Republican Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann Signs Pledge Supporting Ban on Porn, Abortion, and Suggests Black Families Were More Functional During Slavery1

by Damon Martin

Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann doesn’t like porn, abortion, or promiscuity. She hates it so much, she’s signed a pledge to prove it! The essence of the pledge is that the candidates who sign it must commit to upholding the oaths contained within should they make it to office, which means Bachmann is now 100% committed to ending both abortion and pornography (it’ll be interesting to see how she’ll legislate against promiscuity – will sex before marriage become a custodial offense?).

On Friday, Bachmann put her signature on ‘The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family‘ a two-page document authored by Iowa pastor Bob Vander Plaats.

Vander Plaats is actually trying to get all presidential candidates to sign his wacky pledge, which calls for a ban on pornography, and contains verbiage condemning gay marriage, while also suggesting that the African American family unit was better off during slavery.

Yes, you read that correctly. Here is the bullet point from the pledge that points to the success of the ‘nuclear family’ with mom and dad both present, which more African Americans had during slavery.

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.

Nothing says love and compassion like comparing the family unit of today – which encompasses millions of strong, viable single parent-led households – to the rosy family unit of yesteryear in the good ol’ days of slavery.

Back to the pornography portion of the manifesto that Bachmann signed up for. It reads like an archaic text (not that unlike the Bible) with regards to how sexuality should be treated under conservative law.

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 stolen innocence.

Stolen innocence? It’s almost like Vander Plaats was reading directly from Bristol Palin’s new book Not Afraid of Life. And the fact that “pornography” and “infanticide” sit together in the same sentence, without and level of distinction between the two, would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic (or maybe it’s the other way around). It also begs the question, what kind of porn have Plaats and Bachmann been watching?

One of the funniest parts of the pledge reads:

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.’

Let’s just dissect that one for a moment.

The pledge wants the candidate to stand up in ‘fierce defense’ of the First Amendment with regards to free speech, yet virtually every case that has come in front of the Supreme Court regarding the curtailment of pornography has been overruled precisely because of our inalienable right to free speech.

The First Amendment protects everyone’s rights to free speech and expression of ideas, whether they are popular or unpopular. It protects the religious right that wants to speak out against abortion and gay marriage the same way it protects the producers and distributors of pornography. The First Amendment doesn’t discriminate, unlike the pledge that Bachmann just signed.

And just to throw out the point about the adherence and defense of ‘faithful heterosexual monogamy,’ I guess there’s a reason fellow Republican candidate Newt Gingrich won’t be signing Plaats’ presidential promise.

By aligning herself with the pledge, Bachmann has once again stepped so far to the right that she’s almost guaranteeing herself a Donald Trump like exit from the actual presidential race — but, hey, it’s amusing to watch it unfold.

As Bill Maher once said so eloquently about the candidate from Minnesota:

Michele Bachmann…for people who find Sarah Palin too intellectual.’