GOP hopeful Michele Bachmann is well known for her anti-gay political views – views that helped her win a Senate seat against a more moderate Republican candidate and that have influenced her stance on what she once called “the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, 30 years:” gay marriage.
Yet Bachmann — whose husband Dr. Marcus Bachmann is on record as being equally against LGBT equality and reportedly called homosexuals “barbarians” in a radio interview last year – has remained uncharacteristically neutral on the subject of LGBT Americans ever since launching her bid for the presidency.
The Washington Post reports that, despite Bachmann’s pronounced campaign objective to “defend marriage,” both Marcus and Michele have avoided commentary on the recent passage of legislation to legalize gay marriage in New York; and that, when questioned about whether or not individuals have the capacity to choose their sexual orientation, the GOP candidate has said, “I am running for the presidency of the United States…I am not running to be anyone’s judge.”
However, her stance goes directly against that purportedly practiced at Marcus Bachmann’s Christian-oriented counseling clinic — an organization which, according to recent reports, practices elements of a controversial, anti-gay method known as “reparative therapy” to convert homosexuals to a heterosexual lifestyle.
In a 2006 interview with City Pages, Marcus Bachmann echoed his wife’s non-judgemental mantra when he refused to comment on the clinic’s use of reparative therapy and insisted only that, “if someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay a homosexual, I don’t have a problem with that.”
But in the wake of Michele’s highly publicized candidacy, Raw Story reports that Truth Wins Out activist John Becker took hidden cameras into the Bachmann & Associates clinic — and noted that the counselors not only encouraged therapeutic “degayification,” but also breached establish ethical practices by failing to notify patients of the potential risks involved in their methods.
Thus far, neither Bachmann & Associates nor the Bachmann presidential campaign have issued comments to the press in response to Becker’s findings.
