National Organization for Marriage (NOM) Attacks Ron Paul in New Iowa Ad: VIDEO

Paul

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has launched a new ad attacking Ron Paul in Iowa and lauding Paul’s rival candidates for their views on ‘traditional marriage’, the NYT reports:

…the National Organization for Marriage ad injects a new and volatile issue into the race, one that has so far largely remained on the sidelines. Same-sex marriage has been a contentious issue in Iowa — voters have removed some of the state judges who paved the way for its legalization — but it has not been a major factor in the presidential campaign…

Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said it was important for conservative Iowans to know where Mr. Paul stood on the issue before it was too late. “There’s five days left,” he said. “This is the critical period. This is a very unique election. People are still making up their minds in Iowa, and that’s why it’s important we do this now.”

Click the link above to watch the video and read the rest of the article.

Paul Endorser: Death to Unrepentant Gays

By Trudy Ring

RON PAUL X390 (GETTY) | ADVOCATE.COM

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s gay-friendly image is taking another hit with the revelation of his endorsement by a minister who advocates the death penalty for homosexuality.

Paul’s campaign chairman for Iowa, which has an early voice in the nominating process with next Tuesday’s caucus, put out a statement yesterday touting the endorsement of the Reverend Phillip Kayser, pastor of Dominion Covenant Church in Omaha, Neb., just across the border from Iowa. Talking Points Memo reports that a paper Kayser wrote a few years ago claims the Bible justifies capital punishment for gay people.

“Difficulty in implementing Biblical law does not make non-Biblical penology just,” he wrote. “But as we have seen, while many homosexuals would be executed, the threat of capital punishment can be restorative,” leading gays to “repent.”

TPM interviewed Kayser by phone, and he confirmed his support for biblical punishments for homosexuality, up to and including the death penalty. He noted that he has differences with the candidate on gay issues — Paul, a member of Congress, voted to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” — but he believes Paul, as president, would allow states leeway to enact laws based on the Bible. “Under a Ron Paul presidency, states would be freed up to not have political correctness imposed on them, but obviously some state would follow what’s politically correct,” Kayser said.

The Paul campaign website had posted a press release on Kayser’s endorsement, but by Wednesday evening it had been taken off the site. Paul and his staff have made no further public statement on the matter.

Paul’s libertarian-leaning image has been undermined in the past week, with various news outlets reporting on racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic statements (which he claims not to have made) in newsletters published under his name, and revelations of incidents indicating discomfort with gay people.

Ron Paul Not Anti-Gay, Just Wouldn't Shake Hands With Gay Donor Says Aide

by David Badash

 

Post image for Ron Paul Not Anti-Gay, Just Wouldn't Shake Hands With Gay Donor Says Aide
A former Ron Paul top aide, who worked for the Texas Congressman from 1987 – 2003, says he knows Ron Paul extremely well, has spent a great deal of time with him, and insists Congressman Paul is not anti-​gay, but details two shocking anti-​gay incidents, including Dr. Paul’s refusal to use a restroom owned by a gay man, and even refusing to shake hands with a top gay campaign donor.
Click the link above to read the full article.

Ron Paul's '90s Newsletters Spew Intense Antigay Sentiment

By Neal Broverman

RON PAUL X390 (GETTY) | ADVOCATE.COM

The New Republic has uncovered newsletters from current presidential candidate Ron Paul that are loaded with antigay and racist rants.

The newsletters dealing with gay content came from the Ron Paul Political Report or the Ron Paul Survival Report and were released in the 1990s (the entirety of the newsletters date back to the ’70s). Many of the homophobic diatribes blame gay men for AIDS. An issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report from 1994 states that “those who don’t commit sodomy, who don’t get blood a transfusion, and who don’t swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.”

A newsletter from 1990 waxed nostalgic for the days when gays were shamed into living in the closet. 

Paul’s newsletters often attacked African-Americans, as well; one issue claimed Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pedophile. It’s not yet clear if Paul himself wrote the articles. Read more here. 

Antigay Statements Turn Up in Ron Paul Literature

By Trudy Ring

RON PAUL X390 (GETTY) | ADVOCATE.COM

Having already disavowed racist rhetoric in newsletters sent out under his name, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul is now having to explain a warning about a “federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS.”

The statement came in a direct-mail advertisement for Paul’s political and investment newsletters in the 1990s, Reuters reports. The ad, in the form of a letter signed by Paul, also predicted that a “race war” would break out in U.S. cities and that the federal government planned to redesign currency so it could be used to track Americans’ activities.

Paul has already said he did not write or endorse the racist passages in his newsletters and had no knowledge of them, and a spokesman for his campaign today told  Talking Points Memo  that the candidate “did not write that mail piece and disavows its content.” Paul also told reporters this week that various statements in the newsletters are at odds with his political positions, such as supporting open service by gay people in the military.

Journalist James Kirchick (an occasional Advocate contributor) provided Reuters with the direct-mail ad, which he found in an archive of political literature. Paul, a Texas congressman with libertarian leanings who opposed the war in Iraq, previously sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. That year Kirchick wrote a story for The New Republic saying the newsletters exhibited “deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays” and “suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing — but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.” The New Republic’s website has Kirchick’s article here and a selection of the newsletters’ “most incendiary” statements here.