Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Here are a few quotes:

The long-simmering tension in the GOP between gays and the religious right has erupted into open conflict at a sensitive time, just weeks before a midterm election that may cost Republicans control of Congress.

"The big-tent strategy could ultimately spell doom for the Republican Party," said Tom McClusky, chief lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. "All a big-tent strategy seems to be doing is attracting a bunch of clowns."

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said in a television interview last week that there should be an investigation into whether gay congressional staffers were responsible for covering up for Foley.

Perkins also has questioned whether gay Republican staffers on Capitol Hill have torpedoed evangelicals' priorities, such as a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. "Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?" he asked in an e-mail to supporters.

Some social conservatives deny they are interested in removing gay staffers from the party.

"We're not calling for what I've heard referred to as a pink purge," McClusky said. "We're asking that members [of Congress] might want to reflect on who's serving them: Are they representing their boss' interest?"

"The Republican Party is taking pro-family conservatives for granted," said Mike Mears, executive director of the political action committee of Concerned Women for America, which promotes biblical values....   [Mears also] said purging gays from the GOP would not necessarily help the evangelical cause. "If you get rid of all the homosexuals in Congress and on the staff, you'd still have Republicans like Chris Shays [the Connecticut congressman] and Susan Collins [the Maine senator] pushing the gay agenda."

This is of a piece with the Family Research Council's recent screechingly anti-gay Liberty Sunday event as detailed by my colleague Chip Berlet at Talk to Action.

Bishop Wellington Boone once again stated that the "Sodomites" were engaged in the "rape of the civil rights movement."

Dr. Roberto Miranda spoke of the "powerful  aggressive instinct," of homosexual organizers, and described the struggle for gay rights, saying: "like a rogue foreign cell inside an organism, it will continue to replicate itself."

The Rev. Donald Wildmon warned evangelicals that the day could come when government agents  could come into their church and arrest them for a hate crime just for speaking their mind as a Christian about homosexuality.

Dr. James Dobson observed that the two political parties have different perspectives about gay marriage, and with the election coming up, folks needed to know that one or two Supreme Court Justices are just hanging on, and that the confirmation of the next justice could be pivotal.

Kris Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute warned that homosexual money is flooding into this state to deny evangelicals their right to vote and their right to free speech. And therefore everyone needed to vote their values on November 7.

Alan Chambers, Exec. Dir. of Exodus International, opened by saying that there but for the grace of God, I might have been outside protesting this event.  "There is an agenda to silence the truth."  Freedom from homosexuality is possible, he claimed, and that is through an intimate relationship "with our savior Jesus Christ."

Bishop Harry Jackson denounced the "attempt to hijack the civil rights movement."

The Christian right is getting more hysterical about homosexuality as they desperately try to salvage the GOP's electoral fortunes this year. Will they kill the party while ostensibly trying to save it?