Minnesota Congresswoman Michele
Bachmann appears to have dropped her campaign against allowing gay
couples to marry.
Bachmann, who is not seeking a fifth
term, has a long history of attacking gay rights, though her
strongest comments came while she served as a Minnesota lawmaker.
In 2004, then-Minnesota State Senator
Bachmann unsuccessfully championed a constitutional amendment
limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. In an urgent appeal to
supporters Bachmann compared marriage equality to Pearl Harbor.
Recalling the events of December 7,
1941, Bachmann told supporters not to repeat the mistakes of military
commanders who ignored the warnings of sailor Orville Ethier.
“You are a type of Orville Ethier –
a patriot looking to secure American freedoms,” she wrote. “The
question is, will the Senators of Minnesota act like the Honolulu
military headquarters and ignore your message?”
“Today we face perhaps the greatest
attack on the family in our lifetime. Now is OUR time to stand up
and send a message to avert an equally impending disaster.”
In vying to become the 2012 GOP
presidential candidate, Bachmann was the first candidate to sign a
Christian conservative group's pledge in which she vowed to
“vigorously” oppose same-sex marriage. Footnotes to the two-page
document suggest that being gay is a choice and may have a negative
impact on public health.
She's also criticized President Barack
Obama's 2012 endorsement of marriage equality, saying it proves he's
“out of touch” with “the values of American families.”
“I will continue to protect
traditional marriage, despite our president's decision to thumb his
nose at the traditional institution of marriage,” she added.
When asked about the issue Friday at
the conservative Values Voter Summit, Bachmann said, “It's not an
issue.”
“In fact, it's boring,” Bachmann
told the Huffington
Post's Michelangelo Signorile.
Asked to respond, Bryan Fischer, a
spokesman for the the Christian conservative American Family
Association, suggested Bachmann had “given up.”
“Well, I’d have to know more about
what Representative Bachmann meant when she said that. The debate is
far from settled,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go.
Unfortunately, there are people in the conservative movement who have
sort of given up. There are even evangelicals leaders sending
signals that the battle is over, that the battle is lost. 'We’ll
never be able to capture the millennials. They’re gone.' I think
it’s way premature for that. You know, when the homosexual lobby
was 0 and 31 [having lost at the ballot in 31 states on marriage],
the gay lobby didn’t quit. They didn’t give up. They didn’t
do it. They didn’t give up, and neither are we.”