A September summit featuring Minnesota
Rep. Michele Bachmann and anti-gay minister Bradlee Dean has been
canceled, the
Minnesota
Independent
reported.
Organizers said the Freedom Jamboree
suffered from low ticket sales.
Also scheduled to appear at the Kansas
City, Kansas event were Joseph Farah, editor of the socially
conservative news site WorldNetDaily,
and Jerome Corsi, author of Where's the Birth Certificate?
The event, billed
as the national tea party straw poll convention, was being organized
by Bob Vander Plaats. Vander Plaats' Iowa-based Christian
conservative group The Family Leader has been under heavy fire for
asking 2012 presidential candidates to sign a two-page anti-gay
marriage pledge. Only Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick
Santorum took the pledge.
Dean, who helms the
ministry You Can Run But You Can't Hide International and
hosts the nationally syndicated radio show The Sons of Liberty,
created an uproar when he suggested President Barack Obama and
Democrats are not Christians in delivering the Minnesota House's
opening prayer in May. The next day, the chamber approved a
constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, sending it to voters
for their approval in 2012 – a move Dean took credit for.
“I believe I have
done my duty,” Dean
wrote in a blog post in which he said gay people are criminals.
The cancellation
might provide comfort to Bachmann who has toned down her anti-gay
rhetoric since officially declaring her run for the GOP presidential
nomination.
(Related: Marcus
Bachmann denies his clinic practices “ex-gay” therapy.)