Marcus Bachmann, husband of presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann, now says that comments in which he referred to gays as “barbarians” who need to be “educated” and “disciplined” were “doctored.”
In an interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Marcus Bachmann defended his family-owned Christian counseling business against allegations that it performs controversial gay-to-straight “repairative” therapy.
Bachmann didn’t deny that he or other counselors at Bachmann & Associates have attempted to convert gay patients, but he said it is not a special interest of the business and would only be attempted at the client’s request.
But as for an audiotape circulating the internet of a 2010 interview with Penna Dexter on the “Point of View” Christian radio talk show, Bachmann denies calling gays “barbarians,” and said the recording must have been “doctored.”
“I was talking in reference to children. Nothing, nothing to do with homosexuality. That’s not my mindset. That’s not my belief system. That’s not the way I would talk,” Bachmann said.
MSNBC has a clip of the interview where Bachmann is speaking about homosexuality for a full two minutes — uninterrupted by editing — answering Dexter’s question of what to do when a child tells a parent that they may think they are gay:
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Marcus Bachmann, who runs Bachmann & Associates Inc. out of clinics in Lake Elmo and Burnsville, told the Star Tribune that his treatment business is not focused on converting gays to heterosexuality.
But a recent investigation by “Truth Wins Out” — a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism — suggests that the Bachmann’s clinic regularly practices the discredited clinical method designed to “cure” gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.
The news has become problematic for his wife’s presidential campaign, highlighting Michele Bachmann’s long career of anti-gay sentiments.
