Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Trump's religious liberty commission pick ran this comically bad anti-gay ad in 2012



Last week, it was announced that two prominent anti-LGBTQ activists, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer, were picked to be members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Naturally the news caused a good deal of anger because of both men's long history of denigrating the LGBTQ community via lies and junk science.

 However much of the attention was given to Perkins (who was chosen by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), while Bauer (picked by Trump) pretty much flew under the radar. I posted something about Bauer's attempt to undermine fighting the AIDS crisis when he worked in the Reagan Administration, but the newest item is a bit more current and captures Bauer's repulsive essence.

 In 2012, Bauer's PAC, Campaign for American Values, launched an ad campaign in North Carolina. Its goal was to attack Obama for his support of marriage equality and thereby cause more voters in that state to vote for Obama's challenger, Mitt Romney, in the upcoming presidential election.

As you can watch, the ad was so awful, it was either mistaken for a parody or simply laughed at.  Granted, Romney did manage to win North Carolina via a very slim margin, but it's relatively easy to say that the ad played no part in the outcome. And of course, Obama easily won re-election 

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