Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who placed fourth in the Ames Straw Poll with less than 10 percent of the vote, spent some time yesterday chatting with two hate group leaders, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association. Parroting Newt Gingrich’s rhetoric from last week, Santorum attempted to draw causation between the nation’s economic woes and “huge moral failings” like the “redefinition of marriage” and “not supporting strong nuclear families”:

SANTORUM: Letting the family break down and in fact encouraging it and inciting more breakdown through this whole redefinition of marriage debate, and not supporting strong nuclear families and not supporting and standing up for the dignity of human life. Those lead to a society that’s broken.

If you think that we can be a society that kills our own, and that disregards the family and the important role it plays, and doesn’t teach moral values and the important role of faith in the public square, and then expect people to be good, decent and moral when they behave economically, if you look at the root cause of the economic problems that we’re dealing with on Wall Street and Main Street I might add, from 2008, they were huge moral failings. And you can’t say that we’re gonna take morality out of the public square, morality out of our schools, God out of our schools, and then expect people to behave decently in a country that requires, capitalism requires some strong modicum of moral consciousness if it’s gonna be successful.

Listen to it:

Neither Santorum nor Gingrich provided any substantiation for their claims that marriage equality somehow compromises “free enterprise,” as Gingrich described it. Given that  both were speaking to social conservative audiences, the rhetoric seems a sad attempt to convince potential voters that continuing to discriminate against same-sex couples will somehow save the economy.

(HT: People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch.)

MassResistance's Brian Camenker

Perhaps desperate that societal support for marriage equality and other LGBT issues continues to grow, anti-gay hate groups seem to be showing their true colors more and more, abandoning tame “protect our family values” talking points for flagrantly pro-bullying rants. MassResistance, in particular, is increasing its visibility, attacking Mitt Romney by painting him as pro-gay, partnering with the Family Research Council to smear GLSEN, and today inspiring fear in the American Family Association’s “news” outlet that the anti-bullying “It Gets Better” project might soon be used in schools. Oh dear!

The OneNewsNow “article” is merely a pedestal for MassResistance’s Brian Camenker to remind people of the group’s campaign against the “It Gets Better” project:

CAMENKER: The homosexual movement discovered in the early 1990s that they could use this tactic of claiming safety or anti-bullying or anti-suicide to do anything. They’ll scream and holler that if you don’t let them into the schools to give their program, then you favor kids killing themselves.

In addition to an archive of “Dan Savage’s sick and obscene attacks, writings, and statements,” MassResistance maintains a page designed to rebut the “It Gets Better” campaign as well as The Trevor Project, which provides suicide prevention resources for young people. Here are the four “big lies” MassResistance worries that these LGBT-affirming resources provide:

“LIE” #1: “You were born that way and can’t change.”
“LIE” #2: “It gets better.”
“LIE” #3: Suicide is caused by hate and intolerance.
“LIE” #4:  Promoting homosexuality as being normal and natural is good for troubled kids.

MassResistance would rather young people get the following messages:

1: Homosexuality is an “addiction,” and “the worldwide ex-gay movement has shown that people can heal and change if they desire.”

2: “It DOESN’T get better,” because “male homosexual behavior takes 20 years off one’s life” and “loneliness and depression are par for the course.”

3: The real reason gay (“gay”) teens contemplate suicide is “because they’re horrified at the disgusting things they’re doing to themselves.”

4: Promoting homosexuality is “psychological trauma” that harms kids “emotionally, psychologically, and certainly medically.”

In a way, it’s almost refreshing that MassResistance’s rebuke of the “It Gets Better” campaign is so candid and unvarnished. Here is a hate group being heralded by other hate groups for unabashedly trying to demonize LGBT youth, scare them into harmful ex-gay therapy, and condemn them to a life of self-hatred. Encouraging stigma is nothing short of a pro-bullying campaign. The media would portray MassResistance as a “fringe” group, but the organizations that command mainstream recognition like FRC and AFA stand hand-in-hand with Camenker and his vitriol. The fact that they seem to have no inhibitions about highlighting MassResistance speaks to how audacious their rhetoric is becoming.

Until the media stops treating hate groups as simply “the other side of the story” and repudiates their tactics, these dangerous messages will continue to permeate our culture. Fortunately, the “It Gets Better” campaign keeps growing, saving the lives of young people one video at a time, and there’s nothing Camenker can do to stop it.

Rep. William Owens (D-NY) has signed on as the newest sponsor to legislation that would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, increasing the total number of supporters in the House to 120. A companion bill in the Senate has attracted 28 co-sponsors. “I indicated I would not become a co-sponsor until New York took action [and legalized same-sex marriage],” Owens said Tuesday. “Once they did that, I felt I had an obligation to the citizens in the state to make sure they weren’t adversely impeded by federal law.”

Owens is still somewhat uncomfortable with extending marriage to gays and lesbians and is unsure if he would have voted for the New York law. But since it passed, the newly-minted Congressman says that all marriages should be treated equally by the federal government:

In his short career in the House, Mr. Owens has walked a fine line on gay marriage. He calls the right for gays to wed a “civil rights issue,” and says: “I think that people should have the freedom to make those kinds of decisions.”

But in his first campaign, in 2009, he expressed reservations about using the word “marriage.” He has those same doubts today, which is why, when asked, he says only that he’d “lean toward” voting in favor of legalizing gay marriage were he a state legislator in New York.

“To be honest with you, I still have some of those concerns,” he said. “That’s why I said I would have likely voted for it.”

Married gay and lesbian New Yorkers still don’t have access to the over 1,000 federal benefits and protections to which opposite-sex couples are entitled and remain strangers in the eyes of the federal government. For instance, because DOMA prohibits the federal government from recognizing gay couples, they’re required to include the costs of dependent health insurance and pay federal taxes on the cost of the coverage. Employers are also assessed FICA taxes on the benefit.

Tax filing can become even more complicated. Newlyweds in New York will be able to file their taxes in New York State as jointly or married, but will “have to file their official tax return as ‘unmarried’ with the Federal government and then file an unofficial, dummy Federal tax return as married. Only in this way can same-sex newlyweds in New York State supersede the Federal Government’s alternative tax code.”