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VIDEO: Super PAC supporting Bachmann goes after Perry spending record
Keep Conservatives United, a Super PAC supporting GOP presidential contender Michele Bachmann, released an ad this week attacking one of Bachmann’s main competitors for the Republican nomination, Rick Perry. The ad claims Perry engaged in record borrowing as governor of Texas.
Video: Glitter-throwing ‘barbarian’ flash mob protests outside of Bachmann clinic
A flash mob at Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling clinic run by Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus, protested the clinic’s acceptance of state and federal money Thursday and poked fun at allegations that the clinic performs therapy to “cure” homosexuality. The mob, dressed as barbarians — a nod to one of Marcus’ comments about LGBT people — danced a choreographed routine to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”
Family Research Council decries government spending while affiliates take in millions
The Family Research Council, a religious-right outfit some watchdog organizations have called an anti-gay hate group, has recently become quite vocal in its opposition to government spending and has called for drastic cuts to social programs. But a survey by The American Independent shows that FRC’s state-based affiliates, called family policy councils, have raked in nearly $6 million in state and federal funds over the last five years to work on their own social programming goals.
Bachmann dodges questions on past anti-gay statements
Rep. Michele Bachmann was grilled by the hosts of several Sunday morning talk shows about her views on gay and lesbian Americans. When pressed about her past statements about LGBT issues, she repeated “I am running for the presidency of the United States,” several times in lieu of answering the question. “I’m not anyone’s judge.”
VIDEO: Teen confronts Pawlenty on marriage equality, says discrimination against gays ‘hurts’
At a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, a member of the audience grilled Tim Pawlenty on his views about rights for LGBT people. Gabe Aderhold, a senior at Edina High School, asked Pawlenty why he has “not had the courage to stand for me and my friends. You are discriminating against me and it hurts.” Pawlenty said he will never be at the point “where I’ll say that every domestic relationship is the same as traditional marriage.”
VIDEO: GOP presidential candidates fundraise for anti-gay groups
A number of Republican presidential candidates are raising money for family policy councils, state-based religious-right groups affiliated with the Family Research Council, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center says is an anti-gay hate group.
VIDEO: Franken grills Focus on the Family head during DOMA repeal hearing
At a hearing on the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, Sen. Al Franken took issue with the testimony of Tom Minnery, the head of Focus on the Family’s political arm, CitizenLink. After Minnery cited a government study he said showed that the children of married gay and lesbian couples fared worse than married opposite-sex couples, Franken flatly stated that Minnery was wrong and called into question any further testimony from Minnery.
GOP gay group wants meeting with Bachmann
A group of gay conservatives have expressed concern over Michele Bachmann’s positions on gay rights. GOProud, a group of LGBT activists more conservative than the Log Cabin Republicans, hopes to defeat President Barack Obama in 2012 and is seeking audiences with all GOP candidates. But it’s Bachmann’s “big government” position on a federal constitutional amendment banning marriage for same-sex couples that has its members concerned
Video shows Bachmann’s clinic engaging in ‘ex-gay’ therapy
On Monday, ABC News posted undercover video of Michele Bachmann’s Christian counseling clinic which shows one of her employees performing “reparative therapy,” a controversial therapy that attempts to turn gays and lesbians into heterosexuals. The video was captured by Truth Wins Out, a LGBT group that opposes such therapy.
Bachmann, religious right group back off claim black children better off during slavery
The Family Leader, an Iowa religious right group that has been active in GOP caucuses of that state, backtracked on a pledge the group released last week that asked candidates to vow to oppose pornography and same-sex marriage. The pledge contained a controversial statement about slavery, and over the weekend, the Family Leader removed that reference. Rep. Michele Bachmann — the first signer of the pledge — said that she wasn’t signing off on the preamble that contained the slavery reference, only the vows themselves.
