I’m posting this for two reasons:

1. It’s outrageous and nauseating, that there is a political party where this kind of rhetoric is acceptable, applied to human beings.

2. Said party also happens to host Religious Right figures like Bryan Fischer, Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, et al., who regularly say things every bit as grotesque as this about LGBT people.

For the eleventieth time, y’all: the beliefs that lead a person to scaremonger about gays raping children, about schools becoming hotbeds of “indoctrination into the homosexual lifestyle,” about how gays should be deported (looking at you, Peter Sprigg), are rooted in the same family of paranoid fear and fundamental hatred that leads Pat Bertroche, a Republican congressional candidate in Iowa, to say the following:

Instead of building a border fence to help stem illegal immigration, the U.S. government should implant microchips into immigrants before deportation, much like what is done with pets, Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician and one of seven Republicans running in the 3rd District Congressional primary, said Monday.

While speaking at a Tama County Republican forum, Bertroche made it clear that he wasn’t joking when he suggested treating undocumented immigrants like pets.

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

“I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?

“That’ not a popular thing to say, but it’ a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under,” Bertroche said.

It’s not a “popular” thing to say because you have to be a frightened, racist, hateful wingnut of the worst kind to suggest that we microchip human beings like housepets.

The more we understand this — that wingnuttia is a hotbed of many strains of a similar xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, ultimately anti-life virus — and the more we point it out, the more the sane people in the “movable middle” will truly see them for what they are.