So, Trump and Pence are no longer being coy about wanting to take women’s rights back to the 1950s, shove gays back into the closet and tell the community of scientists to shut up.
Vice President Mike Pence spent Friday in Colorado Springs ingratiating himself to one of the nation’s most onerous political activist groups: Focus on the Family.
“The time is now,” Pence said during his political-religious rant, drawing supporters to ovations when he said that Obamacare is “dead.”
“This is when we are going to defund Planned Parenthood once and for all,” Pence said.
The crowd went wild.
Do not be fooled by its disarming name. Focus on the Family has long been called out by hate-group monitoring organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center for being a swamp of bigotry and civil-rights abusers.
Pence spent Friday there for the organization’s 40th anniversary, lauding the group, pledging his allegiance and that of the president.
“I promise you,” Pence told the crowd and Focus on the Family leaders, “you have an unwavering ally in President Donald Trump.”
Here’s what they are ensuring their unwavering support for: Abusing women, children, homosexuals, science, education and civil rights, all in the name of religion and family.
These are not conservatives. This is an extreme-right religious cult that works relentlessly to abuse homosexual children by encouraging parents to subject their gay children to “conversion therapy.” They claim it can “cure” children and adults of their homosexuality. Banned in a growing number of states, Focus on the Family works endlessly to keep this sadistic and dangerous abuse alive here in Colorado. They’re part of an effort to bully weak state legislators. Conversion therapy enjoys the whole-hearted support of others. This abuse of homosexuals persists despite unified agreement from the medical community that it’s dangerous fakery.
Focus on the Family has for decades battled against any and all gay rights, and especially equality for gay marriage, working to undermine recent progress made at long last.
But there’s much more family life this group focuses on. The organization has been part of a massive campaign of lies and vulgarity against Planned Parenthood. The group couches its opposition to abortion rights behind a determined effort to undermine what Planned Parenthood actually spends the vast majority of its time and resources on. Planned Parenthood empowers women to control their reproductive lives with information and access to birth control. Planned Parenthood has long been in the business of primarily preventing pregnancies rather then ending them. Focus on the Family has long known that. Pence knows that. All Republicans know that. But they cower from the fear that this group and others will turn against them during elections, supporting either directly or indirectly minions who will do their political bidding.
They certainly found that in Trump and Pence.
Now they have top-political support to push other parts of their long-standing agenda. They want your family to focus on pseudoscience like Intelligent Design. It’s because they think undisputed evolutionary theory is simply an anti-religious tool of science. They want our public schools to teach “creationism,” a dangerous assault on not just science, but the very scientific method that has brought us everything that humans have accomplished so far.
This is the dangerous infiltration into education that has resulted in mainstream political leaders feeling emboldened to dismiss the science of global climate change and even things like vaccination.
This group and Pence’s sworn allegiance to them has nothing to do with the Colorado conservatives I know and have known my entire life. Colorado is a state that has long treasured tolerance, equality, pragmatism and individual liberty. Focus on the Family is to conservatism as to what the Weather Underground was to liberalism. It’s not.
Fight back, Colorado. Tell your elected officials you want nothing to do with Focus on the Family, and demand they publicly call them out for what they are, mean and vicious bigots.
Even the group’s current leader, Jim Daly, who brings at least an air of civility to this political powerhouse, admits that the vast majority of voters will undo Trump, Pence and all that what most Americans stand for and stand behind. In talking to the Associated Press after this Pence extravaganza, Daly admitted that this is their moment in the sun.
“This is fleeting,” Daly said.
And the end can’t come a moment too soon.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@AuroraSentinel.com