The blogger who first surfaced Marcus Bachmann’s “barbarians” audio from 2010 says in no uncertain terms that the clip of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) husband saying gays “need to be disciplined” was not altered whatsoever.
“I didn’t doctor a damn a thing,” DumpBachmann.com blogger Ken Avidor told New York magazine.
Bachmann and one of the counselors at his clinic are distancing themselves from the controversial remarks by saying, in essence, that they never happened.
Not so says Avidor, who first posted the audio clip from Christian talk radio show “Point of View” back in May, 2010. It was later picked up by ThinkProgress and went viral.
The show’s not talking — it didn’t respond to requests from New York or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which published Bachmann’s quote about it being doctored this morning.
The show also didn’t immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment on the issue.
Bachmann told the Star-Tribune he was talking about children, not gay people, when he referred to “barbarians” something Avidor — an avid follower of all things Bachmann — told New York could be the case.
Here’s the original question from the transcript of the clip posted by New York:
Question: Today The Wall Street Journal came out with an article, “What do you say when your teenager is gay?” What do you say to Christian parents who come up with this?Bachmann: Well, I think you clearly say, what is the understanding of God’s word on homosexuality. And I think that this is no mystery that a child or pre-adolescent, particularly adolescents, will question and wonder about sexuality. That’s nothing new under the sun since the beginning of time. But I don’t think we should take that as, because we wonder or we think or we question, does that take us down the road of homosexuality —
Question: Could you add the word experiment to that?
Bachmann: Well, certainly, there’s that curiosity. But again, we, like, you know, it is as if we have to understand: Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. And just because someone feels it or thinks it, doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to go down that road. That’s what’s called the sinful nature. And we have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps.
Avidor says he’s heard Bachmann say “children are barbarians” before, and often says “things need to be “civilized out of them.” So he does acknowledge that Bachmann may have been taken — at least somewhat — out of context.
Read the full New York post, including Avidor’s take on the quote in context, here.
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