Lou Engle, the GOP’s new it-kid spiritual leader, is banging on the gays and how they are possessed by “demons.” Predictably, this has been received positively. (By demons, do they mean the unholy trinity “Bed, Bath and Beyond”?)

As the Rachel Maddow Show has recently showcased, on December 16th the Family Research Council sponsored a “Prayercast” event, attended by GOP luminaries including Senators Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback, and House Representatives Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes. But FRC head Tony Perkins did not lead the prayer event. That honor fell to Lou Engle, Founder of TheCall. Besides leading the capstone stadium rally for pro-Proposition 8, antigay marriage organizers last November 1, 2008 at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, Lou Engle could also be found, at a special ceremony at a Virginia Beach megachurch last summer, anointing and blessing GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich.

Meet the Republican Party’s new spiritual guru, Lou Engle:

“My son Jesse, he’s nineteen years old. God has given him dreams, to go to San Francisco to launch a house of prayer, one block from the Castro District - where the homosexuals boast the dominion of darkness. He’s going there with weeping in his heart. With the dream that prayer is stronger than the dominion of that spirit.

...He said to me, “dad,” he said, “as long as I’m there I don’t think the Lord will judge San Francisco.” [boos, angry murmur from Engle’s audience]...

He’s nineteen years old. He’s starting to cast out homosexual spirits out of our new converts. It’s scary*. The whole thing’s scary. But fathers are to send their sons into the darkest places.”

(AlterNet: GOP’s New Prayer Guru Says Gays Possessed By Demons)