Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

She has long denied any connection to Olive Tree Ministries, a Maple Grove, Minnesota-based organization that focuses on the three main themes of fundamentalist ministries: the return to Israel, the approach of end times and, first and foremost, the protection of little ones from those pink-uniformed “recruiters.” Nonetheless, the ministry’s web site contains a testimonial from Bachmann, and in 2004 she appeared on a radio show hosted by their founder, Jan Markell. It was on this program that the future congresswoman warned, “Gay marriage is a very real threat to the states. We need people to be in prayer so that we can get it voted on in the senate floor.”

The marriage bill, in the end, never did get a hearing on the floor, but OT founder and show host Markell was so impressed by her guest that she called for listeners to “pray for Michele.”

More glaring are the speaking tours Bachmann has taken part in with her husband Marcus, a therapist whose center, Bachmann and Associates, counts “un-gaying” homosexuals as one of its treatment options. Mirroring the bedroom-and-boardroom partnership between Anita Bryant and Bob Green, the Bachmanns have for years been fixtures at family values conferences and pastors summits, giving talks that link homosexuality with eternal damnation, and hauling forth speakers who claim to be “ex-gays freed from the bonds of homoeroticism."

Curt Prins, a Minneapolis-based marketing executive, who in 2005 attended one conference entitled The Truth About the Homosexual Lifestyle, recalled, in an interview for a documentary I am producing: “[Michele] was amongst her crowd, so she didn’t have to speak like a politician and just talk about gay marriage. She had the crazy eyes going, and this deep Minnesota accent you wouldn’t believe, when she was talking about how she was cornered and trapped in this bathroom by two lesbians.”

This refers to an incident that is now not only part of local political lore, but belongs in the annals of the News of the Weird. In April 2005, at a restaurant in Scandia, Minnesota, where Bachmann was holding a public forum on the gay marriage ban, she came running out of the women’s restroom, screaming, “Help! Help! I was being held against my will!” The would-be Rizzos in the john were two openly gay women who merely confronted Bachmann, on a purely verbal basis as she was washing her hands, about her lifelong devotion to demonizing homosexuals. Displaying the same paranoia that Bryant did in the waning days of her SOC campaign, when she demanded security for every TV and public appearance, Bachmann may have been so immersed in her phobia that she could only assume that when a gay woman approached her in the can, it would be to put her in a choke-hold … or violate her Christian purity.

A similarly strange incident took place that same month at the Capital, where a gay rights rally was being held. A security camera clearly documented Bachmann spying on the proceedings, crouching in bushes like a secret agent observing an enemy’s orgy. When asked about this by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Michele snapped, "I had high heels on and I just couldn’t stand anymore. I was not in the bushes."

Since running for congress, and taking office after the election, Michele and her husband have toned down their rhetoric to the point of never bringing up sexuality of any kind when speaking to the press or appearing in secular forums. Even same-sex marriage has, for the time being, been swept under the rug as a talking point, in favor of lowering taxes, hunting down illegal immigrants and, in another gaffe that got her in hot water, bombing Iran. But, make no mistake, the honorable representative, and the constituents who want her reelected in 2008, have not stopped their quest to drive all unrepentant gays and lesbians to the ends of the earth — or, at least, San Francisco.

There is no public record of Michele ever having expressed an opinion about Anita Bryant, let alone been inspired by her to devote her life to saving kids from becoming leather-chapped cruisers. But it’s hard not to see Bachmann as, deep down, being every bit a sourpuss as Bryant, even though she tries to appear as perky as Mary Tyler Moore (who, being another celebrity who spoke out against Anita, would not appreciate comparisons to her successor). Hopefully, if the congresswoman continues to make foolhardy statements like the ones noted above, and pull public stunts like her kiss-and-clutch of Beatle Bush, she may find herself on November 4 with… well, take a wild guess!


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