"The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman. That's what it says. I think where we may take exception with some religious leaders is that we believe in inclusion, that everybody deserves to live with dignity and respect, and that equal rights under the law are important" - Democratic party Chairman Howard Dean, on "The 700 Club", Wednesday May 10, 2006

During the 2004 presidential GOP primaries McCain called Jerry Falwell "an agent of intolerance" while Howard Dean asked an Evangelical couple, on On February 14  2005 (as quoted in Christianity Today): "How can you support me, one who has a strong conviction on gay marriage and a woman's right to choose....?"

In a July 21, 2002 interview on Tim Russert's "Meet The Press", then Democratic Primary contender Howard Dean told Russert, about Dean's decision to sign into law the Vermont bill granting civil union to same sex couples in the state:

"I never got to have a discussion with myself about whether this made any political sense or not because I knew that whether I was going to win the next election or lose it, that every day I was going to have to look at myself in the mirror and decide what kind of a human being I was. And if I denied a whole bunch of human beings equal rights under the law simply because it was politically inconvenient and bad for my career, then there was really no difference between me and three-quarters of the rest of the politicians in this world. But I didn't do that. I signed the bill. It took guts"

In the recent past, Howard Dean had taken to quoting Democratic Party advisor Jim Wallis' rejoinder to the Christian right's obsession with the issue of gay marriage, that "the Bible mentions caring for the poor 3,000 times; it doesn't mention gay marriage at all". But, last week, Dean charted an abrupt course shift  and appeared on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" to loudly proclaim that the Democratic Party platform was opposed to same sex marriage:  

"[On] gay marriage: the platform said marriage is between a man and a woman. That's what it says....I'm not saying we'll agree with everything between the more conservative evangelicals and Democrats but I think there's more common ground and we're willing to work with the evangelical community."

Why the Democratic Party Chairman chose to misstate the party position is unclear, and his statement was quickly and scathingly corrected by commentators from all quarters. But one aspect of Dean's misfired bombshell received little note: the venue Dean chose could hardly have been symbolically more offensive due to the history of statements emitted by Pat Robertson on "700 Club". The choice was profoundly toxic.

Now, Pat Robertson has weighed in on numerous issues :

"If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer." [ CNN, October 10, 2003 ]  Robertson. advocating - apparently - destroying the US State department with a nuclear device

    "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians." Pat Robertson, fundraising letter, 1992

    "[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns." Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 4/9/91

    "It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians.... The people who have come into [our] institutions [today] are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians.... The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation."  Pat Robertson, New York Magazine, August 18, 1986, p.24

Robertson, the founder of the "Christian Coalition" and one of the principal architects of the Christian right's political ascendance, seems to hold a singular animosity towards gays and lesbians:

"I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you. ... [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." - Pat Robertson, as reported by Media Matters For America, warning Orlando, Florida city officials on the alleged consequences of hanging rainbow flags, from city lamposts, during the annual Gay Days event at Disney World.  

    "...What kind of craziness is it in our society which will put a cloak of secrecy around a group of people whose lifestyle is at best abominable. Homosexuality is an abomination. The practices of those people is appalling. It is a pathology. It is a sickness, and instead of thinking of giving these people a preferred status and privacy, we should treat AIDS exactly the same way as any other communicable disease..." - 700 Club, 6-6-88 (source: People for the American Way Foundation)

    "When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together." - Pat Robertson, 700 Club, 1-21-93 (source: People for the American Way Foundation)

    "[Gays seek] to destroy all Christians." -  Pat Robertson, as quoted by People for the American Way, in "Hostile Climate," 1994, p.9

Did Howard Dean know that his appearance at such a forum on which these sorts of statements have been broadcast - let alone concurring with that forum's host in opposing same sex marriage - might have been be viewed, to put it rather mildly, in a negative light ? Could Howard Dean possibly been unaware of Pat Robertson's rhetorical legacy ?  

Like Dean, John McCain has in the past sought to build a reputation as a politician with positions independent from party ideology. But, McCain's presidential ambitions may have cast a shadow on his claims as a "straight talking" politician.

McCain's public overtures towards Jerry Falwell are not new. In April, 2006 on NBC's "Meet The Press", McCain answered to Tim Russert's question "Do you believe that Jerry Falwell is still an agent of intolerance?" with the reply : "No, I don't. I think that Jerry Falwell can explain to you his views on this program when you have him on." [ for further analysis of Republican commentator efforts to portray McCain's pandering as political "maturation", Media Matters ]

Mainstream news reporting on McCain's Liberty University appearance has tended to lack context: like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell has made many contentious public statements:

"We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today ... our battle is with Satan himself."- Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority Report, September 1984

    "I think Mohammed was a terrorist." -Jerry Falwell, 60 Minutes, October 6, 2002

    "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" -  Rev. Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979 pp. 52-53, from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, "The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom"

    "The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible,without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc." - Jerry Falwell, "Finding Inner Peace and Strength"

    "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." -Jerry Falwell, Sermon, July 4, 1976

    "This poisonous rot about creatures not of God's making, societies of 'aliens' without a good Christian among them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realizing the true will of God." -Jerry Falwell, "Can Our Young People Find God in the Pages of Trashy Magazines? No, Of Course Not!" Reader's Digest, Aug. 1985: p142-157

In particular, Falwell's vilification of homosexuals casts a harsh light on John McCain's commencement address exhortation to tolerance, that
"Americans deserve more than tolerance from one another." :

"Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches.....thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there'll be a celebration in heaven." - Rev. Jerry Falwell, "Old Time Gospel Hour" broadcast, March 11, 1984, quoted by Rev. Jerry Sloan, "Is Jerry Falwell a liar?" Freedom Writer, September, 1994

    "Someone must not be afraid to say, 'moral perversion is wrong.' If we do not act now, homosexuals will 'own' America!...If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way...and our nation will pay a terrible price!" - Jerry Falwell, as quoted by People for the American Way in "Hostile Climate," 1997, p.15

Howard Dean and John McCain may be under the sway of highly paid campaign consultants, in consultation with myriad focus groups, who counsel such pandering in hopes of attracting American evangelical "values voters". But, evangelical or not, voters can have an uncanny nose for hypocrisy, and beyond simple resonance in stated values, voters also want politicians who demonstrate they hold values of a deeper sort....

....such as integrity .