What Has Really Changed with Ron Paul?The Ron Paul campaign is trying to distance Paul from the newsletters that he published, edited, and which he previously claimed he wrote. They know say that the bigotry in those publications don't reflect Paul's views at all and that he doesn't share them. In fact, they claim he didn't know anything about them, never saw the publication when it was coming out and Paul claim's he only knew about 10 years after they were published. I find that impossible to believe but I don't have the sort of "faith" necessary to be a Rondroid.
How worried is Paul about hate-mongers using his material?
Well, today it was brought to my attention that Paul wrote a "Statement of Faith" for a fundamentalist web site, asserting Ron Paul's own Christian fundamentalism. Paul makes public his born-again Christianity, something that didn't exist in him in 1988. After that run Paul left the Episcopal Church and joined a very anti-gay fundamentalist Baptist Church.
The site for which Paul wrote his "Statement of Faith" certainly doesn't help Ron when he wants to assert he isn't bigoted.
I went to look at the site at the suggestion of a friend who found this material first, something I would hope Ron would have done before writing for them. Here is one headline: "Filthy Sodomites Can Begin Serving Openly by Summer." The link is to a story that says "Gay Soldiers Can Begin Service Openly by Summer." The publication changes the word "gay" into "filthy sodomites." The tag on the story was "fagotts," it has to be embarrassing when one can't even spell insults correctly. Another headline was changed to the following (I leave the grammar as it appears on the site.) "Can Hotels Discriminate Against 'filthy sodomite couples?"
In fairness, these headlines are up today, and Paul's article was published before that. But what relief that may bring is brief indeed; these same sort of hateful articles were being published on the site when Paul wrote for them, and he easily could have checked for them. But he is intimately familiar with the views of the site. One of the main writers there is Rev. Chuck Baldwin, a far-Right fundamentalist minister who ran for president on the theocratic Constitution Party. Ron Paul endorsed Baldwin in that election. (The photo above is of Chuck Baldwin and Ron Paul campaigning together.)
The Constitution Party That Paul Endorsed
Paul's endorsement of that party ought to concern genuine libertarians. His followers, however, showed no such concern. The CP claims that America is a "Christian nation" and that they intend to "restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations." They claim that American is "a Republican rooted in Biblical law."
This means that the law must "safeguard the lives of the pre-born." What about the post-dead? Don't they have rights as well?
The would ban "the distribution and use of all abortifacients." This includes morning-after pills to prevent pregnancy. See, the pre-born have rights over the actually born in this theology. They also say that you don't have the right to terminate your own life if circumstances such as pain and suffering require it. Their right-to-life views also mean they support government killing criminals. Go figure.
Now, they are also in favor of the war on drugs. But isn't Ron Paul an opponent of the war on drugs? It all depends on who is doing the war, according to Pauline theory. And the CP satisfies Paul because the "uphold the rights of states and localities to restrict access to drugs and to enforce such restrictions." Remember Paul's big thing is letting the states act as they wish. He goes so far as to say the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the states so even merger of church and state is acceptable.
As for marriage rights for gay couples, forget it. The CP, again with Ron Paul's endorsement for them, says: "The law of our Creator defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman... No government may legitimately authorize or define marriage or family relations contrary to what God has instituted." They affirm "the rights of states and localities to proscribe offensive sexual behavior." They also want it illegal for gay people to adopt children either as single parents or in a relationship. But then, since I suspect that the "offensive sexual behavior" then want to ban includes throwing gay people in prison this is not surprising.
In regards to gambling they want the states and local authority to have the right to ban gambling. Again, a moralistic view consistent with Paul's states' "rights" theory. In regards to immigration they basically want to end it with a "moratorium on immigration to these United States, except in extreme hardship cases" until all welfare is abolished. In other words, ban immigration forever.
They want to end any judicial review of matters "involving acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty or government." And in Orwellian newspeak demand that all levels of government uphold the First Amendment "by vigorously enforcing our laws against obscenity."
They oppose "all international trade agreements which have the effect of diminishing America's economic self-sufficiency." That is just failed mercantilism all over again, but consistent with Paul's actual votes on free trade.
Now please note that this platform is entirely consistent with the hateful anti-gay rhetoric in the Ron Paul Newsletters. His endorsement of the Constitution Party certainly didn't put any distance between him and the material he previously published, but which he NOW wants to disassociate from.
Baldwin wrote that he was thrilled to have Ron Paul's endorsement and said that they "believe in the same principles." Baldwin says he personally campaigned for Paul in the Republican primary.
Covenant News
So what sort of material was Covenant News publishing around the time that Ron Paul wrote his "Statement of Faith" for them?
They attacked Wal-Mart for accepting same-sex partners as "immediate family" saying the company "has now officially thrown its lot in with perversion." They claim Wal-Mart "is eager to fan the flames for the nationwide establishment of the next 'best thing': sodomite civil unions." This is "a rebellious shaking of the fist in the face of God." The article suggest that good conservatives buy elsewhere, even if they pay more. I'm in favor of reducing the wealth conservatives have to spend on politics. So I endorse them spending more elsewhere. Otherwise the article is rubbish.
Here are other stories they ran around the time Paul wrote for them.
House Passes Sodomite Bill
Sodomite Anglican priest dying of AIDS pleads for new drug
Pro-Sodomite Republicans Court Religious Broadcasters
Harry Potter and Sodomite Witchcraft
Another Pro-Sodomite Republican to Explore 2008 White House Bid
Abortion Foes Honor Pro-Sodomite Republican
Senate OKs Bill With Sodomite 'Rights'
Pro-Sodomite McCain to open office in Iowa
Students Flee Forced Sodomite Agenda
Pro-Abort/Sodomite State Hammered by Flood
More Sodomite Sex from Republican Senator
Fires in Sodomite State Cost U.S. Taxpayers Millions
Laura Bush Attends Sodomite Swearing-in Ceremony
Abortion. Sodomite Studies Considered
Sodomite Blogger Outs GOP Congressman's Chief of Staff
The 'Public Persona" of a Sodomite Republican
Sodomite Congressman Altered Immigration Law to Further 'Gay' Agenda
Paper: Republicans Fear This Sodomite
This could go on for some time. There are 1,280 articles on this site attacking "sodomites." These are just a sampling of the ones that appeared at the time Ron Paul wrote for them. In addition they wrote a glowing article on Ron Paul praising him to their readers. From what I can see they have almost 7,000 articles either written by Paul or mentioning him.
Baldwin, Ron Paul's endorsed candidate for president, wrote on the site that the military was being turned "into a hodgepodge of foreigners, gang members, women, homosexuals, and mercenaries." He claims to have spoke to "hundreds of active duty and retired" military personnel and said that not a single one supports allowing gays in the military, "and the vast majority of them were also opposed to women" being in combat units as well.
Baldwin also wrote that "the acceptance of homosexuality by any mainstream culture tends to doom that society!" He falsely claims that "acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle certainly contributed to the collapse of many empires of antiquity." Baldwin said that states that allow gay marriage should lose federal funding. And urged strict enforcement of one of Ron Paul's favorite laws: The Defense of Marriage Act. He claims that if homosexuals are not criminalized then child molesting will be legalized. Baldwin even damns Christian schools for allowing women in "leadership" positions because the "overexposure of young boys to women leaders is taking a serious toll on their masculinity." The result is that "most Christian high schools. What do you see? Soft, effeminate boys! Most Christian schools do not even provide masculine sports such as football, wrestling, or boxing." Instead boys are "taught to submit to feminine leadership." Christian musicians, he says "are markedly soft and effeminate" and "true masculinity is fast disappearing from the American landscape." I guess Rev. Chuck also has some problems with women.
When Ron Paul organized a "Freedom March" in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Capitol, he invited Baldwin to be a main speaker. According to Baldwin, "I spoke immediately preceding Dr. Paul and helped introduce the ten-term congressman."
The Pattern
Let us look at this long term pattern. By the 1980s into the mid 1990s Ron Paul published a series of newsletters. They used vicious language to depict gay Americans. The newsletters had his name emblazoned all across them. He was listed as the writer of the articles. He was listed as the editor of the newsletter. He admits being the publisher of these hate letters. He signed a letter smearing gay people and sent it out soliciting people to subscribe to his publication.
In 1996 he didn't deny writing the material, he just complained that other people took him out of context. By 2001 they were a liability and he started claiming he didn't write the material, others did. Today he claims he didn't even know it was being written, and didn't find out about them until ten years later. Yet there is video of him promoting them and claiming he writes them from the time that he claims he wasn't writing them. Even if you assume he didn't write any of it, and just put his name on it, isn't it fraud to sell this as Ron Paul's advice when Ron Paul now claims he didn't write, didn't approve it, and never saw it? He was willing to promote it and took the profits from it, now he denies any active role in it.
Assume he had a change of heart, and that he no longer held to the bigoted views in that publication, or never supported them. What has he done since that time? He continued to associate with people who promote the very kind of views from which he now wants to be disassociated.
He wrote for Covenant News, which clearly is obsessed with anti-gay hatred. Those headlines are so extreme they look like something that Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist would hold up at one of their hate protests. The language at Covenant News is as extreme and hateful as that which was published in the Paul newsletters a few years earlier. If Ron Paul was trying to move away from that sort of hate mongering he did a very bad job of it.
And, in the 2008 Ron Paul endorsed fundamentalist Baptist minister Chuck Baldwin for president. This is a man who was a state leader in the Moral Majority. Baldwin writes for groups like the racist VDare web site and the crazy site of Alex Jones. But this is the man that Ron Paul supported only three years ago.
Ron Paul has never abandoned his associations with the bigots who were ghost-writing his newsletter. And, one major reason that Paul will not expose the main author he used, is because they were/are tight friends and partners on various projects over the years. Ron Paul gave the indication that the author was unknown to him and he doesn't associate with the man. In truth, they work together all the time and Paul regularly has material appear on the man's website, a site that also published racists and anti-Semites on a regular basis.
After the newsletter fiasco of the 1980s and 1990s, Paul went on to write for publications like Covenant News exhibiting the same hatred of gay people that his own newsletter showed. The hate comments at Covenant News were pervasive at the time Paul wrote for them. (Of course, once again Paul can claim he doesn't know who wrote for them in his name and had no idea it was ever published on a hate-filled web site. So much for individual responsibility.) And then, only 3 years ago Ron Paul endorsed a candidate and political party that was running the most bigoted anti-gay candidate of the election.
Precisely what has changed? He stills panders to the bigots while refusing to take responsibility for his own actions. That is the same old Ron Paul who has been shuffling around the fringes of American politics for as long as I can remember.
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