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As I’ve discussed several times now, Vander Plaats heads a group called The Family Leader, itself a new repackaging of the previous groups such as The Iowa Family Policy Center. Vander Plaats and the IFPC lead the recall of 3 Iowa Supreme Court justices because they dared to rule, in what scholars agree is an accurate reading of the Iowa Constitution, that it was unconstitutional to forbid gay marriage according to the Iowa Constitution. This forcing out of Supreme Court justices not for any misconduct on the part of the justices but because of religious beliefs is unprecedented, and it really deserves more attention. I consider it the first real successful step towards theocracy.

Anyway, the IFPC (now organizational a subset of The Family Leader) not only campaigned against the justices. It has been promoting a bigoted, anti-gay campaign that compares exposing children to homosexuality as being worse than second-hand smoke exposure. I’ve brought this up before.

So someone tried to call Vander Plaats on this, and look - now he denies it: Vander Plaats denies involvement in anti-gay seminars

[The] man behind one of the state’s largest socially conservative political networks denied Monday that he had anything to do with a seminar series that presented homosexuality and its “second-hand effects” as a public health threat.

But the organization’s website continues to advertise the seminars, and the leadership of its subsidiaries have repeatedly said homosexuality is as dangerous as second-hand smoke.

Bob Vander Plaats, who heads The Family Leader, pushed back during a press conference when his guest, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, was asked if he agreed with the seminar’s conclusion that homosexuality is a bigger public health threat than smoking.

[…]

Vander Plaats said in the press conference, and confirmed during a one-on-one interview with The Iowa Independent following the Pawlenty appearance, that The Family Leader had no role in the seminars many deemed so controversial, saying it could be a product of the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC). The Family Leader is an umbrella organization that includes IFPC and the formerly federally funded counseling program Marriage Matters.

“We have not held seminars on that,” Vander Plaats told The Iowa Independent during the follow-up interview. “My guess would be that maybe it was something done earlier… you know, ‘The Other Effects’ — I don’t know how they (the IFPC) phrased it. I was not aware of it.”

When asked by The Iowa Independent how a blogger posted a screen shot of The Family Leader’s website with information about the seminar series, Vander Plaats pledged to look into it.

Chuck Hurley, who leads the Iowa Family Policy Center, made the charge in March 2010 that gay marriage was more dangerous than smoking.

“The Iowa Legislature outlawed smoking [in some public places] in an effort to improve health and reduce the medical costs that are often passed on to the state,” Hurley said at that time. “The second-hand impacts of certain homosexual acts are arguably more destructive, and potentially more costly to society than smoking.”

Days later the IFPC published information in its blog entitled: “What’s Worse — Smoking or Sodomy?” […]

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