Jeb Bush to Meet with Extremist Gay Super Hater

                                                                          

That Jeb Bush is the putative “moderate” in the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential field says far more about the ever-rightward movement of the contemporary GOP than it does about Bush’s ideological proclivities. Although he bucks the tinfoil-hat crowd on Common Core and supports comprehensive immigration reform, Bush’s record on abortion rights, taxes, affirmative action, gun control, and Florida’s “stand your ground” law is that of a “head-banging conservative,” as he described himself in his first gubernatorial campaign. Still, the rump faction of centrist Republicans hardly has anyone else to whom they can turn in next year’s GOP contest, which is shaping up, like 2012, as a battle between the right and the far right. And though Bush situates himself in the former camp, he’s making entreaties to the latter.

   

In a story on how Bush is winning early support from prominent pro-choice, pro-marriage equality Republicans (even though the former Florida governor shares their views on neither issue), the Wall Street Journal’s Beth Reinhard and Reid Epstein report that Bush is set to meet with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, underscoring Bush’s commitment to wooing social conservatives — even the most extreme.

Since taking the helm of the FRC in 2003, Perkins has acquired a well-earned reputation as one of the country’s most vehement opponents of LGBT equality. He doesn’t simply oppose same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination measures; Perkins regularly engages in the demonization and smearing of LGBT people. Showing a flagrant disregard for the evidence, Perkins has called pedophilia a “homosexual problem.” Homosexuality, he has declared, leads to “eternal damnation.” After the suicides of LGBT teens led Dan Savage to start the It Gets Better project, Perkins condemned the initiative as “immoral,” “disgusting,” and an effort to promote “perversion.”

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