He already has a long history of upsetting both racial and social minorities, and now, MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan is back in the headlines for rallying strongly against gay rights in his new book.
The 72-year-old former Republican presidential candidate, a regular on "The McLaughlin Group" and a "Morning Joe" commentator, slams both the U.S. military's repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the increasing legalization of same-sex marriage in the just-released "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive Until 2025?"
"Indoctrination of recruits, soldiers and officers into an acceptance of the gay lifestyle will transfer authority over the military, the most respected institution in America, to agents of a deeply resented and widely detested managerial state," Buchanan is quoted by On Top Magazine as having written in the new book, which he says describes the overall "cultural collapse" of the United States and "the slow death of the people who created and ruled the nation."
But Buchanan, who served as a senior advisor to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, has even harsher words for same-sex marriage, as The New Civil Rights Movement notes:
Can anyone believe this absurd notion of equality was intended by or written into the constitution by the Congress that produced the 14th Amendment? Although gay marriage has been rejected in 31 states in referenda, judges continue to declare that such unions be treated as marriages. An idea of equality rejected democratically by voters is being imposed dictatorially. In December 2010, a repudiated liberal Congress imposed its San Francisco values on the Armed Forces, by ordering homosexuals admitted to all branches of the service. Indoctrination of recruits, soldiers, and officers into an acceptance of the gay lifestyle will transfer authority over the military, the most respected institution in America, to agents of a deeply-resented and widely detested managerial state.
Buchanan's ultra-conservative take on LGBT issues is nothing new; he's previously referred to gays as "sodomites" who are "literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide." Of course, it isn't just his views on LGBT rights that are generating controversy; he also takes a particularly critical stance on U.S. race relations among other subjects, arguing that blacks and whites were actually more unified during the 1950s than they are today. "What we had then, which was a sense of cultural and social one-ness, we were a people, that I think that is what's being lost," he is quoted as saying before noting that the use of hyphenated terms like "African-American" have actually been detrimental to the anti-segregation cause.
Hear Buchanan read from "Suicide of a Superpower" here: