This Saturday in Des Moines: Overcooked condemnations with a side of mashed equality

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11/14/2011

by Jeremy Hooper

Via Des Moines Register comes more insight into what we will see at the GOP presidential forum that the Family Leader, Focus on the Family, and the National Organization For Marriage are co-hosting this Saturday in Des Moines:

CANDIDATES: Sitting shoulder to shoulder around a “Thanksgiving table” facing the audience on Saturday will be Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.

DRESS CODE: Organizer Bob Vander Plaats said the audience attire will be “business casual,” but the candidates were asked “to dress like they’re going to Thanksgiving dinner.”

MODERATORS: Frank Luntz, a Fox News contributor who has turned political focus groups into a speciality, will moderate one hour and 40 minutes of the two-hour program. Officials from two groups will each lead 10-minute segments. Tom Minnery, executive director of CitizenLink, an affiliate of the the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, will do one. Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, will do the other.

WHEN: Doors open at 2:30 p.m. Organizers are requiring a photo ID for security. The forum runs from 4 to 6 p.m.

WHERE: The audience will sit in pews at the First Federated Church in Des Moines, which has a capacity of 3,400. So far, just over 1,500 people have bought the $40 tickets for the event.

MEDIA: Dozens of political reporters are expected. No major network is booked to do live coverage, but it will be live-streamed at www.citizenlink.com.

FOCUS GROUP: Afterward, Luntz will pull 25 Iowa moms from the audience to do a focus group on their reactions to the candidates. That interview will be part of a special that airs on Fox News on Nov. 23, he said.
[Des Moines Register]

So not only will six (for now) potential next Presidents be catering to three groups that hold aggressive contempt for LGBT Americans' rights and even basic wellbeing, but leaders from these groups will actually get ten minutes each to bend the candidates ears. And it will all be seen as par for the American political course. Just a way for the GOP to speak to the "values votes," even if the group leading the whole thing has itself headed a heinous program that tells LGBT kids they are a health risk.

Days later, countless LGBT adults will be forced to make other plans, uninvited from their own families' Thanksgivings because of who they are, love, and/or marry. Perhaps if C-Span ran a split screen of that yearly reality show alongside this "Family Forum," an America in desperate need of its LGBT equality lightbulb moment might finally start to get it. Or at least be forced to deal with the true casualties of careless rhetoric.