#552: Brian Camenker

Brian Camenker is the founder and leader of MassResistance, a Massachusetts-based anti-gay group (formerly known as the Parents’ Rights Coalition and the Article 8 Alliance) that promotes bigotry, fundamentalism, denialism and evil with regard to issues relating to homosexuality, abortion, anti-bullying, gun control, the transgender community, and same-sex marriage. It is designated as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in part for its claim that suicide prevention programs aimed at gay youth were “put together by homosexual activists to normalize homosexuality” (i.e. it is better that gays are encouraged to kill themselves as a preventive measure with regard to … well, I suppose the idea is really rather “we hate them and want to see them suffer”). His group started out by opposing sexual education in public schools because there was a danger that the kids would be exposed to non-judgmental advice on gay sex in sex-ed classes, and suing schools for making available books that the group considered “gay”.

Among Camenker’s mass of barely coherent claims you will find the idea that groups such as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which support school anti-bullying programs, actually want to “lure children into homosexuality and, very possibly, sadomasochism,” because groups opposing the completely natural and normal phenomenon of bullying obviously have nefarious intents. Camenker has commented that such anti-bullying efforts are part of a “very aggressive, fascist type of movement” of “homosexual activists,” and has for instance urged the Boston Red Sox to withdraw and apologize for its “It Gets Better” Video. Such anti-bullying efforts are “not scientific at all” since there is, in fact, no evidence – according to Camenker – that bullying targeting gay kids exists. MassResistance has also insisted that gays were “trying to get legislation passed to allow sex with animals,” but surprisingly failed to offer any real evidence for this claim either. Apparently the evidence they can muster for most of their ideas consists of the claim that homosexuality is icky; therefore everything.

As for justification for their claim that “gays are dangerous to kids,” the idea is apparently based on the “skyrocketing homosexual domestic violence” they imagine is occurring. And it is little surprise that gays turn so easily to violence – with regard to a gay pride parade that Camenker also called “depraved”, he observed “a great deal of obviously disturbed, dysfunctional, and extremely self-centered people whose aim was to push their agenda.” Which would be really evil – in Camenker’s world homosexuality is like racism, gay rights efforts are exactly like Jim Crow laws, and gay pride events have brought “spiritual darkness” to the Massachusetts State House.

In 2012 MassResistance publicly criticized the FBI and CIA for “embracing the homosexual movement,” claiming that the FBI and CIA are “controlled” by the gay terrorists because the FBI “actively recruits homosexual and transgender employees and agents” (though MassResistance is especially critical of the FBI’s “outrageous” official partnership with the SPLC). And yes, according to Camenker Obama is trying to create a “worldwide homosexual terror group” that “will lead to increasingly brutal oppression against people with traditional values both in America and around the world” along with “sleazy and quasi-legal destabilizing and harassing activities in foreign countries,” because that’s just what liberal presidents do. Apparently the reason why more and more people support gay rights, according to Camenker, is that rightwingers haven’t been anti-gay enough. MassResistance is evidently trying to make up for that.

As with most wingnut conspiracy groups, MassResistance has no problems with historical revisionism, and they have for instance claimed that no homosexuals died in the The Holocaust and that the “pink triangle the Nazis forced imprisoned gays to wear actually signified Catholic priests.” Instead, according to Camenker, it is educators who support LGTB-inclusive schools who are exactly “like Nazi concentration camp guards”.

The weird and uncanny story about MassResistance member Michael Olivio is recounted here.

Diagnosis: A real charmer, this one. He seems to have some clout with certain fringe groups, but one wonders whether his strategies really strengthen his cause in the long run.

#551: John Calvert

John Calvert (not the magician, though he shares the name) may not be the most famous Intelligent Design Creationism advocates in the US, but he has historically been one of the most influential and dangerous. Calvert is (or at least was) a representative for the Kansas Intelligent Design Network, founder of IDNet, and one of the main architects behind the push for including creationism in the public school curriculum in Kansas back in 2006; he wrote the (later removed) amendments with William Harris, and was the de facto legal counsel for the moron side. He was later involved in an attempt to do the same thing in Ohio (and elsewhere). Among other charming, science-related things he distributed pamphlets attempting to ad hominem Kansas Citizens for Science by claiming, in true Orwellian fashion, that they were employing ”Character Assassination and Denigration of Theism.”  His claims wereinaccurate, to put it mildly, but that should come as no surprise.

His argument is generally that is that we are on the verge of both fascism and communism because the courts won't let schools teach creationism (featured in this interesting survey), and he presents his points by way of incoherent screaming (also here). And atheism is a religion as welll, as if that had anything to do with the matter even if it made sense. You can see Randy Olson slam Calvert, Jonathan Wells and the Discovery Institute here, as well as a breathtaking but typical example of Discovery Institute dishonesty (augmented in Wells’s response here).

Calvert is also apparently an amateur playwright (with one Daniel Schwabauer), but should probably not quite his day job quite yet.

The reaction of fundies to the loss in Kansas makes for an … interesting read, by the way. Chuck Colson bemoaned the “censorship” of not mandating the instruction of “Intelligent Design” creationism in public schools. Wichita pastor Terry Fox called evolution a “cult” and “the mother of all liberalism,” which stands in an interesting relation to a point. Board member Connie Morris, who called evolution a “fairytale”, blamed the “lying liberal media” for her defeat, and Calvert himself complained about a “propaganda” campaign of “systematic misinformation.” Phyllis Schlafly weighed in as well.

Diagnosis: Ardent fundie who likes to howl with rage at reason, sanity, and reality, and seems to get confused whenever reality wins. Still got some bite, though, so he shouldn’t be discounted quite yet.

#550: Wendy Callahan

Wendy Callahan is Co-Director of Vaccination Liberation and director of the Florida chapter of Vaccine Information and Liberation. She also runs a website, Vaccine Information, which contains the whole gamut of antivaxx insanity, from links to hardcore woo (such as homeopathy) to posters labeled “pharmageddon”). She is on the record calling parents who vaccinate “child abusers,” claiming that “you can't poison yourself into health,” and arguing, concerning the constituents of vaccines that “these ingredients don't belong in a vaccine. They belong in a Satanic ritual.”

Callahan is most famous for her less than flattering appearance on Penn & Teller, an installment that also featured one Carl Buzz, who claims that, cancer didn’t exist before around 1945 (which to him, as opposed to reality, was when vaccines were introduced), despite the fact that e.g. radical mastectomy for breast cancer was developed in the 19^th century.

Diagnosis: Batshit loon; crazy and dangerous.

#549: Larry Caldwell

Skipping Herman Cain for the obvious reason (that puts his rank theocratic leanings, pseudomathematics, hilarious ranting, and conspiracy theories in perspective), we give you instead the terminally ridiculous Larry Caldwell. Caldwell is a pro-intelligent design activist and attorney – a somewhat less well-hinged alternative to the Thomas More Law Center – who has been honing the largely defensive weapon of litigation for use in various causes supporting the intelligent design movement. Caldwell and his wife, Jeanne (a Christian school teacher who “takes the Bible literally”), used to run Quality Science Education for All, which has little to do with “science” or “quality” in education, and is generally known for his “his hair-trigger willingness to sue people for just about anything in the cause of ID creationism.”

Caldwell describes his goals as getting schools to teach “some of the scientific weaknesses of evolution”, and among the numerous targets for his lawsuits we find the NCSE (also here), The Texas State Board of Education, Roseville Joint Union High School District (because they didn’t take seriously his garbled objections to their biology textbook, also here), and the University of California, Berkeley, claiming that their website “Understanding Evolution” violated the separation of church and state by linking to sites that claim that religious faith is compatible with evolution. The courts weren’t particularly interested in Caldwell’s complaints.

Caldwell has also written for the Discovery Institute blog,

Diagnosis: That’s the way to establish the scientific credentials of Intelligent Design Creationism, Larry! As a creationist activist, Caldwell has at least realized that appealing to science is gonna get him nowhere.

#548: Rod Butterworth

Rod Butterworth runs the Creation Museum of the Ozarks in Branson, Missouri, one of several such “museums” in the US constructed around the premise that The Flintstones is a documentary to offer tacky displays of plastic dinosaurs living together with humans as evidence for a young earth and against evolution (no, they don’t quite get the distinction between evidence and imagination, but according Butterworth “evolution teaches that there is no God, and everything evolved by lucky chance  over millions of years,” which doesn’t much resemble the theory of evolution).

The museum was founded by Butterworth, who is originally British (it seems like the US are attracting a plethora of raving Commonwealth morons – Ken Ham and Ray Comfort being obvious others in that group), as a response to his concern that most “dinosaur museums” around were completely “evolutionary in nature”. Their mantra is the same as the more famous Kentucky museum’s, namely the interestingly post-modernist “same evidence, different views” (+presuppositionalism). Again, the mantra should be interpreted keeping in mind that these guys wouldn’t be able to distinguish evidence from wishful thinking if their lives depended on it – which is of course how they are able to present “evidence” that “evolutionists” have overlooked, such as Ica stones, the London artifact, polystrate fossils, chameleon art, a variety of fallacies, and claims strikingly reminiscent of “the Loch Ness monster disproves evolution” (which made it into the curriculum at certain Louisiana private schools) – rivers run south from Missouri, just sayin’), fire-breathing dinosaurs (hence dragons, therefore Jesus QED), a Paluxy footprint with the comment that “yes, most of these have shown to be fake, but this particular one looks like the real thing,” but which really is the very same as one previously offered  by Carl Baugh). You can read a detailed (hilarious) report on a visit to the “museum” here. You can see Butterworth trying to defend the perfect benevolence of the God of the Old Testament here.

The museum’s vice president, Barry Dullum, claims that he used to be an evolutionist, but then someone told him that there has really been a Great Flood and a great hoax played upon Western Civilization by the Humanists, and that made him open his eyes. I’m not sure I believe him.

Diagnosis: A magnificent display of sheer idiocy, ignorance and dishonesty, Butterworth and his museum makes Casey Luskin look well-informed by comparison, and that takes some deep stupid. Moderately dangerous, since they, as all creationists, are targeting the children instead of even attempting to actually apply critical thinking or look for evidence.