Rep. Michele Bachmann. Photo: Patrick Caldwell

Rep. Michele Bachmann is listed on the Values Voter Summit’s 2012 presidential straw poll along with 16 other potential candidates, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty. When asked, Bachmann hasn’t said she’s running for president; she simply says she’s focused on getting reelected, but if God asks her to run, she will.

In a press release on Tuesday, the Family Research Council — a group founded by James Dobson — announced a list of presidential contenders that religious right leaders and summit attendees will see on the ballot next week:

The ballot will feature 17 possible presidential candidates, several of whom will be speaking at the Summit – Michele Bachmann, Jan Brewer, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Jim DeMint, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Bob McDonnell, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum.

The Values Voter Summit is put together by Dobson’s FRC, the American Family Association, the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and the Heritage Foundation.

“The first 2012 presidential primaries may be more than a year away but values voters are already surveying the very wide field of possible candidates,” said Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins in a statement Tuesday. “This early test of the presidential field will provide an early indication of who might be the candidate of real change in 2012.”

Bachmann is listed as a confirmed speaker, but Pawlenty, who spoke at the event in 2009, is not listed as invited or as a speaker.

“We should be strengthening marriage, not undermining it,” Lorence said in a press release Wednesday. “Once again, activists are trying to use the courts to force something on the people that they have repeatedly rejected. Judges and politicians should never impose a system that intentionally deprives children of a mom and dad. Which parent doesn’t matter: a mom or a dad?”

Three couples are suing the state in Benson v. Alverson (pdf) for the right to marry on the grounds that Minnesota laws prohibiting same-sex marriage violate the state Constitution. The couples say the law violates the families’ right to due process, equal protection, freedom of association and freedom of conscience. But ADF, an organization based in Arizona, disputes that legal reasoning.

“No provision of the Minnesota Constitution gives individuals the right to redefine marriage and force that definition on everyone else,” Lorence said. “The same-sex couples who have brought this lawsuit are brazenly asking the courts to misuse the state constitution to throw out Minnesota’s legal definition of marriage as one man and one woman, the only definition of marriage Minnesota law has ever had.”

Court challenges to make same-sex marriage legal have succeeded in Iowa, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California, though in California voters overturned that ruling in 2008. Legislatures in New Hampshire and Vermont have also passed marriage equality measures.

Allen Quist. Photo: YouTube

Former state legislator Allen Quist has announced his campaign to challenge Rep. Tim Walz in Minnesota’s First Congressional district. A once-outspoken figurehead of the conservative Christian movement, he’s now promising a retooled campaign that will focus more on “Tea Party” issues than on social issues targeted by the religious right. But during the last few months, he had been working closely with some of the religious right’s top leaders as he’s done throughout much of his 27-year political career.

In November, Quist told MinnPost that he his campaign will focus less on concerns like opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion this time around. “[T]he issues that are the top priorities have changed,” said Quist. “Politics is always a moving target.”

Religious right connections

If there’s an effort to put some distance between Quist and religious-right issues, his close and continuing ties to religious right causes and leaders may hinder his progress. The Quist campaign hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment regarding those ties.

“I recommend all information that Eagle Forum publishes, which is superb,” Quist said on Phyllis Schlafly’s radio program on Oct. 17 of this year. Schlafly, known as the grandmother of the religious right, wrote the foreword to Quist’s 2002 book, “Fed Ed: The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced.”

In August, Quist appeared on the radio program of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, an anti-gay, anti-pornography group tied to the American Family Association.

As recently as 2003, Quist spoke at a “Ten Commandments Rally” with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, then a state senator, and Minnesota Family Council president Tim Prichard protesting the unlawfulness of posting religious scriptures on government property.

Currently, he’s a speaker for Lutherans for Life, an anti-abortion group, where his expertise is listed as creationism.

And on Friday, Quist was on James Dobson’s Family News on Focus, sharing the air with a representative of the Minnesota Family Council, discussing marriage and the health reform bill being debated in the U.S. Senate.

Quist’s church, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, holds some controversial views, including the belief that women should be subservient to men. The ELS’ website states that, since 1990, its official teaching includes: “The purpose of the wife’s submitting to her husband and of the woman’s being submissive within the Christian congregation is also to carry out a beautiful plan, viz., the establishment of a marriage that not only lasts but is also a wonderful harmony, and the establishment of an orderly and harmonious fellowship within the congregation.”

Quist caught quite a bit of flak for a similar statement made to the Twin Cities Reader in 1994: “The fact then that traditionally you do have situations where the husband has been recognized as the head of the home is probably a natural thing, probably based in genetics, just like everything else is.”

Christian values in government

Quist was elected to the Minnesota House in 1982 just as the religious right was gaining influence in the Republican party. He told the Washington Post in 1985, “I don’t know how to gauge it, but I can say this: At the last [Republican] convention, the Christian right was able to do virtually anything it wanted to.”

He gained some fame in the late 1980s, as a state legislator, for bold conservative stances. In the 1988 legislative session, he racked up a cumulative 30 hours on the House floor speaking about sex. He railed against what he he saw as the evils of homosexuality and sex education in the schools. He tried to get a counseling center for gays and lesbians at Mankato State University shut down. “He alleged that Mankato State University was encouraging the spread of AIDS by sponsoring a counseling center for gays, comparing it to a center for the Ku Klux Klan,” wrote the Star Tribune’s Dane Smith in 1994.

When that failed, Quist entered an adult bookstore in Mankato looking to see if anyone was engaged in sexual activity in order to have it shut down.

Quist says he takes a literal interpretation of the Bible. He told Smith in 1994 that the Earth was created “over a very short period of time” and that God plays “an active role in intervening in human history.”

He has also written a number of books. In “The Abortion Revolution,” Quist said, “Can there be any doubt that all on-demand abortions are first-degree murder? … Because abortion is a genuine evil (except when used to save the mother’s life), it must be legally restrained.”

“If our nation would return to Christian ethical codes, the abortion revolution would come to an end and many of the other evils mentioned would be largely restrained as well” and “no improper mixing of church and state occurs when Christian ethics are followed by the state,” he wrote.

Quist versus Carlson

In the 1990s, Quist challenged and eventually won the Republican Party’s endorsement for governor over GOP incumbent Arnie Carlson. Quist felt Carlson was be too liberal on religious right issues — particularly gay rights and abortion. Dubbed “Quistian” by the media, he generated headlines cross-country as newspapers touted him as a religious right candidate who stood up to moderation within the Republican party.

Quist told the Star Tribune at the time that among the campaign issues that spurred him to challenge his fellow Republican was, “The teaching of family values in schools, including chastity for unmarried people.”

In 1994, during the height of media attention on Quist, he told CNN, “Religious people are looking for a voice, and without me, they have no voice in Minnesota.”

Quist went after his opponent with an attack mailer in the summer of 1994 saying — incorrectly — that Carlson supports “abortion on demand, even through the ninth month of pregnancy” and that he was “supporting homosexual marriages.”

Landing the GOP endorsement over a sitting Republican governor sparked a media frenzy rivaling those by fellow conservative Christian Michele Bachmann today, including stories in the New York Times and CNN. But it wasn’t enough to unseat Carlson, who trounced Quist in the primary.

Running again

Quist’s statement about retooling his campaign to emphasize Tea Party issues may be a calculated maneuver. But earlier in his career he said politics isn’t his strongest suit. In the 1994 Star Tribune profile on him and his family, Dane Smith reported that legislators who worked with Quist in the capitol said he was “something of a loner in the Legislature, preferring to socialize with lobbyists and activists who opposed abortion rather than with his colleagues. He did little to build the personal contacts and rapport that is crucial to enactment of legislation.”

“He agrees that his character was not well-suited to the back-slapping and tending to the narrow needs of a legislative district,” Smith continued.

Quist agreed with that assessment. “I’m much more at home running for statewide office,” he said. “I was never that interested in parochial issues, in bringing home the bacon.”

Last November, the group cut 200 workers when donations failed to come in and after spending $500,000 in efforts to repeal gay marriage in California. In August, Focus on the Family sold its “ex-gay” program to shore up funds.

The latest round of layoffs shutters the organization’s in-house advertising department, which will now be farmed to an outside agency.

“Right now we’re facing a serious budget shortfall that threatens our ability to reach out to parents, families and married couples who count on our help,” said Jim Daly, Focus’ CEO in a letter to 800,000 members. “Income is down nearly $6 million from what we expected and planned for this year. I want to assure you that we’re committed to good stewardship AND living within our means, just as so many families are today.”

In November, Focus laid off nearly 20 percent of its workforce, or 200 employees, due to declining donations from individuals and foundations.

Focus is selling “Love Won Out” to Exodus International, an ex-gay ministry.

His resignation has prompted a flurry of press releases from church-state-separation groups and LGBT advocacy organizations.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

James Dobson’s decision to resign as chairman of Focus on the Family is unlikely to make much of a difference in the day-to-day operations of that organization. … For years, FOF has been the leading voice of religious extremism and intolerance in America. It has led the attack on the legal rights of gay and lesbian Americans, worked assiduously to undermine reproductive rights, assaulted the religious neutrality of public schools and labored to replace science with far-right, fundamentalist dogma.

Despite my differences with him, if Dobson were truly retiring, I would wish him well. But I know that Dobson and so many other leaders of the Religious Right intend to remain active, working to force their exclusionary worldview onto the rest of us.

Focus on the Family is merely rearranging the deck chairs on its big, intolerant ship.

People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert:

James Dobson may be stepping down, but he’s not stepping off the field. Dobson will continue hosting his national radio show and pushing his far right agenda under the cover of folksy advice.

Dobson has built an audience for himself in the millions and a series of organizations that pull in tens of millions of dollars each year. He presents himself as an expert on raising kids, but his real passion is for enacting the policies of the Religious Right.

Dobson and Focus on the Family fervently support failed abstinence-only sex ed programs, destructive bans on same-sex marriage and adoption, and efforts to undermine fundamental constitutional rights like privacy and church-state separation. Regardless of where Dobson appears on the organizational chart, he and Focus on the Family will continue their assault on Americans’ liberties.

Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation:

“For more than 20 years, James Dobson has used his expansive, well-funded media platform to promote defamatory and false information about the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” said Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “As Dobson resigns from his role as chairman, it is important to remember his history of false and defamatory claims about our community. GLAAD urges the media to not allow Dobson to turn today’s news into yet another media platform for him to advance his intolerant divisive attacks on gay and lesbian Americans and their families.

Cizik had been a lobbyist for the NAE for more than 28 years.

“In a December 2, 2008 broadcast interview on National Public Radio, Richard responded to questions and made statements that did not appropriately represent the values and convictions of NAE and our constituents,” said Anderson in a statement. “Although he has subsequently expressed regret, apologized and affirmed our values, there is a loss of trust in his credibility as a spokesperson among leaders and constituents.”

Here’s what he said in the interview with NPR’s Terry Gross:

“Two years ago,” said Gross, “you said you were still opposed to gay marriage. But now as you identify more and more with the younger voters and their priorities, have you changed on gay marriage?”

Cizik responded, “I’m shifting, I have to admit. In other words, I would willingly say I believe in civil unions. I don’t officially support redefining marriage from its traditional definition, I don’t think.”

On Obama, Cizik said, “It would be possible for evangelicals to disagree with Barack Obama on same-sex marriage and abortion and yet vote for him.”

“I happen to think in the primary he was the best choice,” Cizik added.

While Anderson said those statements weren’t appropriate for an NAE representative to make, his decision to encourage Cizik’s resignation was likely influenced by the most influential evangelical of them all. James Dobson of Focus on the Family has had it out for Cizik for years.

Response to Cizik from other corners of the religious right have been fierce.

“Richard Cizik of NAE Says Christians Can Vote for Pro-Child Killing Politicians,” read one press release. Ingrid Schlueter, co-host of the nationally syndicated Crosstalk Radio Talk Show, wrote “Richard Cizik seems more concerned about impressing NPR’s liberal audience with his broad-mindedness than being faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Concerned Women for America’s Janice Shaw Crouse said, “I think, perhaps, my dear friend Rich has been inside the Beltway for too long and has swallowed too much of the NPR and Vogue Magazine Kool-Aid.”

The American Family Association’s Tony Perkins, agreed and asked, “How else can you explain enthusiastic support for what will probably be the nation’s most pro-abortion, anti-family president in our nation’s 232 year history?”

On Thursday, Anderson explained how the remarks about Obama influenced the resignation of Cizik in an interview with Christianity Today. “Generally in America, people don’t say whom they vote for. I think in listening to the interview, it seemed to me that [Fresh Air host] Terry Gross was surprised that he said whom he voted for,” said Anderson. “And he declined to say whom he voted for in the general election. But for NAE and all of us who seek to be a bipartisan voice, it’s generally not in our best interests to declare whom we vote for.”

Ironically, just days after his fateful interview with NPR, Cizik was criticized by progressive Christians for his signature on a full-page ad in the New York Times that accused gays and lesbians of bigotry.

Photo: Richard Cizik via American Public Media’s Speaking of Faith

As voters in conservative-leaning and moderate districts are learning, topics such as war and the economy affect them far more than the private decisions their neighbors make. Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District is such a district, and the race between Republican Erik Paulsen and DFLer Madia is being watched closely. Can a Democratic candidate for Congress win in a moderate suburban district on a platform that includes equality for gays and lesbians?

Democrats are watching the race in the suburbs west on Minneapolis as Iraq veteran Madia has been unequivocal in his support for gay and lesbian equality throughout his campaign. But it’s not a position he came to lightly.

A personal transformation

As student body president at the University of Minnesota in 1997, Madia was a conservative and a Republican. According to Minnesota Daily archives, the student government, with Madia at the helm, significantly reduced the amount of student fees money going to the Queer Student Cultural Center (QSCC), the only gay-straight alliance on campus.

Madia’s turn-about happened while he was a U.S. Marine. As a member of the judge advocate general’s corps in the Marines, Madia was assigned to defend the case of a servicemember who was being discharged because he is gay. Madia was one of the first attorneys in history to successfully defend a fellow Marine against the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“Real patriotism sometimes means taking on the system if you know what you’re doing is the right thing,” he said of taking the case.

In 2005, Madia took on a client who had downloaded gay pornography on a government computer and was caught. The same day, another Marine had gotten caught doing the same thing, only the pornography was heterosexual in nature.

“The gay Marine was given a demotion in rank; loss of pay; restricted in his movements on base; and, most severe of all, an administrative separation from the Marine Corps with an Other-Than-Honorable (OTH) discharge, just one step below a court martial,” Madia said. “The straight Marine received a verbal reprimand by the commanding officer.”

Madia successfully argued to a panel of Marines that the disparity in punishment was unjust. They agreed.

His client was able to continue his career with the Marines, but Madia was concerned about the man’s well-being now that he had been outed as gay. Madia checked up on him. “When PFC Smith got on the phone, he was calm and his voice level toned. He said, ‘Sir, nobody cares about that stuff,’” Madia recalled.

“If the Marines, some of the most conservative members of our society, can look beyond sexual preference, maybe the rest of America can do so too,” says Madia. “If someone is willing to wear the uniform, fight, and possibly die for this country, it shouldn’t matter who they are and who they love.”

While Madia was serving in Iraq, the issue hit closer to home as one of his siblings came out to him as gay. Family members relate that Madia sought out information to understand more about the issue, and came back to Minnesota fully embracing his gay sibling.

Megan Thomas was the administrative assistant at the QSCC in 1997 when Madia ran the conservative student government at the University of Minnesota. She says that the Madia’s growth in understanding the controversial issues surrounding gay and lesbian issues has brought him to the side of equality.

“Since then Madia has grown and has seen the error that was. So, let me state this as clearly as possible,” she wrote recently. “As someone who was part of that whole brouhaha, as a former chair of the Stonewall DFL Caucus and as an out lesbian, I have no doubt whatsoever in Ashwin Madia’s support of and dedication to GLBT issues and people.”

Going on the offensive

In debates, Madia, often joined by Independence Party candidate David Dillon, have been taking Paulsen to task for his push for constitutional amendments banning civil unions and same-sex marriage, which for three years during his tenure as House majority leader were the topic of intense debate and media hype.

“I look at the happiness my parents have through their marriage, and I wouldn’t want to deny that to anybody. But what’s important is that — and this is a difference between the candidates — I wouldn’t take government time away from dealing with Iraq or the economy for these kinds of constitutional amendments,” Madia said at a Sept. 16 debate.

He followed up at a Minnetonka debate on Sept. 22. “There are so many things that we ought to be focusing on, that I don’t think we ought to be using public dollars or our constitution to try to impose our religious beliefs on other people,” Madia said of Paulsen’s amendment push.

“I’ve come to like both of the guys sitting at the table with me,” Dillon added. “The plain fact of the matter is that Erik has come out of the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Paulsen defended himself saying, “That is not what I’ve done in the state Legislature,” noting that he hadn’t made any floor speeches in support of the amendments. He might not have made any floor speeches, but he voted for the measures each time, and as House Majority Leader, he made them a priority amongst his caucus.

Indeed Paulsen has focused on the issue of banning same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment (it has already been made illegal by statute), so much so that religious right figurehead James Dobson of Focus on the Family praised Paulsen for his efforts in a letter to district voters.

Turning the controversy over social issues back onto Republicans is not an approach that DFLers often take when it comes to LGBT equality in the suburbs. But the 3rd Congressional District is more diverse than the suburbs north, east and south of the Twin Cities.

Almost 6 percent of voters identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA, easily within the margin of this very close race. That’s 26,000 voters, and that doesn’t count the friends and family of those voters who are much more likely to support an equality candidate. In addition, the 3rd District lies to the west of the 5th Congressional District, which has one of the highest percentage of gay, lesbian and bisexual voters in the state, ranking ninth out of 435 districts nationwide.

It might be the reason Rep. Jim Ramstad, the moderate Republican retiring from the district this year, supported a key piece of LGBT legislation — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. On that issue, Madia is much more closely aligned with Ramstad than is Paulsen.

A candidate to watch

DFL Rep. Tim Walz demonstrated in 2006 that a Democratic candidate can win in a moderate rural district while supporting LGBT equality. Democrats are hoping that a Madia win on Tuesday will demonstrate that honesty and fairness regarding LGBT equality can be a positive in a moderate suburban district.

“I think what Ashwin has realized is that there are larger issues which unite us than the divisive social tactics some Republicans have used in the past to try to win elections,” said Jon Hoadley, executive director of Stonewall Democrats, an LGBT group affiliated with the Democratic Party. “I think Ashwin Madia represents a new generation in Congress who says, ‘Let’s focus on the fundamentals that we were elected to work on. Let’s give everyone a fair shot, and let’s get back to tackling the issues important to our constituents.’”

Hoadley says that it’s important for candidates to be direct with voters. “Ashwin has also been honest with voters [on LGBT equality]. He’s stated his position and then turned back to focus on the larger issues which impact his district. And we’ve seen voters say ‘OK, I see where you’re coming from.”

Even if voters don’t agree on LGBT issues, Hoadley says there is trust built when candidates are honest with voters. “It’s that honest answer that has allowed him to tackle those things which impact all of us. I think voters have been lied to enough by politicians in the past that they truly appreciate an honest, straightforward answer by a candidate like Ashwin.”

Walz, a National Guard veteran, took the same approach, and while Republicans attacked him for his support, the voters rewarded him with a seat in Congress. “For some reason, it is the same approach that has also been embraced by numerous Iraq War veterans running for office, like former Army Captain Patrick Murphy who was elected to Congress from Pennsylvania in 2006,” noted Hoadley. “Perhaps it’s the belief that their service to the people whom they fought for on the battlefield extends beyond the war zone and onto the home front. Servicemembers are remarkable that way, and Ashwin Madia is a remarkable candidate.”

While Dobson is quick to point out that he never endorses candidates for office, he does his best to sway voters toward candidates that agree with his religious views. Arguably the most influential member of the religious right, Dobson is using his name to promote Republican Erik Paulsen in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District.

Dobson’s Focus on the Family Action is sending letters to residents of the district signed by Dobson (PDF), reminding them of Paulsen’s views on issues like abortion and gay and lesbian equality.

Dobson writes, “For one thing, [Paulsen]’s pro-life and has backed that up with a stellar record in the Minnesota House.”

He continues, “For another, Erik Paulsen believes that the institution of marriage is worth protecting, and he helped lead the effort in the legislature to pass a constitutional amendment to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

And while Dobson praises Paulsen’s involvement with the constitutional amendment push, in debates with DFLer Ashwin Madia and Independence Party candidate Davis Dillon, Paulsen has downplayed his role.

At a Sept. 22 debate in Minnetonka, Madia and Dillon both called Paulsen out for just the type of advocacy of anti-abortion and anti-gay and lesbian positions that Dobson praised.

“There are so many things that we ought to be focusing on, that I don’t think we ought to be using public dollars or our constitution to try to impose our religious beliefs on other people,” said Madia.

“I’ve come to like both of the guys sitting at the table with me,” Dillon said. “The plain fact of the matter is that Erik has come out of the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Paulsen said, “That is not what I’ve done in the state legislature.”

Paulsen should tell Dobson. He concludes the letter, “Contact Erik Paulsen and thank him for his common-sense, pro-family stands — and urge him to stand strong in the face of attacks from the angry Left.”

Obamageddon it? Bumper sticker at CafePress.com

The religious right never goes down without a fight, and given the dwindling chance that their candidates, Sarah Palin and John McCain, can win the White House, they’re taking the fight to extreme new levels. Prominent figures are comparing supporters of Sen. Barack Obama to the Nazis, warning that God will condemn Americans if they don’t vote for McCain, accusing Obama’s family of witchcraft and foretelling a future when Christianity is criminalized by an Obama administration. Are you prepared for Obamageddon?

Perhaps the most controversial essay in the final week of the election season comes from the evangelical news outlet, World Net Daily. Under the screaming headline, “Ex-Hitler youth compares Obama to Nazi rise,” Hilmar von Campe goes on a Godwinesque diatribe:

The Democratic Party, with the leadership of Obama, the Clintons, Reid, Pelosi and comrades, is an illegitimate party that is destroying the Constitution – which leads to spiritual, political and economic disaster. It is illegitimate because of policy principles like abortion and also Darwinism being taught in schools.

Having grown up in the godless totalitarian Nazi society, it is appalling for me to watch that in America, politicians can speak of their “Christian faith” and at the same time make abortion, same-sex marriage and homosexuality their party policy. Democrats are not fit for American constitutional government.

While most examples of Obamageddon where not as extreme, they still prophesy disaster at the hands of God if McCain is not president.

Charisma, a magazine targeted at Pentecostals, recently endorsed McCain saying, “[I]f Sen. Barack Obama is elected, life as we know it in many ways will end… [W]e must pray and work — before it’s too late — to see that Obama is not elected.”

Religious right and political gadlfy Gary Bauer subtly warned that an Obama presidency meant that “God could take his hand of protection off of America.” Terrorist attacks and economic ruin would be God’s punishment on the nation.

James Dobson of Focus on the Family, never one to be outdone for over-the-top theocratic zeal, put out a 16-page “fictional” guide to what will happen to America by 2012 if Obama is elected (PDF). Here are a few excerpts:

The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.

Tens of thousands of Christian teachers either quit or were fired, and there are hardly any evangelical teachers in public schools any more.

The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as homosexual conduct or the claim that people will go to hell if they do not believe in Jesus Christ.

[T]elevision programs at all hours of the day now contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.

Since 2009 terrorist bombs have exploded in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds, and the entire country is now fearful, for no place seems safe. President Obama in each case has vowed “to pursue and arrest and prosecute those responsible,” but no arrests have yet been made.

When did this all start? Christians share a lot of the blame. In 2008 many evangelicals thought that Senator Obama was an opportunity for a “change,” and they voted for him. They simply did not realize Obama’s far-left agenda would take away many of our freedoms as a nation, perhaps permanently. Christians did not realize that by electing Barack Obama, the most liberal member ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, they would allow the law, in the hands of a liberal Congress and Supreme Court, to become a great instrument of oppression.

ValuesVotersUsa.com, a consortium of religious right entities, released this video to persuade Christian voters that their own economic self-interest must take a backseat to abortion and homosexuality at the polls this year.

“The purpose of the video is to demonstrate there are more concerning issues at stake during this election other than gas prices and the economy,” read the introduction to pastors who might wish to show this video to their congregations:

Perhaps one of the most curious accusation in the final days of the election comes from Jim Bramlett, who has worked for religious right powerhouses including Pat Robertson and the Campus Crusade for Christ. He claims to have found “evidence” that Obama’s relatives put a curse on McCain and Palin, and that’s why the Republicans are down in the polls:

Dear friends:

THIS IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS.

Minutes ago I spoke with friend Dr. Norman G. Marvin, M.D. and he is so concerned at what he has learned about Barack Obama’s family in Kenya that he is calling a special prayer meeting in his home to pray against the witchcraft curses attempted by them against John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Dr. Marvin sent me the below e-mail from Flo Ellers. Flo is credentialed with the International Fellowship of Ministries which is based in Washington State. She is also a member of EndTime Handmaidens and Servants of Jasper, Arkansas.

IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, PLEASE PRAY TODAY AND CONTINUALLY THAT ALL SUCH CURSES BE BROKEN AND SATAN’S PLAN FOR AMERICA BE DEFEATED, IN JESUS’ NAME. PRAY AND COVER MCCAIN AND PALIN WITH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, IT IS TIME YOU LEARN!!!

Jim

And do-it-yourself religious righties are creating their own bizarre campaigns. South Carolina journalist Linda Hansen documents a series of e-mails making the rounds in the South.

“In a world that’s rushing toward the end times prophecy, God will bless the true Christian leader, if we choose wisely. The Prince of Darkness’ blood runs through the veins of the evildoer…Vote for McCain…Always remember one thing — GOD WILL HAVE THE LAST WORD.”

“God is not schizophrenic, he would not tell one person to vote for Obama and another to vote for McCain…For all my friends who are voting for Obama, can you really look God in the face and say; Father, based on your works I am voting for Obama even though…abortion…liberal judges making laws that are against you…homosexual rights, even though you destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for this.”

The religious right is already gearing up for the massive culture war sure to come with an Obama presidency. Bill Donahue of the Catholic League told Reuters on Sunday, “I’ve been on the phone the last couple of days with some of my friends … and we’re getting ready for the biggest culture war battles ever.”

The Southern Baptist Convention agreed. “An Obama victory will galvanize social conservatives for 2010 and 2012 and they will look for a standard bearer they can rally around,” said Richard Land, who runs the public policy wing of the SBC.

That standard bearer will be Sarah Palin, says Lund. And for good reason. Palin told James Dobson last week that she is sure that God will do the right thing and put her and McCain in the White House. “And it also strengthens my faith because I know at the end of the day putting this in God’s hands, the right thing for America will be done, at the end of the day on Nov. 4,” she said.