10 Most Horrifying, Absurd Things in the GOP State Platforms | | AlterNet

This year, Republicans at the state level have taken a brave stand against your sex life, the New World Order and paper currency.

The GOP leadership's plan for addressing the nation's problems is to make them worse in order to screw over Obama and Democrats. Republicans at the state level, however, have introduced more proactive solutions to America's ills. These include outlawing oral sex and porn, taking a stand against the New World Order, and, of course, granting fetuses greater rights than women.

Republican state platforms don't have a direct impact on national politics: they're way too weird for the GOP leadership, which has to balance pandering to the crazy right-wing with wooing independents. But since the state platforms are mostly cobbled together in town halls, they're a good gauge of what inspires activists on the ground -- an important guide to Republican politics in an election year that's seen many GOP fixtures felled by Tea Party right-wingers. (In May, Maine Tea Partiers staged a bloodless coup at the GOP platform town halls, replacing the traditional, bland party platform with a statement of principles soaked in Glenn Beckian paranoia.)

Here are 10 of the weirdest, most extremist planks that have made their way into recent GOP state platforms -- a telling glimpse of Republican views unfiltered by media consultants and political calculations, in an election year hijacked by the Tea Partiers.

1. Brave Stand Against the New World Order - Like Beck, the Maine GOP is speaking out against the totalitarian menace in its 2010 platform, pledging to resist "efforts to create a one-world government." (In 2008, Maine Republicans, still blind to the truth, failed to enlist in the fight.)

2. Get the UN Off Our Land! - Iowa Republicans most definitely do not want UN diplomats invading the state to raise their children, writing "We support parental rights and oppose the recognition of the United Nations Convention on “The Rights of the Child.” (Needless to say, they really don't have to worry -- the Treaty, which prohibits things like child labor, trafficking and child soldiers, carries no mandates and cannot impose laws at odds with the Constitution.)

3. GOP Thinks Gays Should Have Fewer Rights - Like the world's children, gays and lesbians have way too many rights. Republicans in several states would like to remedy this problem. The Texas GOP, which actually has the gall to say that homosexuality "tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases," opposes same-sex marriage, child custody rights for gays, and insurance and retirement benefits for same-sex couples.

4. The GOP Disapproves of Your Sex Life - Also relevant to the country's well-being is the kind of sex had by consenting adults. According to Texas Republicans, it definitely shouldn't be oral or anal. Their platform opposes the legalization of "sodomy," and demands that Congress "withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy."

5. No Taxes - Several platforms call for the abolition of the IRS, the Sixteenth Amendment and all federal taxes.

6. Nullification - The solution, embraced by a number of GOP platforms, is for states and individuals to ignore laws they deem unconstitutional. A sampling, from Montana: " ... the States not only have the right, but also the duty to nullify unconstitutional laws in order to protect their citizens."

7. Gold Standard - Like the federal government, paper money can't be trusted. Tea Party visionaries Glenn Beck and Ron Paul have a better idea though: gold. Several GOP platforms have embraced the sound economic plan to return to the gold standard. Montana advocates "a return to a gold and silver-based monetary system ... "

8. Birth Certificates

9. Science Is Scary -Several state platforms are also behind the totally non-embarrassing quest to teach Creationism in schools, so that kids' brains aren't too filled up with all the untrustworthy science.
Minnesota: "We should continue to encourage the voluntary expression of religious beliefs and traditions of students. "

10. Women - Finally, in a move that, sadly, actually dovetails quite nicely with national GOP politics, most Republican state platforms would really like the vessels that carry children to stop getting abortions or using contraception, so they've introduced several measures to curb these practices. Minnesota wants this weird thing to happen: "Members of the Minnesota House and Senate should introduce and support legislation defining conception as: “when the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) of Mankind is joined.”