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

Read the full article

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who is against marriage equality, but says same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children.

I happen to believe that the best setting for raising a child is where this is the opportunity to a mom and a dad to be in the home. I know there are many circumstances where that is not possible, through death or divorce. I also know many gay couples are able to adopt children. That’s fine.

Read the full article

The Conservative Coalition of Montgomery County (CCMC) this week posted video of a discussion with Cargill at a meeting last February. The group also posted video from a discussion with Cargill’s opponent in the May 29 GOP primary, Linda Ellis. Both candidates are from The Woodlands just north of Houston. (You can watch CCMC videos for Cargill, Ellis and candidates for other elective offices here.)

Cargill got into trouble just days after Gov. Rick Perry appointed her board chair last July, when she suggested that some of her Republican colleagues weren’t Christians and conservative. In her talk before the CCMC in February, Cargill left out the suggestion that five of her Republican colleagues aren’t Christians, but she made clear that she doesn’t think they’re conservatives:

“In looking at some of the other state board races, we would appreciate your prayers to get more conservatives on the board. If we could get seven or even eight, because eight is a majority of the 15. For four years we had seven, and that was so incredible because, you know, it’s right when the science standards were being adopted and then the history standards. So God’s timing was perfect. Then we just had to fight for that one vote to be a majority. So I’m really praying that we have some turnarounds on the board because, you know, now is the time we’ve got to do something and we’ve got to protect these precious children.”

And from what must the state board protect schoolchildren in Texas? Earlier in her talk, Cargill worried what school districts would do with the flexibility the Texas Legislature has given them (in passing Senate Bill 6 last year) to buy instructional materials even if the state board doesn’t approve those materials:

“I guess if I really want to stretch it and stir the pot, they could spend their money on things from Planned Parenthood.”

Yeah, stirring the pot might be one way to describe such a statement.

Cargill insisted that legislators must repeal SB 6, that school districts don’t really want the flexibility the new law gives them, and that the state board would do a better job keeping kids from being indoctrinated into Islam:

“There’s no error checking now. Because that was a big thing that we did when we appoint the panels to look through the textbooks, was to check for errors and to make sure that the content didn’t have, like, such a slant towards Islam, etcetera.”

Wondering where that came from? In 2010 Cargill supported a state board resolution (which passed) attacking Islam and falsely claiming that history textbooks are pro-Muslim and anti-Christian. Never mind, of course, that a Republican-dominated state board had approved those textbooks in 2002.

In her own discussion with the CCMC, Ellis stressed her support for local control and opposition to management of public schools from Washington as well as too much control in Austin.

All 15 seats on the State Board of Education are up for election this year. You can find a listing of candidates, district information and election news at tfn.org/sboe2012.

Dave Welch of the Houston Area Pastor Council says the president is an enemy of God:

“When marriage is everything, marriage is nothing. Obama and his radical allies of the sexual diversity agenda cannot redefine marriage, they can only undefine it and destroy it. Our prayer and commitment is that the people of this nation will continue to make it clear that we will not allow enemies of God and His design of marriage and family to destroy it on our watch. President Obama today not only came out against marriage, he came out against God.”

Steve Riggle, a Welch ally and senior pastor of Grace Community Church in Houston, went for a two-fer — attacking President Obama as well as Houston Mayor Annise Parker (already one of Riggle’s favorite targets):

“In November, the people need to speak once again, overwhelmingly, and tell President Obama by not giving him another term that we want our leader to believe in and support traditional marriage. In addition, since Houston Mayor Annise Parker has not only refused to honor the will of the people of Houston regarding their overwhelming support of traditional marriage, but has now as our mayor expressed jubilation at President Obama’s support for gay marriage, it may be that the people of Houston should consider adding her to the November ballot by the process of recall.”

Dwight McKissic, an African-American pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington who in 2005 suggested that God sent Hurricane Katrina to “purify” New Orleans because of tolerance for homosexuality, said the president’s announcement was bad for African-American churches and parents:

“President Obama has betrayed the Bible and the Black Church with his endorsement of same-sex marriage. The Bible is crystal clear on this subject, and the Black Church strongly opposes same-sex marriage. His endorsement is an inadvertent attack on the Christian Faith… This means that parents are now going to have an extremely difficult time teaching their children that marriage biblically and traditionally is between a man and a woman, when the President that many love and admire is now on record endorsing sodomy. This is painful and shameful. The Black Church should galvanize, mobilize and address this matter with the same (if not greater) intensity, velocity and resolve as we did the Civil Rights Movement. If we don’t, our children and grandchildren will pay a far greater price in suffering from a governmental sanction of same-sex marriage than we would have under segregation.”

Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for Liberty Institute, the Texas affiliate of Focus on the Family, was so agitated that he told one reporter he “absolutely” agreed that marriage is a states’ rights issue — but then suggested that a federal constitutional amendment is necessary to keep states from, well, having the right to decide for themselves:

“I think this is something you should see decided at the state level, but not exclusively at the state level.”

OK. Sure. He’s “for” states’ rights — except when he’s not. And too bad for the same-sex families who live in states where their marriages and civil unions are already legally recognized, right? Just another example of how, at its core, the religious right is anti-freedom.

“If one states the Pilgrims were radicals seeking a communist-socialist utopia, there is obviously something to debate … much less take note of before entering the Voting Booth. Especially making the link more than two centuries before Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto.”

TFN Insider was the first to report about Spurlock’s comments here and here.

This fall Vision America, a religious-right group based in Texas, is sponsoring “40 Days to Save America” — which calls on Americans to pray, fast and repent for “our national and and personal sins against the God of Heaven.” Rick Scarborough, Vision America’s president, says of the event:

“While we are deeply troubled by the direction in which our nation is headed this is not a political effort. The political problems which beset us are symptoms of a deeper spiritual malaise. In times of national tribulation, our people have often been urged to humbly turn to God in prayer.”

It’s not a political effort? So then why have those 40 days stretch from September 28 to November 6 — election day? And the official list of supporters includes right-wing Republican congressmen and a virtual “who’s who” of religious-right groups that typically back GOP candidates, such as the American Family Association, Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America. Of course this is “a political effort.”

“Our national survival is at stake,” the organizers declare on the “40 Days” website. And in what has become a typical political organizing tool, the website calls on pastors to sign up to participate in the 40-day project:

“On the weekend of November 3-4, Clergymen will stand before their congregations and call them to vote their values on November 6th, asking God to give us men and women who will lead us once again into being a light to the world.”

The Texas Freedom Network supports the right of all Americans — including clergy — to engage in the political process. But we draw the line when it comes to dragging churches and other houses of worship into partisan politics.

We’ve heard the “it’s not about politics” line too many times from the religious right. We were told that the Texas Restoration Project wasn’t about politics in 2005 — but major donors to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s election campaigns were secretly funneling nearly $1.3 million into that organization’s efforts to get pastors to politicize their churches. Last summer we were told that Gov. Perry’s prayer extravaganza in Houston wasn’t about politics — but it was, as subsequent events showed.

Now we’re told that “40 Days” isn’t “a political effort” — even though the project is set to the election calendar and involves, once again, persuading pastors to politicize their congregations. Don’t believe it.

That is a SICK website. I DISLIKE political DISTORTIONS aimed at destroying the worthy credibility of candidates.

Really, Cathie?

Just a few days before that post, Adams tweeted a quote from a Fox News contributor declaring that “I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism.” Last week she tweeted this headline from a Phyllis Schlafly essay: “Obama Is a Big-Time Law Violator.” Cathie has also questioned President Obama’s Christian faith, attacked former Texas Gov. Ann Richards as an “anti-religious bigot” who wasn’t “ladylike,” compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, and implied that Bill and Hillary Clinton were somehow involved in the murder of former aides and friends.

Now she’s upset with “political distortions aimed at destroying the worthy credibility of candidates”? Oh please. Cry us a river.

President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner, making joking reference to the moment in the GOP presidential primary campaign when Rick Santorum called Obama a snob for wanting young people to go to college.

We both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, (Mitt Romney) has two. What a snob.

Read the full article

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Michael Zimmerman, on why he founded the Clergy Letter Project.

The men and women who comprise The Clergy Letter Project, religious leaders representing scores of religions and denominations, are not opposed to religion. What they are opposed to, though, is the belief that there is only one “right” religion and that American society must reflect the narrow position promoted by those who espouse that one view.

Read the full article

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Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott, upon announcing his resignation from the post he was appointed to by Gov. Rick Perry in 2007.

It’s time.

Read the full article

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry, referencing his infamous “oops” moment at a breakfast to celebrate the National Day of Prayer.

Every one of us has ‘oops moments’ every day. America may not forgive you for it. But God will.

Read the full article

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Gov. Rick Perry, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto.

Mitt – he’s going to be our nominee, we are going to be behind him and God help us if he doesn’t win.

Read the full article