An undercover investigation from a staff member of the organization Truth Wins Out has revealed that the clinic run by Dr. Marcus Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann, is providing discredited “ex-gay” reparative therapy.  Dr. Marcus Bachmann has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks, after a ThinkProgress report documenting his past comments referring to gays as ”barbarians” and an NBC News report that revealed Bachmann and Associates had taken $137,000 in federal Medicaid funds over the past five years despite Michele Bachmann’s strident anti-government stance.  John Becker of Truth Wins Out, who went undercover at Bachmann & Associates, writes:

Based on my experiences at Bachmann & Associates, there can no longer be any doubt that Marcus Bachmann’s state- and federally-funded clinic endorses and practices reparative therapy aimed at changing a gay person’s sexual orientation, despite the fact that such “therapy” is widely discredited by the scientific and medical communities. It’s time for Michele and Marcus Bachmann to stop denying, dodging, and stonewalling. They owe it to all Americans to provide a full and honest explanation for their embrace of these dangerous and fraudulent practices.

 The scrutiny of the Bachmanns’ extreme anti-gay views has only increased in the past 24 hours, following Bachmann’s decision to sign an extreme anti-gay, anti-Muslim pledge put forward a key Iowa group, the Iowa FAMiLY Leader.

Echoing concerns that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will somehow infringe on the religious liberty of military chaplains, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriates bill defunding training for chaplains about the adjustment to gay and lesbian servicemembers serving openly. The amendment passed 236-184, with nine Republicans voting against it and nine Democrats voting for it.

During the debate last night, Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) called out Huelskamp for not even having read the training manual before proposing the amendment and second-guessing the judgment of the military:

POLIS: Has the gentleman from Kansas read the training manual that he’s seeking to defund?

HUELSKAMP: Madam Chair, that is an excellent question. We tried to obtain a copy of that from the Department of Defense today and they refused to provide a copy. What I do have is an online three-page summary of the manual.

POLIS: So, reclaiming my time, I think that the straight answer is no. In fact, our ranking member and others have been unable to get that from the Navy Liaison’s Office.

Watch it:

Army Chaplain Lt. Col. Carleton Birch said back in February that chaplains already have experience counseling soldiers who are gay and no changes are necessary to protect their rights. Capt. John F. Gundlach, a retired Navy chaplain, has called claims to the contrary a pursuit of bigotry, not liberty. Gundlach is part of a group called the Forum on the Military Chaplaincy, a coalition of chaplains who have filed a brief supporting the repeal of DADT for the way it actually ends imposed dogma that is offensive to many religious groups. Most importantly, the chaplain trainings that have already taken place have gone smoothly.

QSaltLake reports that Jon Huntsman is using his support for civil unions to reach out to LGBT organizations and voters in his home state of Utah:

While there are no official endorsements from any caucuses or groups within the Republican Party yet, the Utah Log Cabin Republicans worked with Huntsman when he was governor, and are ready and willing to work continue that relationship, Melvin Nimer, the president of the ULCR, said.

“Huntsman was the first governor of Utah to open up the governor’s mansion to the LGBT community,” Nimer said. “They [the Huntsman campaign team] have reached out to get some help from us and some people within the group are working with him.”

This isn’t the first time Huntsman has tried to capitalize on his “evolving” position on LGBT issues. Last month, a campaign consultant from the California chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans circulated a fundraising letter co-written by a Huntsman campaign employee falsely claiming that Huntmsan “signed into law Utah’s first Civil Unions legislation.” The former Utah governor did enact legislation expanding domestic partner benefits for Utah’s unmarried couples in 2008, but legislation legalizing civil unions never passed, making it impossible for Huntsman to sign it into law. And while he supported expanding hospital visitation rights and other “contractual” rights for gay couples, most of those initiatives died in the state Legislature.

Still, Huntsman is alone among the candidates for the Republican party’s 2012 presidential nomination to endorse civil union. He first embraced the policy in February 2009, despite supporting a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage in 2004.

For all intents and purposes, the New York marriage equality debate is over, but Archbishop Timothy Dolan is still talking about it. In addition to reiterating all his anti-gay talking points and his “apology” for offending the gay community, Dolan reinforces the fear that polygamy is an inevitable outcome:

And now we ring the steeple bell again at this latest dilution of the authentic understanding of marriage, worried that the next step will be another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity.  If you think I’m exaggerating, within days of the passage of this bill, one major newspaper ran a flattering profile of a proponent of what was called “nonmonogamy.” Apparently, “nonmonogamy” is the idea that society is unrealistic to think that one man and one woman should remain faithful in marriage, and that openness to some infidelity should be the norm!

Dolan is referring to a New York Times profile of sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, in which Savage said, “Men were never expected to be monogamous.” He suggested that the feminist revolution “mistakenly” confined men to monogamy rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and press-release valve” (such as “concubines, mistresses, and access to prostitutes”). It’s an argument for what Savage calls “monogamish,” acknowledging that monogamy is important and works for many people, but that some couples actually have healthier relationships if they do not bind their pleasures to sexual exclusivity.

The important distinction between Dolan’s claim and Savage’s argument is that Savage is not advocating for either “multiple partners” or “infidelity.” Infidelity implies unfaithfulness, whereas Savage advocates for relationships to consider being open, but still built upon trust and commitment. Dolan’s attempt to add to the “slippery slope” fear-baiting is weak, but demonstrates that the leadership in the Catholic Church has no intention of ending its condemnation of same-sex couples, even after they’ve lost the fight against marriage equality.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning that the 2012 election will focus on “job creation” and the “economy” just one day after she became the first presidential candidate to sign a pledge vowing that homosexuality is a choice and pornography should be banned. In what may prove to be one of the most blatant examples of delivering different messages in front of different audiences, Bachmann stressed her economic bonafides and suggested that social issues would take a back seat in her bid to unseat President Obama:

BACHMANN: People just want the economy to turn around. I’m a former federal tax lawyer. I sit on financial services committee and primarily my work in Washington, DC has been about job growth, job creation, turning the economy around and fighting against Dodd/Frank. [...]

HOST: But it’s not going to be a gay marriage election.

BACHMANN: This election is about jobs in the economy.

Watch it:

Since announcing her candidacy, Bachmann has tried to eschew social issues in hopes of attracting moderate voters, but there is no escaping her past. Bachmann rose to prominence as a state senator from Minnesota by sponsoring a failed constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage, and as a congresswoman, she has championed a series of abortion measures and other social conservative priorities. As she reminded Republicans in February at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference, “As important as these distressing economic concerns are, we would be wise to recall that there are other threats that loom as well.” She urged the party “not forget that for our conservative coalition to be victorious in 2012, it will take every one of us and then some, pulling together to bring together the three legs of the conservative stool.”