Before telling attendees of the Values Voter Summit about her “sexual rampage” as part of an attack on Sandra Fluke and the contraception coverage mandate, right-wing activist Star Parker sat down with Buster Wilson of the American Family Association to knock the Republican Party for not being anti-gay enough. While Paul Ryan is a vehement opponent of gay rights, Wilson and Parker were upset that Ryan did not speak in depth about his stance against marriage equality at a time when Democrats are campaigning on the issue.
Parker offered a stern warning to the GOP: speak out against same-sex marriage or lose God’s blessing. Parker, who interviewed Ryan for her own show, expressed disappointment in his speech and said that she was “not confident that God is going to shine down upon the party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan, while we are running away from the very core issues that birthed us as a party.” In fact, Parker even likened the fight over marriage equality to the debate over slavery.
Wilson: One of the things that Paul Ryan did not speak of in his speech today was the issue of marriage, it seemed like once again ‘it’s the economy stupid’ with this campaign and we’ve done everything we can do to shy away from any of the social issues, in particular marriage. But not the Democrats, it seemed like everybody that spoke at the Democratic Convention brought up the fact that they were the party for abortion and gay marriage and gay rights. Why do you think the conservatives that are—let me rephrase this— why do you think the Romney campaign seems to want to shy away from those issues as much as he does.
Parker: Because the Republican Party is a political party, when you think about the social environment, if you think about the social issues, they demand us to talk about morality and I think that the Republican Party has made the decision that they don’t want to. The challenge before them, however, is that this election is about choosing who we are going to serve. According to the Scripture, God said I’d laid life and death before you, good and evil before you, those are defining topics. As you just mentioned, Democrats have made it clear who they are and they are going to make sure that we define ourselves. So it is unfortunate that even though Romney and the Republicans have decided that we are not going to define ourselves and that now Paul Ryan has not done that here at the Values Voter Summit. I do not know who prepared his remarks for him, I love him, I’ve known him since he came to Washington, D.C., I am very hopeful that his star will consider to shine. But I am just not confident that God is going to shine down upon the party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan, while we are running away from the very core issues that birthed us as a party. We are at that critical cross point, similar to the 1850s; we cannot go on like this half-free and half-slave. We are going to have to do what Abraham Lincoln did and that’s reach into the Scripture and say ‘a house divided against itself can’t stand.’
