Why did it take a faux undercover investigation to bring Michele Bachmann’s radical anti-gay views to light?
As someone who underwent ex-gay therapy for three years—and not because I was “going undercover” as gay to fancy myself an investigative reporter—I couldn’t care less if a clinic owned by Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and her husband, Marcus, practices ex-gay therapy.
I’m not saying I don’t feel sorry for patients who’ve been subjected to it. But I just don’t see why the fact that Bachmann’s husband runs a Christian clinic where therapists try to convert gays is any sort of revelation. Given Bachmann’s well-documented statements decrying homosexuality as a demonic mental disorder, this doesn’t prove to any greater degree than Bachmann has already established that she holds extreme anti-gay views; her bigoted outbursts about gay people have been in plain view for years. That it took an entrapment scheme and the pretense of catching Bachmann’s husband in a lie to bring attention to the pair’s radicalism just confirms the degree to which even liberal journalism has been Breitbart-ized.
For the past week, the media has been consumed by the results of an investigation by gay-activist group Truth Wins Out, which sent an undercover informant to the Bachmann-owned clinic and videotaped the sessions. The therapist makes statements like “in terms of how God created us, we’re all heterosexual” and “God has created you for heterosexuality”—pretty standard fare for right-wing Christians (though in fairness, the grainy hidden-video footage does add a To-Catch-a-Predator thrill). The Nation used the hit job and the fact that the Bachmanns appeared a few times with a woman who claimed to have rid herself of homosexual attractions to pronounce the Bachmann’s “embrace of the controversial ex-gay movement.” The story then went viral, prompting segments on all the major news networks (except, predictably, Fox).
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Complete article at Prospect : http://bit.ly/nSClRm
