Power

The Best of The Values Voters Summit

Didn't bother to watch the Values Voters summit this weekend?  Don't worry, here is what you missed.

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan the 2012 Values Voter Summit Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

This weekend was the annual Value Voters Summit, a gathering of the most extreme of the religious right voters and politicians. The conference is meant to engage fundamentalist conservative activists and bring together groups like Americans United for Life, Susan B. Anthony List, and the Family Research Council to energize their base prior to election day.

So what do the current leaders of the movement say when they are talking to their own? Here are some of the best quotes of the summit.

Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney may have inadvertently endorsed more birth control in his own speech to the conservative base.

We need a president who understands that we will not have a strong economy unless we have strong communities and strong families. This isn’t conjecture or some quaint belief. It’s evidenced by a Brookings Institution study that Senator Rick Santorum brought to my attention some time ago. For those who graduate from high school, get a full time job, and wait until they’re 21 before they marry, and then have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2 percent. But if those things are absent, the probability of becoming poor is 76 percent.

Now, that’s not going to sit well with Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp, who isn’t very fond of the racist babykillers of Planned Parenthood:

[L]adies and gentlemen, I am the adoptive father of four children, each of them either — each of them either black, Hispanic, Native American, and I am incensed that this president pays money to an entity that was created for the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine — a racist organization, and it continues specifically to target minorities for abortion destruction. Shame on this president and shame on that party.”

But what? You’ve never really heard of Huelskamp before, and you want a big name celebrity? Well, how about a sneak peak into the life of… Kirk Cameron?

Actor Kirk Cameron also mentioned the linkage between adoption and abortion in his Friday speech. After noting that four of his six children are adopted and his wife was adopted, he said, “If it weren’t for the young lady that chose to give my wife the gift of life, my two natural born children would not be here either. My whole family is here today because of the gift of life and adoption.”

“Adoption is the answer to the abortion crisis. We change only two letters in the word abortion and we get the word adoption and it reflects the heartbeat of God,” he added.

Then there is conservative personality Star Parker who claims that “The HHS mandate has made Sandra Fluke into a national icon for sexual promiscuity.”

Did all of this get a little too “sex” focused for you?  Well, don’t worry. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann says you can concentrate on the creeping threat of impending sharia speech codes instead.

[The Organization for Islamic Cooperation, or  OIC] had a 10-year plan of action to implement their Shariah-based, Islamic-based speech code requirements worldwide. But don’t take my word for it. They published this plan on their website in English so no one would miss their intent. They intend to internationally criminalize all communication or any communication or speech that’s deemed by them to be insulting to Islam, even in countries like the United States. That, my friends, explains the story of this week – Islamic-enforced speech codes. No one, not Muslims, not non-Muslims, not Americans, are allowed to speak anything Islamists see as insulting to their religion. They intend to force us to kiss our freedom of speech and religion goodbye, and that’s why we’re being forewarned today. (Applause.)

Okay, so maybe it’s not quite like being their yourself. After all, I don’t have any “glow in the dark George Washington stickers” for you. But here is a quick video to remind you there is no war on “women” only on “religious liberty.”