American Family Association of Michigan president Gary Glenn won a Republican primary for a seat in the Michigan state House yesterday, making him potentially the second most virulently anti-gay GOP candidate in the country, behind Colorado demon-hunter Gordon Klingenschmitt.
Glenn was a prominent supporter of Michigan’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning marriage equality and was a big backer of his “very special friend” Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential bid. As the head of the American Family Association’s Michigan affiliate, Glenn has pushed any number of extreme anti-gay positions:
- Wants states to be able to recriminalize homosexuality: “[W]e believe that states should be free to regulate and prohibit behavior that’s a violation of community standards and a proven threat to public health and safety — including, as most of the United States did throughout its history, homosexual behavior.”
- Warned that companies should be wary of hiring LGBT people.
- Wanted public schools to ban Gay Straight Alliances because they promote “homosexual propaganda” and “risky behavior.”
- Called anti-bullying measures the “Trojan horse” of “homosexual activists.”
- Was a plaintiff in a lawsuit to stop the 2009 federal hate crimes law by falsely claiming it would criminalize the Bible.
- Targeted openly gay state House candidate, narrating a robocall that used the word “homosexual” ten times.
This, of course, is all run of the mill for someone associated with the American Family Association.