Ad for The Awakening 2012 (Photo: Tea Party Manatee)

The Freedom Federation, a network of conservative faith-based organizations, will host its “Awakening 2012″ event in Orlando next year, featuring a long list of big conservative names as “invited speakers.”

Presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry have all been invited to Awakening, which will take place April 19-21 at Calvary Assembly in Winter Park. According to the group’s website, Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio, Rep. Allen West and Gov. Rick Scott have also been invited to speak, but have not yet been confirmed.

Other invited speakers include: Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Live Action founder Lila Rose, and James “Jim Bob” Duggar, subject of the TLC reality series 19 Kids and Counting.

John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, is a confirmed speaker, along with Frank Gaffney, who penned a controversial op-ed insinuating that President Obama was “America’s first Muslim president.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been confirmed to address the rally via video feed.

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich made an appearance at the 2011 Awakening event, telling more than 100 faith-based leaders that House Republicans should not compromise on fundamentals because the budget is a “moral battle.”

The ads say, respectively:

“Marriage is at risk in our state. Our laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman could be overturned. Marriage between one man and one woman benefits families in society so we must preserve the marriage laws in our state Constitution.

“On September 12, the North Carolina legislature will vote on putting a marriage amendment to a vote of the people. Powerful voices in our state capitol are threatening your right to vote on marriage. Take a stand for marriage. Call [your representative] and ask [them] to vote yes to the marriage amendment. It’s not about party, it’s about marriage.

“And on September 12, join us for a rally supporting marriage at 11 a.m. in front of the legislative building in Raleigh. Bring a sign and take a stand for marriage.”

The Family Research Council, which is listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is specifically targeting Sen. Eric Mansfield (D), and Reps. Rep. Chuck McGrady (R), Michael Wray (D), Annie Mobley (D), Garland Pierce (D), Elmer Floyd (D), Larry Bell (D), Charles Graham (D), Earline Parmon (D), Jim Crawford (D) and Glen Bradley (R).

“Marriage is the fundamental building block of our society. Children grow up with the greatest emotional stability in households with a loving and committed mother and father. Married couples rely less on government programs, and contribute to society rather than depending on the welfare state,” FRC head Tony Perkins said in a statement. “North Carolina invests in itself when it allows its citizens to vote on protecting and defending marriage. We urge the legislature to take this important step for their state, and join the majority of states nationwide in approving a ballot vote on marriage.”

Because marriage-equality supporters have for years compared states’ bans on same-sex marriage to the interracial-marriage ban, a strategy for gay-marriage opponents has been to mobilize African-American communities, where gay marriage is often a divisive subject.

In the fall, this strategy played out in Maryland, where a coalition of groups against same-sex marriage tried to appeal to the black community’s perceived ownership of “civil rights” and encouraged preachers and citizens to urge their state House delegates to vote against a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage. When support for the bill waned, the House recommitted it until 2012.

Advocates and opponents for marriage equality in Maryland have already begun campaigning ahead of next year’s vote in the state Legislature, and surfacing again is the argument that gay and lesbian couples are unfairly co-opting the black Civil Rights movement.

Del. Emmett C. Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore County), who has been a member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 1995, has long been outspoken against same-sex marriage and has made the point that gay rights are not civil rights.

Burns, who is black and a pastor, last month held a press conference at the church he founded, the Rising Sun First Baptist Church in Woodlawn, to announce his formal opposition to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s decision to support gay-marriage legislation in 2012. According to the Carroll County Times, during the conference, Burns urged attendants to persuade “minority churches” to get involved in the campaign to defeat the same-sex marriage bill.

Last month, Dr. Ruth Jacobs of Rockville, Md., erected the website Folks4md.com, which gathers information from media that argue against legalizing gay marriage. One of the main features on the “Resources” page of the site is a 10-part series of videos produced by Focus on the Family (FoF). Glenn Stanton, director for Family Formation Studies at FoF, counters the interracial-marriage argument in a three-minute video titled: “Is same-sex marraige [sic] like interacial [sic] marriage?”

Is same sex marriage like interracial marriage? … They are nothing alike, and here’s the difference: Racism is about keeping the races apart, and that is always wrong. Segregation was a serious, serious social problem. The fact that marriage exists exclusively between men and women, folks, is not a social problem; it is a deep, deep social good. … Striking down the bans on interracial marriage is nothing like striking down bans on exclusively heterosexual marriage. And it really is an ugly thing to equate the two. Segregation was run by an ugly, really evil system that kept people apart. What drives exclusively heterosexual marriage is a good thing. And to say that the two things are equal really does pollute the public discourse and really has no place in civil dialogue.

Stanton is white, and his audience, captured on film, appear to be predominantly white, as well.

Watch:

In the “Take Action” section of the site, a letter-generating program allows users to create an e-mail to send to state lawmakers using arguments such as “Same sex marriage is NOT a civil right. The father of the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote, ‘A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.’”

Sharon Lettman-Hicks, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), a self-described “Black LGBT civil rights organization,” told The American Independent that the black-centric argument against legalizing gay marriage is no argument at all.

“This conversation is getting old,” she said. “At the end of the day, one part of [same-sex-marriage] opponents’ campaign is a manipulation of words [that] trumps history. … Civil rights – little ‘c,’ little ‘r’ – belongs to everyone in the United States.”

Lettman-Hicks, who lives in Maryland, said the issue of same-sex marriage is about the “preservation of personal privacy” and about “two consenting adults [wanting] to be a family.”

She pointed out that African-American households are overwhelming single-parent run. (Figures from the Census Bureau in 2010 indicate that only 38 percent of African-American families in America consist of two parents.) “You’re going to tell me that two mommies is worse than one?” she said.

Since 2003, the NBJC has attempted to unite the black and LGBT communities, but despite the efforts of gay African-Americans to convince socially-conservative African-Americans that marriage equality is about equality for all Americans, the community is still divided on the issue.

Though the NAACP does not have an official position on whether same-sex marriage should be legal, its leadership is reaching out to the LGBT community. This year’s NAACP convention involved discussion of same-sex marriage, mainly from comedian Wanda Sykes, who has famously said during stand-up routines “I didn’t have to come out black.” NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous and Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond both support LGBT rights.

Next month, the NBJC is hosting its second annual OUT on the Hill Black LGBT Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. There, black LGBT leaders will advocate for various federal policies (PDF) that include following through with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Because the summit is about federal policy, marriage equality is not on the list, but other policies -– including the Family and Medical Leave Act and a health-care reform proposal to extend hospital visitation rights to same-sex domestic partners –- unavailable to same-sex couples in most states will be part of the focus.

Like many LGBT-rights advocates, Lettman-Hicks believes that a federal policy legalizing gay marriage is a matter of when rather than if, but, in the meantime, she hopes the battle continues within state legislatures rather than in voter referendums.

“I don’t want my freedom to be someone’s vote,” she said.

In a recent Washington Update, Perkins warns that “activists are already plotting to overthrow the Republicans’ pro-life, pro-family platform. … Homosexual groups like GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans are hoping to elbow their way into the conversation, but they’ll meet strong resistance from the solid conservatives that have historically dominated the platform process.”

Gay GOP groups’ essential strategy, as reported by the Washington Blade, is to try to make the party’s 2012 party platform more LGBT-friendly than 2008′s platform, which denounced same-sex marriage as well as statues against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in areas such as employment and adoption.

“Log Cabin Republicans plan to actively participate in the process to revise the party’s platform,” Log Cabin Republicans Deputy Executive Director Christian Berle told the Blade. “We recognize there will be a lot of work to be done to strengthen the importance of reaching out to LGBT Americans as a part of strengthening the party.”

Despite Perkins’ insistence that such efforts should be tamped down, he disputes the idea that there is a gay constituency in the Republican Party, stating, “Although Gov. Jon Huntsman is the only candidate with a pro-gay agenda, [GOProud board chair Christopher] Barron says he’s ‘confident’ that this almost non-existent constituency is ‘going to have a nominee that gay conservatives can work with.’” (Perkins ignores the fact that openly gay Republican candidate Fred Karger is still in the race and but has been fighting for recognition from his own party.)

Last month, GOProud was uninvited to next year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) “for pushing this same divisive agenda,” says Perkins. However, as a boost to their credibility within the Republican Party, GOProud recently acquired conservative commentator Ann Coulter as the new “honorary chair” of their advisory council.

Perkins’ major concerns with LCR and GOProud appears to stem from a concern that the Republican Party might bend a little on LGBT issues, but it’s the 2012 Democratic Party platform (which he says is also “under attack” by LGBT lobby groups) he fears more.

Homosexuals are already leaning on Democrats to step up their support for the LGBT cause when the Left convenes in Charlotte more than 13 months from now. In 2008, delegates made it clear that this is not your grandparents’ Democratic party. For the first time in history, the Left’s planks called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Now, homosexuals want more. They want “marriage.”

But FRC’s lobbying arm, FRC Action, and new Super Political Action Committee, Faith Family Freedom Fund, are prepared to push back on LGBT agendas from both parties.

“As always, the FRC Action team will be on hand in Florida, fighting for the values and priorities of America’s families,” Perkins said. “We’ll make sure the conservative base has a solid platform to stand on.”

In the run-up to the debt ceiling vote earlier this month, FRC president Tony Perkins penned a column urging cuts to government spending.

“It is easy to lose sight of the spiritual and moral implications of our current debt crisis,” Perkins wrote. “Christians must stand up against an immoral political regime which indebts us to such foreign powers as the anti-Christian Communist Chinese. Our leaders must cut spending, cut the debt, and end fiscal obligations to oppressive regimes.”

The group opposes an increase in tax revenues, especially allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. The group has repeatedly decried “government waste.” And earlier this week in a “memo the movement,” the group launched an effort to pressure the “Super Committee,” a group of Congress members charged with reducing the federal deficit to cut programs instead of enacting “job-killing tax increases.”

But the group’s affiliates have raked in government funds for controversial programs such as abstinence-only until marriage and healthy-marriage initiatives over the past decade, state and federal records show.

The Family Action Council of Tennessee received $10,000 from the state of Tennessee to host anti-pornography workshop in 2008. FACT supports cutting government spending. They also insinuate that the poor should pay more. “It seems to me that a major problem in Washington is that right at 50 percent of Americans no longer pay federal taxes,” wrote the group’s head David Fowler.

“Sexually oriented businesses often prey upon urban communities and those located along interstate routes and major state highways, especially where there are few zoning restrictions,” the group said on the event invite. “Adult businesses are now pursuing their agenda through their own state association and have a lobbyist promoting their interests at the state Capitol. This is not an ‘industry’ your community can afford to ignore.”

The Georgia Family Council has received about $165,000 a year from the Georgia Department of Human Services as part of a healthy-marriage initiative. The initiative is funded through a five-year, $960,000 grant from the federal Administration on Children and Families to the state of Georgia. The grant began in 2005 and ran through June of this year.

The organization acknowledges some good from government programs, but its president Randy Hicks notes in a recent blog post, “Big government may also hinder compassionate collaboration at the community level when its ubiquitous, taxpayer-funded programs role into town and crowd out private charitable organizations who are working to meet, not just material needs, but often emotional and spiritual needs as well.”

The Oklahoma Family Policy Council, which closed in March of this year for lack of funds, took in $100,000 a year through 2008 beginning as recently as 2005.

The American Independent News Network has also previously identified government funding for family policy councils in Indiana, Iowa and South Carolina.

The Indiana Family Institute received $50,000 from the Administration for Children and Families in 2005.

The Iowa Family Policy Center is part of the FAMiLY Leader, a group that has become heavily involved in the Republican presidential race. The group received $3 million in federal funding between 2004 and 2011. The FAMiLY Leader asked presidential candidates to sign a pledge that included a “commitment to downsizing government.”

The Palmetto Family Council in South Carolina received $1.2 million between 2008 and 2010 as part of the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program through the Administration of Children and Families.

Some state affiliates gain access to state and federal funds more indirectly, as well.

The Wisconsin Family Council, now called Wisconsin Family Action, partnered with the Foundation for a Great Marriage under a healthy-marriage initiative grant in the late-2000s.

“We recently worked with Foundation for a Great Marriage to kick off a ‘Think Marriage’ campaign by mailing to nearly 90,000 Wisconsin households a ‘Marriage Myth-Buster Guide,’” wrote the group’s Julaine Appling. “This 14-page publication busts 5 common marriage myths to smithereens, based on solid social-science research—research that continues to show that God’s plan for marriage and family is the very best plan for all of us. The challenge is for each of us to become, as the guide says, a Marriage Champion! The ‘Marriage Myth-Buster Guides’ are especially useful because they can be used with so many audiences. Wisconsin Family Council has already received numerous requests from pastors who want to use it in their churches, public-school teachers who want to use it in their classrooms, and just last week we had an individual contact us about using it in a crisis pregnancy center.”

Foundation for a Great Marriage has also been blogging in support of WFC, particularly around an anti-gay marriage amendment in the state.

Both groups were part of a lobbying campaignin 2005 to get $200 million from the federal government for marriage initiatives. The Foundation for a Great Marriage got $5.5 million in federal marriage grants between 2006 and 2010. While Wisconsin Family Action benefited from government funds, it calls for cuts to programs in Wisconsin.

The Center for Arizona Policy received a $210,000 settlement with the state of Arizona in 2009. The state settled on an abortion-related case where some abortion clinic regulations enacted by the state were ruled constitutional and others ruled unconstitutional. CAP was allowed to recoup “operating expenditures, insurance and related charges, and gross proceeds and payments to attorneys.”

Correction, August 22, 4:00 p.m.: This article originally included Rocky Mountain Family Council as an FRC affiliate. RMFC is an independent organization not affiliated with FRC. The story has been updated to reflect these changes.

Blunt’s “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011,” Senate Bill 1467, thus far has two co-sponsors, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), and it is an identical copy of a House bill that was introduced in March.

Five months before HHS ordered all Food and Drug Administration-approved forms of birth control to be offered to all insured women without a co-pay — a move that has become controversial, especially for anti-abortion rights advocates — Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb) introduced the “Respect for Rights of Conscience” bill, which anticipated HHS’s decision. One aspect in the Findings and Purposes section of both bills is:

PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] creates a new nationwide requirement for health plans to cover “essential health benefits” and “preventive services” (including a distinct set of “preventive services for women”), delegating to the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to provide a list of detailed services under each category, and imposes other new requirements with respect to the provision of health care services.

Fortenberry’s bill has 44 co-sponsors and hasn’t seen any congressional action since March 28, according to bill records documented by the Library of Congress.

This legislation is intended to amend the Affordable Care Act by adding a section titled “Respecting Rights of Conscience With Regard to Specific Items of Services,” which states that a health plan will not have failed to provide “the essential health benefits package” described in the health care law, if the reason to deny coverage of certain services is because one or more of the services “is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions” of either the sponsor, issuer or entity offering the health care plan. That also applies to individuals, in the case of individual coverage, whose “religious beliefs or moral convictions” are in conflict with any services covered under the health care law.

Under the proposed legislation, health care providers will not be required “to provide, participate in, or refer for a specific item or service contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The day before Blunt introduced the Senate version of this bill, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), put out a press release criticizing the “new HHS ‘preventive services’ mandate requiring private health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.” Declaring that the new ruling violates “conscience rights,” the USCCB called on Congress to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience” bill.

Despite the Institute of Medicine disputing claims that the FDA-approved contraceptive methods offered to be covered fully under the health care law cause abortions, statements such as USCCB’s have been perpetuated by influential policy groups such asAmericans United for Life and the Family Research Council.

This week on the FRC’s Washington Watch Daily Radio Commentary, FRC President Tony Perkins said:

Starting next August, fertility might as well be a disease–because that’s how the government will be treating it. This month, HHS ordered all health insurers to offer free birth control–regardless of anyone’s objections. Drugs like Ella and Plan B are part of the mandate, even though they can destroy a developing baby. Once the regulations go into effect, this “emergency contraception” will be considered basic medical care–and taxpayers who don’t agree will still have to pick up the tab.

Blunt’s bill has been read twice and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for review.

“We needed to balance the budget — we need to limit the size and scale of government — what they did with this proposal was kick the can down the road,” Santorum told Fox’s Greta Van Susteran last week. “They did get some cuts, but everyone knows those cuts in the first two years are small — those are the only ones that really can be controlled.”

Rhetoric aside, Santorum’s quest for earmarks landed him in hot water in 2006, when an anti-gay organization that he secured earmarks for supported his political campaign for Senate.

The Urban Family Council has received $1,016,169 in federal funds for abstinence education and other programming since 2003 chiefly through earmarks secured by Santorum. The money is part of $3.1 million that Santorum earmarked, along with fellow former Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, for social conservative causes in Pennsylvania.

The UFC is not your typical social-services organization. The Philadelphia-based group took shape in 1987 when William Devlin took over the Philadelphia Family Policy Council and renamed it the Urban Family Council.

According to the Presbyterian News, Devlin sees the “predilection toward alternative life-styles in American cities as reflective of the same trend in Berlin and Amsterdam before the rise of the Third Reich.”

Those “alternative lifestyles” are Philadelphia’s LGBT communities.

Devlin’s group supports laws criminalizing gays and lesbians. He told the Advocate in 2003, that he is “one of those folk who believes the government should be in our bedrooms.” He also filed suit to prevent domestic partner benefits from taking effect in Philadelphia and has vociferously supported a proposed amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution barring same-sex marriage.

Financial connections

In addition to securing earmarks for the UFC, Santorum’s foundation, Operation Good Neighbor, gave the group $10,000 in 2002. That foundation came under fire because it paid officers in Santorum’s campaign and was run out of his campaign office.

Santorum’s support for the UFC and Devlin was reciprocated in 2006.

UFC was part of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network which held a get-out-the-vote drive in Pennsylvania churches and featured a spring 2006 address by Santorum. No other candidates were given the same courtesy.

In fact, his opponent, now-Sen. Bob Casey, sent a letter requesting that he also be allowed to address the PPN. He was rebuffed and Devlin threw his full support behind Santorum.

“I am sure you are interested in clearly showing that the Pennsylvania Pastors Network does not endorse candidates,” Casey wrote. “I would greatly appreciate being allowed a few minutes to share my values and priorities.”

Santorum said in his video message to 125 clergy that March, “I encourage you to let your voices be heard from the pulpit” the New York Times reported. “You are the leaders of the flock. You have a responsibility to be informed and to inform” and “to help guide those who seek your counsel,” especially in regard to banning same-sex marriage. The pastors were each given a copy of Santorum’s book, “It Takes a Family.”

The appearance of a quid pro quo relationship between the UFC and Santorum sparked criticism from many quarters.

UFC and the PPN were subject to a complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in 2006 because of the perceived focus on reelecting Santorum. The group held an election day prayer and fasting for the senator.

“Do you understand the Christian concept of forgiveness? Let’s move on and let’s work together for Rick Santorum’s re-election.” Devlin said at the time regarding hard feelings between conservative voters and Santorum after the senator endorsed moderate Republican Arlen Specter for re-election over more conservative challenger Pat Toomey in 2004.

CREW’s executive director, Melanie Sloan, said in a statement:

“[I]t appears that rather than engaging in legal, non-partisan get-out-the-vote efforts, the real mission of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network is to assist Senator Santorum in his re-election campaign. This is exactly the sort of political activity prohibited by IRS law.” Sloan continued, “the IRS has already taken action against a liberal church in Pasadena, California for much less egregious activities. If the IRS is serious about enforcing the law equally, it will take action against those involved in creating the Pennsylvania Pastors Network.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,said the relationship “creates a gigantic conflict of interest – an inappropriate meshing of the interests of the Urban [Family Council] and the interests of Senator Santorum.”

Santorum and groups fighting equality

Pennsylvania Pastor’s Network, which UFC used to support Santorum’s 2006 campaign, is a group that describes itself as a “network of Biblically-faithful clergy and church liaisons whose objective is to build a permanent infrastructure of like-minded clergy.”

Also in the group: the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, Let Freedom Ring and the Pennsylvania Family Institute. The latter is a part of Focus on the Family’s network of family policy councils that work to block and dismantle LGBT equality efforts.

Santorum has riled LGBT rights advocates for years because of his comparisons of LGBT relationships to bestiality, polygamy and incest. Activist and advice columnist Dan Savage even launched an effort to have the word “Santorum” redefined as a product of anal sex. But Santorum hasn’t backed off.

In an interview on Friday with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a “hate group,” Santorum said the idea of LGBT equality is “absurd.”

“They want to force their worldview on us and they’re using this idea of ‘equality,’ which is absurd,” he said. “This has nothing to do with how two people want to live their lives. It has everything to do with an agenda that is ultimately going to destroy the family, weaken the family and weaken our religious liberties in this country.”

Santorum’s fading credibility with fiscal conservatives

Santorum’s earmarks have given him a mixed record during his time in the U.S. Senatewith groups like the Club for Growth. “His record is plagued by the big-spending habits that Republicans adopted during the Bush years of 2001-2006,” the group says.

Fiscal conservatives and tea partiers have begun to call it the Santorum Scam.

He’s claimed that he was “Tea Party before there was a Tea Party,” but RedState.com’s Ben Domenech begged to differ.

Does Rick Santorum have any clue what the Tea Party movement stands for? … Doesn’t he realize that the big government solutions he advocated for in his book are exactly the reason so many Tea Partiers today don’t call themselves Republicans any more? … (H)e was never categorized as someone with robust views on the size or scope of government. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in his book review of the Senator’s It Takes a Family, “[Santorum's] first priority is to make government pro-family, not to make it small.”

Gov. Rick Perry will be free to usher, direct parking or join hands onstage with James Dobson one week from Saturday, thanks to a ruling yesterday in Houston federal court dropping a suit meant to keep him from participating in his Houston prayer rally.

“My prayer is that the courts will find that the First Amendment is still applicable to governors no matter what they might be doing,” Perry told reporters Wednesday, and yesterday’s court decision agreed.

The New York Times wrote the dismissal of the suit brought by the atheist and agnostic Freedom From Religion Foundation amounts to “a key legal victory in what has become one of the most controversial events of his political career in Texas”:

Judge Gray H. Miller, of Federal District Court in the Southern District of Texas, ruled that the plaintiffs — the foundation and five of its Houston-area members — had suffered no concrete injury and that the governor’s invitations for Texans to join him in a day of prayer were “requests, not commands.” People offended by the governor’s prayer rally can either not attend, not pray or express their disapproval using their First Amendment rights, the judge said. He dismissed the lawsuit and the motion to stop the governor’s official participation.

After his appearance on Family Research Council president Tony Perkins’ radio show yesterday, Perry may be welcomed a little more enthusiastically by the anti-gay American Family Association and other “Response” leaders who questioned his comments last week that New York’s new marriage equality law was “fine by me.”

In keeping with statements he’s made before, Perry said it should be a states’ rights issue, like legalizing marijuana. AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer told the Texas Independent earlier this week that Perry “missed an opportunity” when he made those remarks, but yesterday Perry wasn’t about to let it go by again.

“Obviously, gay marriage is not fine with me,” he told Perkins, adding that marriage equality moves by New York and other states risk ruining the institution for all of us.

“Indeed, to not pass the federal marriage amendment would impinge on Texas,” Perry said.

Perry spokesman Mark Miner told the Los Angeles Times it wasn’t a change of position at all, and that Perry has “been very consistent” on his stance.

Perry’s comments last week were: “That’s New York, and that’s their business and that’s fine with me. That is their call.”

More headlines:

Austin American-Statesman: Lawsuit could be a help or hindrance for Doggett
Doggett, D-Austin, had wanted to have an Austin-area congressional redistricting case heard by itself in an Austin court. The hope was to quickly dispose of the case and undo the work of the Legislature, which created a congressional district map last month that carves Travis County into five districts and seemed to be designed to end Doggett’s nearly 17-year tenure in Congress.

San Antonio Express-News: Perry late to embrace Reagan
If Perry finds significance in Reagan’s election, or learned anything about rugged individualism during the Gipper’s eight years as president, it took a long time for the inspirational lessons to sink in.

Associated Press: Texas town auctions troubled jail for $6 million
A $6 million bid has been declared the winner of an auction Thursday to sell off a prison that has been a financial millstone on the back of a small High Plains Texas town.

Odessa American: Guest view: Do school accountability ratings mean anything?
The upcoming 2011 Accountability Ratings are destined to produce even more public skepticism. Why? Because in calculating this year’s state ratings, TEA will not apply the controversial Texas Projection Measure, a complex student growth projection that allowed many districts, and their campuses, to receive higher ratings in 2010 than would otherwise have been the case.

Texas Tribune: Fees for Students Redefine “Free” Public School
As cash-strapped public schools attempt to squeeze every possible dollar out of their budgets, an unpleasant reality awaits parents: They will most likely have to pay for programs and services that schools once provided for free.

New York’s Catholic bishops reacted by calling the vote a radical altering of of marriage.

“The passage by the Legislature of a bill to alter radically and forever humanity’s historic understanding of marriage leaves us deeply disappointed and troubled,” the group wrote in a statement following the vote. “We worry that both marriage and the family will be undermined by this tragic presumption of government in passing this legislation that attempts to redefine these cornerstones of civilization. Our society must regain what it appears to have lost –- a true understanding of the meaning and the place of marriage, as revealed by God, grounded in nature, and respected by America’s foundational principles.”

The reaction of the National Organization for Marriage, a group that opposes rights for same-sex couples and that had declared victory in New York just days before the vote, was much more pointed.

Maggie Gallagher, NOM’s chair, blamed Republicans for the passage of gay marriage.

“What does it mean that they passed gay marriage in N.Y.?” Gallagher asked in a blog post at the National Review. “Michael Long, the Conservative-party chairman, has vowed to withhold his endorsement. The National Organization for Marriage has committed $2 million to persuading Republicans: Voting for gay marriage has consequences. Sad that the N.Y. GOP has caved. Consequences to be continued.”

NOM sent out a plea asking for money to defeat four Republicans and two Democrats that voted for the marriage equality bill.

“[T]he Republican Party has sold out, and it is the Republican Party that will pay the worst price for this vote to redefine marriage,” wrote Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “In response to last night’s vote, I have doubled our pledge to New York, committing at least $2 million to make sure that New York Republicans understand that voting for gay marriage has consequences.”

On Facebook immediately after the vote, NOM went so far as to insinuate that New York Republicans had betrayed Jesus.

Other religious right organizations made similar claims. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel warned that God would harm New York because of the vote.

“Gay ‘marriage’ mockery: ‘Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.’ Gal 6:7. Dark days ahead for NY,” Barber wrote in one tweet. “Gay “marriage” silliness: Sad for NY. Sad for America. Yet not unexpected. We mock God & He obliges. Buckle in. Rough ride ahead,” he wrote in another.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, an organization that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, accused New York Republicans of taking bribes.

“Enormous political coercion has resulted in a profound failure of moral courage in the New York Senate. A clear majority of the people of New York oppose counterfeit ‘marriage,’ but Gov. Cuomo and anti-family lawmakers have shown that their allegiance is to a small but vocal minority seeking to redefine marriage and family,” he said in a statement. “The so-called religious protections that were tacked on to the bill will ultimately do nothing to protect the religious rights of New York citizens. As we go forward there is little doubt that the “incentives,” some taxpayer funded, used to sway votes, especially Republican ones, will be exposed.”

New York representatives of the Catholic church were not happy with the outcome. The Reverend Monsignor Kieran Harrington, a Catholic priest in Brooklyn, told the BBC that he thinks the new law is offensive.

“What we find repugnant is that this is being described as a civil rights issue,” he said. “African-Americans weren’t allowed to use the same fountains as white people. There were lynchings. The civil rights legislation was a reaction to this very real level of discrimination. If you say it’s a civil rights issue, then the state uses the coercive means at its disposal.”

POS, a Republican polling firm, was hired by religious right outfit Alliance Defense Fund to conduct the poll. The poll’s numbers stand in stark contrast to a series of polls that show majority support for same-sex marriage among the American electorate, and come on the eve of a contentious push in New York to legalize gay marriage.

The Alliance Defense Fund — founded in part by Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ and the American Family Association, which has been dubbed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — paid for the poll. The ADF opposes any rights for same-sex couples including marriage, civil unions and domestic partner benefits.

The poll found that 63 percent of Americans agreed with the statement, “I believe marriage should be defined ONLY as a union between one man and one woman,” with 53 percent strongly agreeing with the statement. Thirty-five percent disagreed.

The poll’s sponsors did not release methodology or crosstabs, but did release basic information (PDF).

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which is also listed as a hate group by the SPLC, praised the poll.

“This survey is a reflection of the voters in 31 states who have voted overwhelmingly to preserve marriage at the ballot box – with Minnesota, North Carolina and Indiana next in line with referendums,” he said. “As New York legislators debate a marriage redefinition bill, they should consider the impact on families, children and religious liberty. In 2006, the New York Court of Appeals reasonably concluded that the legislature has a legitimate interest in promoting responsible procreation and can ‘rationally’ believe that children need both a mother and a father.”

The poll contrasts with several mainstream polls released in recent months that found majority support for same-sex marriage. A Gallup poll in early May found that 53 percent of Americans support gay marriage. A CNN poll asked the same question in April and found 51 percent in support of gay marriage. The Washington Post released a poll in March showing 53 percent of Americans support marriage for same-sex couples.