Tonight, the Southwest Metro Tea Party emerges from its social conservative closet--discretely tucked a page down on its website--by screening a movie at the Chanhassen Cinema:
This Month's Movie, January 31st:
"My War"
The Testimony of Bradlee Dean
With Special Guests: Bradlee Dean & Jake McMillian
Son's of Liberty Radio (Saturdays 3-5pm on am1280 The Patriot)
This will be a night for the entire family!
"My War" is an all-encompassing look at the country today.
This documentary will give you insight into topics such as:
* Our Founding Fathers * The Constitution *
* What kids are being taught in public schools *
* The myth of alcoholism * Drug abuse *
* Hollywood and the moral decline of our nation *
* The spiritual heritage and foundation of the United States *
* The lies in the media * & much more *HELP SPREAD THE WORD
& Be Sure To **BRING A FRIEND**
Trust Us -- You will not want to miss this Showing!
As Andy Birkey at Minnesota Independent, Karl Bremer at Ripple in Stillwater, and Ken Avidor at Dump Bachman have reported on an ongoing basis, Bradlee Dean ( birth name, Bradley Dean Smith) and Jacob "MacMillian" MacAulay run the homophobic "You Can Run But You Can't Hide" youth ministry from rural Annandale, out here in my neck of the woods (my state senate district, at least).
The Awl previewed the film itself last fall in My War': Bradlee Dean's Popular Struggle Against Those Criminal, Child-Molesting Gays.
Politico, like the mainstream media in general, may say that in the popular mind the Tea Party "movement draws on populist sentiments and pushes an agenda focused on reducing taxes, government spending and the national debt." In 2010, for instance, the New York Times reported that the Tea Party Avoids Divisive Social Issues. Other stories have suggested a Tea Party/social conservative split.
A recent poll found that Americans want Republicans to listen to the Tea Party, and given the earlier reportage about the Tea Party and social conservative ideas, those polled might readily be forgiven for assuming those ideas aren't a socially conservative agenda.
But the pollsters didn't actually define what Tea Party ideas are, so the coast is clear for the SW Metro Tea Party to fill in the blanks.
Southwest Metro Tea Party has other ideas indeed about what its ideas or "principles" are (scroll down a bit here), in a clear contrast with the agenda Politico outlines. Sure, there's the frontpage short version: "fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, free markets/free enterprise, [and] personal freedoms." But step deeper into the website for the self-described "longer version," and they align with the theocratic clap-trap espoused by Dean and MacAulay, as well as by the Republicans who love and support their ministry.
The group supports the principle of "personal liberty:"
No interference in private life, business, health, assembly, speech or possessions.
That "personal liberty" only goes so far, and certainly not to include a woman's right to make decisions about her own health or treating queer folk as equals. One principle is traditional marriage:
The union between a man and a woman, has been the foundation of every civilization in human history. It is incorporated into the fabric of our culture and civic life. It is the platform on which children, families and communities are nurtured. The institution of marriage is far too precious to surrender to the whims of a handful of unelected, activist judges. Males and females are born with profoundly sacred and contrasting, yet complementary characteristics and responsibilities.
So much for the notion of "private life." Not to mention butch and femme. Read all of the Principles of the Southwest Metro Tea Party here in all their glorious pretzel logic.
But such paradoxes seem easily bridged by this set and their fellow travelers. Most recently, Bremer reported about YCRBYCH's commitment to the fiscal responsibility that the SW Metro Tea Party endorses.
Bremer writes in You Can Run But You Cannot Hide was evicted from Plymouth offices in 2007 :
Bradley Dean Smith, aka “Bradlee Dean,” and his Annandale-based anti-gay hate “ministry” found out that you can run, but you cannot hide—from the landlord. In 2007, Smith’s Old Paths Church Ministries, dba You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, was evicted under court order from its offices in the Bass Lake Business Centre II in Plymouth for nonpayment of rent.
The eviction was the result of a complaint filed against Old Paths Church Ministries in Hennepin County Housing Court on June 7, 2007, by its landlord, Bass Lake Realty LLC of Minneapolis. . . .
Read the rest at RIS.
Given the road conditions out here today on the wind-swept prairie, I'll have to forgo the splendors of Dean's cinematic masterpiece in Chanhassen--surely a case of weather-induced cultural deprivation second only to missing a Katherine Kersten-led tour of Yale Sex Week.
Image: A promo for Dean's war.
Funny how Southwest Metro Tea Party's version of "religious freedom" only includes the freedom to stick The Nailed God on everything and not the opposite.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 31, 2011 at 04:40 PM
Wow Chanhassen Cinema! I realize you are in business to make money but don't you regret saying yes to this one?
Editor's note: The theater is available on a rental basis and the film wasn't on the regular schedule of films. I think this was a private rental. sjs
Posted by: Kathleen Stratton | Feb 01, 2011 at 03:28 PM