Will the nuttiest among you please step forward? Wait, not all at once. (Photo: Reuters /Joel Page)

Will the nuttiest among you please step forward? Wait, not all at once. (Photo: Reuters /Joel Page)

Via Mother Jones, this is pretty hilarious:

On Thursday, one of Iowa's most influential social conservative organizations, The Family Leader, informed GOP presidential candidates that to win the group's endorsement, they'll have to sign a pledge. Family Leader president Bob Vander Plaats, a former Mike Huckabee ally, wants GOP contenders to committ to a list of 14 red-meat items, including opposition to gay marriage, a ban on Islamic Sharia law, a rejection of pornography, and an affirmation that married couples have better sex.

You're probably thinking, wait a minute. They're supposed to sign a pledge that married couples have better sex? How do they know that? How is such a pledge enforced? Do the candidates themselves have to promise to have awesome sex with their spouses, or are we just talking generally about married couples? This raises many more questions than it answers.

And just guess which right-wing nut signed the pledge first? Here's a hint: Pawlenty's campaign thinks she's got "a little sex appeal."

But wait. It gets even better. Way better. Unless your name is Newt:

Presidential candidates who sign The Marriage Vow will sign off on support of personal fidelity to his/her spouse, appointing faithful constitutionalists as judges, opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and divorce law. The Marriage Vow also outlines support for the legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), humane efforts to protect women and children, rejection of anti-women Sharia Islam, safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. military personnel, and commitment to downsizing government and the burden upon American families.

Okay, so obviously Newt is out, with that whole "fidelity" issue. But that's only the beginning of this four-page, tiny-font gobbledy-gook. There's this gem, for example:

Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.

So anti-woman, anti-human rights stuff is bad. How refreshing! But then there's this:

Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

Wait a minute. Paternalism and prudery about women's sexuality is a good thing now? And allowing women to control their own reproduction is bad? That sounds kind of like, well, anti-woman totalitarian control.

At least the social conservatives in Iowa want to make sure whichever Republican ultimately loses to Obama next year cares deeply about fighting against that wicked anti-human rights totalitarianism. Which is why Republicans are supposed to pledge their "vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage" (No. 4); "earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)" (No. 7); "steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" (No. 8); and of course No. 14:

Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.



Because a bigot's right to say really hateful shit about gay people is sacrosanct. It says so right there in the First Amendment, after all.

And for those keeping score at home, yes, that's four separate promises, in a 14-point pledge, to discriminate against gay people. Which, again, sounds kind of like ... oh, what are the words? Anti-human totalitarian control?

There are other standard conservative talking points in there as well. No activist judges, of course. Debt reduction. Welfare reform. All the usual stuff.

Bottom line: If Republican presidential wannabes want to get this prime endorsement, they have to pledge to join the American Taliban, just like Jesus did.