The calls, which feature the voice of Republican Joy Corning and were paid for by gay rights group One Iowa, say the Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage continues “Iowa’s tradition of protecting the civil rights of all Iowans.”

One of Branstad’s rivals for the 2010 gubernatorial nomination, Bob Vander Plaats, said the calls are another reason to question Branstad’s commitment to opposing same-sex marriage.

“Terry Branstad enters the governor’s race on Saturday night without stating where he truly stands on the issue and on Tuesday night his lieutenant governor does an automated call urging Iowans to support same-sex marriages. All of that takes place not too long after his former chief of staff wrote an opinion piece saying the Republican Party needs to nominate a candidate with ‘centrist’ views on social issues,” Vander Plaats said. “Urging Iowans to support same-sex marriage is not only out of touch with Republican values but it is overwhelmingly out of touch with Main Street Iowa.”

Conservative group Iowa Family Policy Center issued a statement saying if Branstad had never appointed a “public supporter of abortion and homosexuality” to be his lieutenant governor she would never have a platform to “undermine traditional family values.”

“Joy Corning has given us another clear example of just exactly why as Christians and conservatives we should no longer sacrifice our convictions for perceived political victories,” said Chuck Hurly, president of IFPC. “When we elect people like Joy Corning, we elevate and advance the destruction of the family.”

Conservative blogger Craig Robinson believes that since the calls didn’t encourage people to attend One Iowa’s Marriage Equality Public Forums in December, they could be attempts by liberals to thwart a Branstad candidacy.

“…Corning’s call might have also been orchestrated by gay activists and liberal Democrats to lessen the chance that Branstad will win the Republican nomination for governor,” Robinson said.

He also wonders whether One Iowa is “taking advantage of the 77 year-old former lieutenant governor in hopes to advance their own political agenda.” Corning is a long time supporter of marriage equality, even writing joint letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register promoting same-sex marriage with former Democratic Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson. She is also a member of Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines, which is a prominent supporter of civil rights, including same-sex marriage.

English, who serves as spokesman for the influential social conservative group, said the last thing the party needs is Republican wolves in  “conservative sheep’s clothing.” The focus of the blog eventually turned to a recent Op-Ed in The Des Moines Register written by Doug Gross, the former chief of staff to Gov. Terry Branstad who has argued for more than a year that Iowa’s GOP needs to be more welcoming and less divisive in order to regain power in Des Moines.

The GOP lost Iowa by “driving away voters who share the Republican philosophy of limited government, but grew tired of a preachy, old party that reminded them of their grouchy, old uncle,” Gross said.

English criticized this line of thought, saying it is people like Gross who are damaging the party.

“Never once was there any reference to the political damage done to his party by secular ideologues who insist that people of faith abandon their core principles in order to participate in the party,” English said. “He completely ignored the large chunk of former Republicans who held their nose and voted for [Republican In Name Only] candidates like John McCain, and then left the party in disgust having realized that they compromised their principles and got absolutely nothing in return but a guilty conscience.”

If the “grouchy, old uncle” Gross refers to is English and the social conservative movement, then Gross represents the “frat boy who has never been as popular or successful as his drinking buddies thought he was back in college. He becomes increasingly irrelevant as time goes on, he continues to refuse to grow up, and people quit listening to how great things were ‘back in college,’” English said.

Gross has become a lightening rod on the political right for his calls for the party to end the politics of “cultural and ideological wars.” Leaders in the social conservative movement and right-wing bloggers have turned the man who was his party’s flag-bearer in the 2002 gubernatorial campaign into public enemy No. 1. So far in 2009, Gross and his organization, the Iowa First Foundation, have commissioned two polls that he says offers clear evidence that voters are more interested in candidates who focus on economic issues rather than social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. Social conservatives argue that line of thinking only alienates the party’s most loyal voters.

Ultimately, the line of attack against Gross could eventually be turned on his former boss. Branstad has said he will decide whether to enter the 2010 gubernatorial campaign by next month, and social conservative leaders have already predicted his re-entry into politics could turn the GOP primary into a “blood bath.”

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s political outreach arm has sent a vitriolic, four-page letter to voters on Burgmeier’s behalf, mostly focusing on accusations that Democrat Curt Hanson’s campaign is being funded by “out-of-state pro-homosexual groups” who are “clamoring” to impose their “radical agenda” on Iowans. Because neither candidate has had to file a campaign finance disclosure report, this claim cannot be verified. (Even after a report is filed, it’s not like it will display donors’ sexual orientations next to their names.)

The Burgmeier campaign’s Web site also now lists a political operative who has been connected to the Iowa Family Policy Center as one of its volunteer contacts.

Mark Doland, who is also pastor of a church in Mahaska County, was a 2008 campaign staffer for former state Rep. Danny Carroll (R-Grinnell), who wrote the pro-Burgmeier letter on IFPC’s behalf. Doland’s email address, as listed on the Burgmeier site, is an acronym for “Let Us Vote,” the slogan of opponents of the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage last year. Because campaign finance reports haven’t been filed, it is unclear whether the conservative operative is being paid (and who is paying him). On his own site, Doland says he is IFPC’s “Field Coordinator.”

For Iowans for Tax Relief’s part, the group had already supplied two staffers to the Burgmeier campaign, and now they have released a new television ad attacking Hanson.

The ITR ad is striking not for its message, which is fairly conventional, but for its inexplicably over-the-top yonic imagery. If you don’t know what yonic means, watch the ad below and take a guess:

On the site of Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION, the socially conservative political group known for offering significant support to Republican campaigns across the state, I found a YouTube video that scarily warns viewers of growing Muslim populations and dwindling Christian populations. It’s embedded in the sidebar of most of the site’s pages (here’s an example).

The video, which is set to gloomy music that sounds vaguely Middle-Eastern, begins with a solemn on-screen warning: “THE WORLD IS CHANGING.”

It then launches into a detailed discussion of fertility rates in majority-Christian countries in Europe and North America. The announcer talks in terms of cultural survival, pitting the a growing Muslim population against Christians in a battle to control the future of the world.

“In a matter of years, Europe as we know it will cease to exist,” the video warns. “Yet the population is not declining. Why? Immigration. Islamic immigration.”

“It’s time to wake up,” says the announcer.

In the United States, the video claims that there is an Islamic conspiracy to “evangelize America through journalism, politics, education, and more.”

Though the video never explicitly says “Christians need to reproduce more” or “Muslims should be discouraged from reproducing so much,” its implication is clear: If the world doesn’t have more Christian babies in it, Muslims will take over. If that doesn’t happen, “The world that we live in is not the world in which our children and grandchildren will live.”

This sentiment may not mirror the particularly nasty eugenicist ideology of someone like Adolf Hitler, but it echoes the softer-edged eugenics movement that was actually pretty popular in the United States and much of the developed world through the middle of the 20th Century.

Dictionary.com defines eugenics as “the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).”

At the very least, the video, which I have posted below, seems to encourage something akin to “positive eugenics,” based more on religion than actual genes.

I couldn’t determine the actual source of the video, because it was published March 30 using a YouTube account that owns no other videos. (It is unlikely, though, that the Iowa Family Policy Center created the video itself, since they already have their own YouTube channel, and it’s not like they are trying to hide their support of this message.) The username associated with the account is, ironically, “muslimfriend.”

This may not be breaking news (in fact, the video could have been up on the IFPC site for months without me noticing), but I thought it deserved some attention anyway, given the socially conservative group’s significant influence in Iowa politics.

What do you think?

After the past grueling months, and the marathon that has been the last three weeks, it’s good for us to be reminded why we are fighting so hard to save traditional marriage.  Unfortunately, due to the Supreme Court opinion, the inactivity of the governor, and the complacency of the state legislature, many young people will experiment with the homosexual “life-style.”  People will die.

The email goes on to feature a video of an older couple whose son died of an AIDS-related illness, which they say was brought on by his ‘homosexual lifestyle.’  According to the video (posted below the page jump), the couple’s son was too ashamed to tell anyone he had been diagnosed with HIV until he got sick.

Of course, viewing HIV/AIDS as ‘the gay disease’ fell out of fashion sometime around 1985.  It afflicts people of all stripes and can be transmitted many different ways.  Risky sexual behavior is a common form of transmission, but that affects heterosexuals, too.  And marriage, whether between a same-sex couple or an opposite-sex one, typically discourages it.

According to instructions emailed out to the Iowa Family Policy Center’s members and posted on Bartz’s poorly formatted web page, conservatives should print out copies of the petition form to bring with them to church this Sunday, and then they should deliver signed petitions to their county recorder when their office opens Monday morning:

DIRECTIONS REGARDING COUNTY RECORDERS PETITION

1. Print as many copies of this petition as you so desire.
2. Distribute petitions to anybody you feel who would be inclined to help in this endeavor.
3. Before submitting petitions to your county recorder, make two copies of the signed petition.  Keep one for yourself and send a copy for accountability purposes to the Iowa Family Policy Center, 1100 N. Hickory, Suite 107, Pleasant Hill, IA 50327.
4. If you need further instructions on how to deliver your petition to your county recorder, feel free to call 1-877-866-IFPC.

Please print and take several copies to church with you on Sunday.  Then, commit to stopping by your Recorder’s office next Monday morning to hand deliver them just as the office opens.

The struggle between the Supreme Court and Iowa law is causing a constitutional crisis in the state of Iowa, and your County Recorder is caught in the middle.  Please keep your recorder in prayer, and bring as many signatures as possible to them on Monday to show that you support them. Recorders offices open at 8:00, so be sure to get there early.

Social conservatives frequently use churches to gain petition signatures and disseminate promotional materials.

All elected officials in Iowa are required to take an oath of office pledging to support the Iowa Constitution, which grants courts the right to strike laws that are inconsistent with the rights embodied in the document.  Defying an Iowa Supreme Court decision could be considered a violation of the oath.

A coalition of same-sex marriage opponents, including the Iowa Family Policy Center, the Iowa Christian Alliance and Everyday America, will rally at the capitol today with the hope of convincing lawmakers to take up the controversial marriage amendment. The gathering is expected to go from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. A similar rally was held Thursday, after which Republican Rep. Christopher Rants of Sioux City tried and failed to attach the amendment, which would ban same-sex marriage, to the Health and Human Services budget.

Most expect another Republican attempt this week to force a vote on the amendment, although House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s James Lynch that the marriage issue wouldn’t prolong the session.

One Iowa, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy organization, is planning to counter the conservative gathering with a “virtual rally” by asking supporters of same-sex marriage to call legislators.

Iowans for Tax Relief will rally Tuesday at 10 a.m. to oppose proposed legislation that would end federal deductibility, which allows state residents to write off their federal tax burden on their state returns. The change is part of a Democratic tax reform plan that could be debated Tuesday or Wednesday. During a public hearing on the bill last month, a group organized by Iowans for Tax Relief had to be removed from the House gallery after repeatedly ignoring requests to stop booing speakers they disagreed with.

Then, on Wednesday, the second Des Moines Tea Party will be held at the capitol from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. A similar event was held Saturday as part of conservative radio host and Fox News contributor Glenn Beck’s “9-12 Project.” Wednesday’s event is completely separate and designed as an antitaxation demonstration to evoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party. The gathering’s press release says several speakers are scheduled, but their names, as well as the organization behind the gathering, are not listed.

While advertised around the country as spontaneous grassroots gatherings of concerned taxpayers, some observers have pointed out that in many cases the tea parties are organized by corporate lobbyists and conservative groups like FreedomWorks, run by former Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Army.

The group’s Web site does, however, have a list of appropriate signs for the event.

“It appears unlikely,” said Danny Carroll, a former Republican legislator from Grinnell who serves as chairman of the Iowa Family Policy Center Action Board. “The legislature can still take it up in the 2010 session, but that may be difficult to accomplish as well.”

With Democratic legislative leaders coming out in support of the ruling, and Gov. Chet Culver saying he would be reluctant to amend the state’s constitution, same-sex marriage foes are left with few avenues for change in the short term.

State Reps. Dwayne Alons, a Hull Republican, and Dolores Mertz, an Ottosen Democrat, introduced a bill last month that would amend Iowa’s Constitution and define marriage as being between a man and a woman. In order for the bill to be debated this late in the legislative session, however, Democratic legislative leaders would have to introduce it to the floor, something Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, a Council Bluffs Democrat, flatly rejected earlier this week.

A public push against the ruling has been slow going, Carroll said, because a lot of people around the state had forgotten the issue was even before the Supreme Court.

“It takes so long for the court to issue a decision; I mean [Polk County Judge Robert] Hansen made his ruling in August 2007,” he said. “It’s been almost a year and a half. That’s a long time, so the ruling caught a lot of people by surprise. They had forgotten it was even there.”

Iowa’s social conservatives will be aided, however, by the National Organization for Marriage, a group that last year helped in the passage of California’s ballot initiative amending the state constitution to eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marry. The organization is launching a $1.5 million ad campaign in several states, including Iowa, hoping to energize opponents of same-sex marriage by making the case that it will directly affect their lives.

Several House Republicans have privately discussed using a procedural move to bring an amendment to the floor without legislative leadership’s approval. The move, called House Rule 60, allows any bill to skip the committee process and go directly to a floor debate if a majority of legislators support it. Former House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, a Sioux City Republican, attempted the same thing last year, falling two votes short in a much more narrowly divided House.

Ultimately, though Carroll said opponents would have to work to change the legislature if they hope to change the constitution, and with so much time before the 2010 elections, it is unclear if that will happen.

“With the passage of time, things have a tendency to cool off,” he said. “Whether or not the people of Iowa will see this as a priority leading into November of 2010 I’m not sure.”

According to an independent media monitoring service, IFPC’s television media presence reached an audience of over 5 million viewers this year. News stories that included information from IFPC totaled over 4 ½ hours of video in 2008. That free “earned” television reporting represented nearly $200,000.00 in real world value. When the newspaper articles, radio interviews, and internet posts are taken into account, the monetary value of the work produced in our media department is well over a half a million dollars.

Your voice is being heard in the secular media each time a story runs that includes information from IFPC. The media comes to IFPC for insight into issues that shape society because we are the group that does research, informs citizens, lobbies legislators, and consistently articulates a clear and concise message based on a Biblical worldview.

Hurley closed the correspondence by indicating that he and the IFPC are prepared to “stand strong as your voice in the public arena” in 2009, but that the group requires financial support to complete the mission.

“This has already been a long journey, but we still have a long way to go,” Brad Clark, campaign director for One Iowa, a marriage equality advocacy group, said during a forum in Cedar Rapids following the oral arguments.

Advocates of same-sex marriage have learned  from recent events in California and other states that a court ruling isn’t enough.

“It is critical — as we saw in California — that equality moves forth in the court of public opinion,” said Catina Lowery, community educator for Lambda Legal. “We don’t want to be in a place where equality is given and then, because we have not done the hard work of educating Iowans, have it removed.”

Meanwhile, supporters of the gay marriage ban, aware the court might overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, are looking to redouble their efforts to win approval for a constitutional amendment to prevent same-sex couples from marrying. Because of the state’s reading and hearing requirements, passage of such an amendment is a lengthy process likely to take a minimum of three years.

“The justices even said that one of the outcomes could be a redefinition of marriage,” said Bryan English, spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center, a group headed by former legislator Chuck Hurley. “That’s different from deciding if something is constitutional or unconstitutional. A redefinition of something as foundational as marriage is a significant change in the law and ought to be handled by the Legislature.”

Norm Pawlewski, spokesman and lobbyist for the Iowa Christian Alliance, said if the gay marriage ban is overturned, it will be time for the Democratic majority in the Legislature to “put up or shut up.”

Pawlewski said he spoke with Democrats roughly two years ago about the court case while lobbying on behalf of ICA.

“They told us at that time, and I’m talking about the Democratic majority, including Sen. [Mike] Gronstal, who said to me — and this is a quote — ‘I believe the court is going to uphold our Defense of Marriage Act and I’ve talked to a number of justices including former Supreme Court justices, and they’ve assured me that it was a legal and constitutional act. But if they overturn it, we will look again at the constitutional amendment,’” Pawlewski explained.

Senate Majority Leader Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, would not speculate on what he might have or might not have said so long ago, but did state that he would never even consider approaching a sitting Supreme Court justice in such a manner.

In the emerging struggle over a constitutional amendment, both sides are looking to win over the political center.

“There is obviously a section of the population that has already made up its mind either for or against marriage equality,” Lowery said. “But there are people who haven’t. Those are the people we want supporters to reach out to and speak with. It’s difficult to discriminate when you become personally involved — when you are confronted with another human face that is attached to the issue.”

If the Supreme Court rules that the existing laws are unconstitutional, Iowa would join Connecticut as the only state with legalized same-sex marriage and no marriage residency requirement. Each side of the debate thinks the combination of Iowa’s unique status and lengthy amending process works in its own favor.

Proponents of same-sex marriage believe that as Iowans watch gay couples marry, the specter of immorality and social dissolution that has been painted by conservative groups will vanish.

“It helps us when people see, meet and know committed gay couples,” Lowery said. “If we are successful, then Iowans will have at least a couple of years to see the benefits of opening up marriage to gay couples, and that can only be of benefit.”

Opponents of gay marriage point in particular to Iowa’s lack of residency requirement and the possible controversies it could create in other states that have not legalized same-sex marriage.

“People will be able to come from California or from Texas and get married in Iowa,” Pawlewski said. “People will be able to come here from states with Defense of Marriage Acts and be married and then return to their home state to challenge the laws there for not recognizing the Iowa marriage. It’s going to cause a legal problem throughout the country.

“I think they are opening up a real big bag of worms if the Supreme Court overrides the Legislature on this,” he said.