Rick Santorum talks a good game when it comes to condemning same-sex marriage for destroying society and the family unit, but when the Des Moines Register asked him what he would do to impose his views of heterosexual marriage on the nation if elected President, the former Pennsylvania senator was left practically speechless. He promised to advocate for a federal constitutional amendment outlawing such unions and “go out and speak and talk” about the issue.

During these trips, Santorum said he’d argue that providing the benefits of opposite-sex marriage to same-sex relationships would devalue the entire institution. Pointing to his relationship with is aunt — whom he assured the board he loves very much — Santorum claimed that that relationship wasn’t as valuable as the one he shares with his wife and if the government said it were, his marriage would lose its value. The national marriage rate would plummet:

SANTORUM: What happens with marriage is — you’ve seen it in Europe and places where you’ve seen this over a long period of time. Fewer people get married. They get married later. They have children out of wedlock before they get married and marriage has become a more casual relationship. Why? Because these other relationships because they are not built on the natural units of the procreative elements of what marriage is about and the stability of having children, they’re not as stable over time. In fact, they don’t even claim to be as stable over time.

Watch it:

Had the editorial board pressed Santorum to substantiate his claims about same-sex relationships devaluing opposite-sex marriages, he would have faced as much difficulty coming up with real word examples as he did explaining how he would act as president.

After all, conservatives made this very same argument after Massachusetts began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, warning against a rapid deterioration of heterosexual partnerships and broken families. Their European statistics were wrong then — after Denmark’s passed its registered-partner law in 1989, marriage rates actually climbed, as did the rates in other Scandinavian countries — and their doomsday projections never materialized in the states that do recognize same-sex unions today.

In fact, Massachusetts recorded the “the lowest divorce rates in the entire country” and Iowa has posted the lowest number of divorces since 1970. As FiveThirtyEight.com pointed out last year, “states which have tended to take more liberal policies toward gay marriage have tended also to have larger declines in their divorce rates,” while the seven states with the highest rates “all had constitutional prohibitions on same-sex marriage in place throughout 2008.” And although the causation may still be unclear, it’s certainly not the case that same sex marriage leads to the kind of disintegration of the institution that Santorum is describing.

Presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus attended the church service of Iowa Pastor Jeff Mullen yesterday, listening quietly as he showed a testimonial video of an alleged ex-gay convert and decried homosexuality as both “immoral and unnatural.”

It might have appeared like just another stop on the campaign trail, but Bachmann has extensive ties to Mullen. The Point of Grace Church pastor joined 99 other religious leaders in formally endorsing Bachmann for president last week, and the two have both been vocal advocates of the ousting of three Iowa Supreme Court justices last year over the court’s 2009 decision striking down the state’s same-sex marriage law. Calling the judges “black-robed masters,” Bachmann praised Iowa voters for turning them out of office.

Mullen took a much more active role in the anti-retention campaign, setting up a website dedicated almost exclusively to getting rid of the “seven rogue justices” and asked “pastors to register voters on the Sundays.” Mississippi’s American Family Association, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an anti-gay hate group, supported his efforts. Mullen explained his campaign as a legal issue. Watch it:

–Sarah Bufkin

Vow 13 of the FAMiLY LEADER’s anti-gay marriage fidelity pledge asks candidates to commit to “downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA’s $14.3 trillion public debt.” The request is ironic given the GOP’s role in contributing to the nation’s deficit throughout the Bush administration and the LEADER’s own reliance on more than $3 million in government funds. As the Associated Press reported in May, the group, which is headed by three-time failed gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats, “received more than half of its funding from federal grants over a five-year period when it operated under a different structure as The Iowa Family Policy Center” and was “among those that benefited from former President George Bush’s faith-based initiative.”

A closer look at Vander Plaats’ chief financial backers — the Wells Family who owns and operates Wells Dairy and sells its products under Blue Bunny Ice Cream label — reveals that they too have profited from some of the same government funding they paid Vander Plaats and the LEADER $456,000 to oppose.

In 2004, Wells Dairy received a total of $15,718,550 in government loans, grants, infrastructure bonds and tax credits, and promised to construct a new corporate headquarters in Iowa, preserve existing jobs, and add another 129 jobs. Wells accepted the subsidies, built the headquarters, but did not expand employment. As a result, the company returned $1,251,414 of the $15,718,550 to Iowa taxpayers as part of an agreement. Below is a breakdown of the government assistance the company received:

$2,928,000: Iowa Values Fund forgivable loan
$200,000: Physical Infrastructure Assistance forgivable loan
$200,000: ARC forgivable loan
$4,790,550: New Jobs and Income Program tax credit assistance
$250,000: from Le Mars
$250,000: from Plymouth County
$100,000: from Le Mars Business Initiative Corp.
_________________
$8,718,550.00

(+)

$7,000,000: Bonds issued by Plymouth County or Le Mars to finance construction of the facility/roads
_________________
$15,718,550.00

Ironically, candidates from both parties have criticized the Iowa Values Fund, characterizing the program as “corporate welfare.” Last year, Vander Plaats himself — then a gubernatorial candidate — said the fund was a “quick fix” but “not leadership.”

During a recent appearance at the Press Club in Washington, DC, Vander Plaats blamed the nation’s economic troubles on same-sex marriage, saying, “When you leave the fundamental core values issues, it will only translate into poor economic policy. And that’s what we’re seeing today.”

ThinkProgress filed this report from the ALEC conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.

This past weekend, hundreds of conservative lawmakers and lobbyists gathered in New Orleans for the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual meeting. The four-day conference was sponsored by a who’s-who of corporations, from BP to Walmart to Altria, that pay upwards of $100,000 for the opportunity to write legislation friendly to their interests and pass it along to state lawmakers. The corporate front group is so concerned with secrecy that it instructed hotel security guards to physically attack two ThinkProgress journalists covering the event.

However, it wasn’t just conservative legislation that was being passed around during ALEC’s meeting. Among the materials handed out to every attendee were anti-LGBT pamphlets from the Family Research Council, including the “Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality” and the “Top Ten Harms Of Same-Sex ‘Marriage’”.

The supposed myths included “people are born gay,” “sexual orientation can never change,” “homosexual conduct is not harmful to one’s physical health,” and “homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.” In its second pamphlet, the FRC told conference-goers that expanding marriage to include same-sex couples will somehow mean “fewer people would marry,” “fewer people would remain monogamous,” and polygamy will soon result.

After dodging questions about her husband’s reported practice of ex-gay therapy on the presidential campaign trail, Rep. Michele Bachmann attended a church service yesterday in which the pastor characterized homosexuality as “immoral” and “unnatural.” He then showed a testimonial video of an ex-gay convert:

“God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,” [Pastor Jeff] Mullen said, reading from the book of Romans.

Mullen’s sermon concluded with video testimonial from a man named Adam Hood, who claims to have been gay before experiencing a conversation with God. “I am so happy God has given me natural affection for a woman,” Hood said in the video, adding that his wife is nine months pregnant.

“We need to have compassion for people that are bound by that sin,” Hood added. “And it is a sin. Call a spade a spade.”

Both Bachmann and her husband stayed throughout Point of Grace Church’s entire service and then posed for photos with Pastor Mullen in front of the altar.

Bachmann — who in 2004 said that an ex-gay group will “present the truth about homosexuality” — has repeatedly avoided answering questions about ex-gay therapy since an undercover investigation captured a counselor suggesting that homosexuality could be overcome through prayer and therapy. Bachmann’s campaign even black-listed a local Iowa station for asking about the revelation.

Bachmann’s husband Marcus, meanwhile, has admitted that his clinic would perform reparative therapy upon request.

–Sarah Bufkin

During a stop in Iowa on Saturday, Rick Santorum tried to compare marriage equality to the “moral wrong” of slavery. He bungled his American history in the process, confusing abolitionist Frederick Douglass with Sen. Stephen Douglas (D-IL), who supported states’ rights to maintain slavery:

SANTORUM: There are people in this race who say, if the state of New York or the state of New Hampshire want to pass gay marriage, then that’s fine with them. It’s not fine with me. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas had a little debate about whether states have the right to do wrong. If the institution that these states are propagating is wrong and harmful to the family, the states may have the legal right to do it, but as far as I’m concerned, they don’t have the moral right to do it, and we should stand up and fight against what they’re doing.

The former senator’s comments echo similar remarks he made last week that religious people should have the right to discriminate against gay people.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), another presidential hopeful, has also made comparisons between homosexuality and slavery (among other things she has compared to slavery).

(HT: On Top Magazine.)

Another day and two more gay-related stories about Michele and Marcus Bachmann who, after years of condemning gay people and the homosexual “lifestyle,” are now tight-lipped about their views of the LGBT community. First, this tidbit from the Concord Monitor, in which Michele “cut off an interview last week as she was being asked a question about gay marriage,” saying, “I’m not involved in light, frivolous matters,” she said. “I’m not involved in fringe or side issues. I’m involved in serious issues.” This, from a woman who has called gay marriage “probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, 30 years” and rose to prominence in the Minnesota Senate by sponsoring a failed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

But as hard as they try to avoid it, the Bachmanns still can’t help but talk about the gays. As the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza reports, Marcus Bachmann — who has called gay people “barbarians” who need to be “disciplined” — is particularly concerned about being perceived as such:

Marcus Bachmann plopped down on the seat next to me, in the back of the plane. He pointed at my laptop and asked if he could take a look. “All I want to know is what they’re saying about me,” he said. “Newsweek came up with the word ‘silver fox.’ Tell me what ‘silver fox’ means.”

“Do you want me to tell you honestly?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t tell me it’s something gay!” he said. “Because I’ve been called that before.” [...]

I explained that “silver fox” probably had more to do with the color of his hair.

“O.K., I can handle that,” he said. Tera, the assistant, assured him that it was a positive term.

“It’s better than Porky Pig,” Marcus said, with a laugh. [...]

Suddenly, his face appeared on Fox. “Look, you’re on TV,” I said.

“It’s the Silver Fox!” he exclaimed as we descended into Manchester.