Every year since 2006, the conservative Christian Family Research Council has hosted the Values Voter Summit, an annual political conference geared towards right wing voters. The platform advocates a strongly anti-abortion stance, emphasizes traditional marriage, and opposes LGBT rights. The conference, which takes place this year between September 14-16, launched on Friday with a bevy of deeply conservative speeches sure to inflame even the most moderately liberal sensibilities. Here are five of the most outrageous claims presented at the Values Voter Summit so far:
Teachers Striking In Chicago = Thugs In The Middle East
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) made the unfortunate comparison between teachers’ strike in Chicago, and the violent rioting in the Middle East over the inflammatory and amateurish anti-Islamic YouTube video. “You know, we had a lot of bad news this week,” DeMint said. “On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets. And then I realized that was a story about the Chicago teachers strike. But we’ve got to think of good things.”
Marriage Prevents Poverty (If It’s Between A Man And A Woman)
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) argued at the Values Voter Summit that “marriage has lifted more people out of poverty than any government program ever.” Ignoring the questionable logic of his own argument, Cantor continues to oppose same-sex marriage, having voted in 2004 for a constitutional amendment that would ban it. As Think Progressnotes, “New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in July 2012 that same-sex marriage generated $259 million for the NYC economy in just one year.”
Planned Parenthood Created To Kill Unborn Minorities
Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) made the absurd claim that Planned Parenthood “was created with the sole purpose of killing” the children of minorities. In the same speech, he placed abortion on the same moral plane as slavery – “Besides slavery, abortion is the darkest stain on our nation’s character”.
Voter Fraud Will Be a Boon To Obama
Gary Bauer, conservative pundit and former president of the Family Research Council, told Talking Points Memo that “voter fraud is rampant in urban areas”, which would help Obama win the election.
President Obama Is A Terrorist Sympathizer
Former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann claimed that the rioting and attacks on US embassies in the Middle East “are the direct consequences of this administration’s policy of apology and appeasement across the globe and the supposed success of the president’s foreign policy genius — hailed by the media, even last week — is now exposed for what it is.” As Raw Storyreports, “Bachmann went on to explain President Barack Obama’s ‘relationship’ with the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, which she claimed had a 10-year plan ‘to implement its Sharia-based speech code requirements worldwide.'”
