Marrying Your Partner Like Marrying Eiffel Tower?

Legal marriage for same-sex couples opens the door for marriage to inanimate objects such as the Eiffel Tower, says the Iowa campaign cochair for Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann.

Tamara Scott, Iowa director for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, was named to the cochair post last week. In a conversation with Iowa antigay activist Bob Vander Plaats posted on YouTube, she brought up polyamory — people having more than one partner — and “objective sexualism,” people marrying inanimate objects, as logical extensions of marriage equality.

“I know you people at home are thinking, This woman is nuts,” Scott says at one point. “I’m not making it up. Get online and do the link.”

There actually has been a case of a woman who considers herself married to the Eiffel Tower and changed her name to reflect that bond, and there are other people who have what they believe to be romantic relationships with objects. How this is like marrying one’s same-sex partner is anyone’s guess, but Scott claims there will be a rash of marriages to objects in 10 years if same-sex marriage isn’t blocked.

Scott has a long history of antigay activism. She was involved in the effort that led to last year’s voter recall of three Iowa Supreme Court justices who had ruled for marriage equality in 2009. In the summer of 2010 she told an anti–marriage equality rally, “This is a battle for your future as Americans, for your future as a society, and for your future someday when you stand before the throne” of God.

Watch her talk with Vander Plaats here, courtesy of People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch.