On this day in both 2014, and in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted its first two profiles of Steve Scheffler, a member of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition and the 2012 Republican National Committee who is one of the key driving forces behind the GOP’s endless campaign against LGBT rights and same sex marriage. In effect, when Republican presidential campaigns go through Iowa every four years, their road to the nomination goes through him, no detours. Any perceived “moderate” stance on gay rights is a death sentence, and Scheffler is the judge and executioner who carries it out. Scheffler, who once worked on the 1988 presidential campaign of Pat Robertson, publicly admonished John McCain for having the nerve to have an appearance on the Ellen Degeneres Show, warned the legalization of gay marriage in Iowa would make Des Moines “the homosexual capital of the Mid-West”. Scheffler also made it a point to block gay Republican candidate Fred Karger from participating in GOP debates, and with the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, claims there are scientific studies that gay men only live to an average age of 47, that gay conversion therapy works, and that if social conservatives win the culture wars, it will result in an endgame where Jesus returns to Earth.
Steve Scheffler, as we predicted, served again on the GOP’s Platform Committee in 2016. You may have heard something about that platform, the one that was the most extreme party platform on social issues the GOP has ever put forth, including opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest, requiring the Bible to be taught in public high schools, appointing “family values” judges; barring female soldiers from combat, insisting same-sex marriage should be overturned by the Supreme Court despite strong support for this constitutional right in the nation at large determining which bathrooms transgender people may use, and defending the bigotry of business owners who would deny service to gay customers. And its that denial of even basic civil rights to gays, lesbians and transgender people that Scheffler is truly proud of.
It will be interesting to see how Scheffler continues to reconcile his faith and family values push when the president his party just helped get elected is a thrice-married serial adulterer who boasts about sexually assaulting women, and has barely even a passing interest in matters of faith. Because Scheffler will have to figure out whether or not he wants to get behind the incumbent in 2020, and the next time he prepares the GOP’s latest homophobic agenda.
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CSGOPOTD: Steve Scheffler- 2016 Update
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