Senator Jim DeMint is often cited as its key Congressional leader. Here he is in South Carolina:
“People are beginning to see that there's no way we can pay the interest on our debt and every week, we're borrowing money to pay the debt we have and are creating new programs that are costing more money,” he said. “Hopefully in 2012, we'll make headway to repeal some of the things we've done, because politics only works when we're realigned with our Savior.”
DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend she shouldn't be in the classroom. “(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” he said. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”
"Freedom to religion" [sic] means firing gay high school teachers. Fiscal conservatism is to "realign with our Savior." On gay high school teachers, it's worth remembering that Ronald Reagan as long ago as 1978 aligned with Harvey Milk in opposing discrimination in the Brigg's Initiative. His op-ed before the initiative was regarded as a turning point against the anti-gay teacher crusade:
The timing is significant because he was then preparing to run for president, a race in which he would need the support of conservatives and moderates very uncomfortable with homosexual teachers. As Cannon puts it, Reagan was "well aware that there were those who wanted him to duck the issue" but nevertheless "chose to state his convictions."
Reagan penned an op-ed against the so-called Briggs Initiative in which he wrote, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this." This was a remarkably progressive thing for a politician, especially a conservative one about to run for president, to say in 1978. The Briggs Initiative was overwhelmingly defeated. Its sponsors blamed Reagan for the defeat.
Please don't tell me these people have moved past Christianism.