While Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum received media backlash for signing an Iowa pledge that made suggestive comments about slavery, news agencies broadly linked the pledge to a conservative group, The Family Leader.
The pledge enjoined GOP presidential candidates to denounce gay marriage, and included a line that read, “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”
The mastermind behind the anti-gay, slave embedded pledge is Bob Vander Plaat, an arguably influential figure in Iowa GOP politics.
Plaats is known as an anti-gay Conservative who many Republicans have extolled, including current Republican presidential candidates, and is considered to have “powerful” influence in the GOP caucuses. The broker for the Iowa GOP was a candidate in the gubernatorial election.
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