Sunday, May 29, 2011

#215: Gordon Klingenschmitt

Gordon Klingenschmitt is a former navy chaplain (removed by the Pentagon, but refuses to admit to having being thrown out), occasional columnist for WorldNetDaily, and vehemently insane. He is fanatically anti-gay and a fan of imprecatory prayer. He applied it, for instance, against Mikey Weinstein, leader of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The tone is fascinatingly old Testament: “Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus' name. Amen” (his second attempt is discussed here). Charming fellow, in other words.

Klingenschmitt is in fact a champion of religious freedom, but only if it is understood his way – i.e. as observing God’s first commandment. I am not sure he is a liar for Jesus as much as an ignorant moron and willful misunderstander for Jesus. He is, unsurprisingly, also a DeMar style revisionist and theocrat.

Klingenschmitt may have been thrown out of the military (as was Jim Ammerman), but people like James Linzey remain. And that is indeed cause for concern.

Diagnosis: Batshit crazy raging fundamentalist and nutjob (and Liar for Jesus). Probably too insane to be any real danger, but one never knows.

18 comments:

  1. Here's Gordo on how Ron Paul is an undercover Democrat.

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  2. Here's Klingenschmidt being his usual self (as per diagnosis).

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  3. Poor Gordo. Reality just sails him by and leaves him behind shrieking with insanity and rage.

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  4. From the department of when everything else fails: Here's Gordo claiming that the gays want to raise taxes on us all (apparently to support their deviant lifestyles). You can't make this shit up.

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  5. Here's Gordo insisting that gay demons can infect animals.

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  6. If you send him some money Klingenschmidt will also explain to you how he uses his spiritual discernment to determine that Obama is controlled by 50 demons.

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  7. Klingenschmitt, with his exceptional capacity for obtaining evidence and interpret subtle signals, by pure bigoted intuition, warns us that
    the military is currently encouraging the abuse of Christian soldiers by encouraging gay soldiers to force themselves on said Christian soldiers. Apparently Newt Gingrich is currently under demonic influences as well, since he seems to recognize that the wingnuts are currently on the losing side in the battle over marriage equality (also
    here).

    Indeed, the insiduousness of the powers that be knows no limits. Obamacare, for instance, is a ploy to systematically exterminate the elderly, presumably through the death panels who make decisions regarding treatments based in part on balancing costs and perceived efficacy of the treatment – as opposed to today’s insurance companies, who [measure only the costs] in their altruism would never mix care for people with financial considerations.

    (I am apparently unable to use the crossout effect in the comments section)

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  8. Klingenschmitt on his claim that Obama pushing “demonic rule” again. Apparently it becomes plausible if you repeat it a sufficient number of times.

    Another mainstay of Klingenschmitt's worldview is his contention that gay rights inevitably leads to discrimination against heterosexuals. (Also here.) His reasoning is less than ... what one would associate with rationality, insight, sanity or being a normally empathetic human being.

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  9. According to Klingenschmitt ENDA is the end of the world for Christian employers.

    And the demons are everywhere. They are, for instance, behind NFL players coming out as gay - indeed, such affairs show that demons are using the sporting industry for their nefarious purposes.

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  10. Here is Klingenschmitt valiantly standing by a report he knows to be false. All in the name of partisanship, of course. And here he claims that demons are to blame for the reported incident that never happened.

    It might be rather superfluous to see what he has to say about the Supreme Court marriage rulings, but at least he claims that they are “absurd”, a “profound injustice” and that the day of the DOMA decision will go down as a ”shameful day” in American history – not the least since gay marriage apparently increases inflation and undermines national security.

    It’s not only gay marriage, though. As a true wingnut’s wingnut, Klingenschmitt also thinks that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act promotes bestiality and that there is a demonic spirit inside Senator Jeff Merkley. Such are the underlying fabric of politics and the causal mechanisms in political decisions according to Klingenschmitt’s mind.

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  11. It’s almost fascinating to follow Gordo’s descent from raving lunatic to whatever is even more abysmally below that in his raging against gay rights. I suppose his furious assertion that Jesus will strike down sodomites and throw them in hell is to be expected. As is his claim that “what gays do behind closed doors is not love; it is lawlessness (yes, he still thinks homosexual behavior is illegal – it contradicts the Old Testament, and to Gordo the Old Testament and the Constitution look exactly the same). More novel is his claim that gay activists are are trying to force Christians to participate in their sodomy (also here).

    The same goes for politics. ”sell your clothes and buy a gun,” advices Gordo. “It’s time. The government persecution will be coming against you and you need to arm yourselves and defend your family when that time comes.” He has read it in the Gospels. Just look how politicians have lost their direction. For instance, few of the recognize that Wendy Davis is ruled by a “demon of murder” and should be prosecuted (also here; it is unclear why he thinks that it is illegal to be ruled by demons). Indeed, demons have become a mainstay of Gordo's "thought". Here he sees some more. Madonna, for instance, is possessed by a demonic spirit of adultery. (There are some more examples here.) And, indeed, demons are currently “raping your children”. At least he is not afraid of ridiculous hyperbole.

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  12. But returning to politics in general, Gordo has expressed concern over Obama’s present efforts to create an atheist army to attack Christians (only he – and perhaps Bryan Fischer – has noticed, apparently). Obama is not only an atheist, however – he is also a Muslim. But the main reason he is constantly and deliberatelyhelping the al-qaeda is that he hates America. Just look at Obamacare. It causes cancer, Gordo asserts. Apparently it does so because it is so hideously ungodly, and everyone knows that apostasy is one of the main causes of cancer.

    Here is Gordo coming up with a clever legal plan, which indeed is so clever that it would have qualified Gordo for an entry in our Encyclopedia on its own. And no, he doesn’t have the faintest clue how the legal system works. Nor the Internet.

    But this is scary.

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  13. Klingenschmitt has recently turned his attention to gays and LGBT rights ... oh. Like so many fellow wingnuts, Klingenschmitt is not reluctant to promote various fake stories and myths; here, for instance, he promotes claims made by the Pacific Justice Institute about a transgender student in a Colorado high school who had supposedly been harassing other girls in the locker room and restrooms. According to Gordo, the student - under the influence of a "demonic spirit" - was "raping, at least visually, these teenage girls." Similarly, he fervently promoted the fake story about "Obama's unisex uniforms" for the army - US soldiers would be forced to wear girl hats and skirts, according to Gordo - and long after the story had been thoroughly debunked. At least he also explained why Obama had ordered this: demons.

    Indeed, demonic spirits seem to be his new schtick. "There is a demon of rape inside of [the LGBT] movement," says Gordo, "to violate your daughters." And not only the LGBT movement. Demonic spirits are everywhere. For instance, relying on his knowledge of medicine and chemistry, as well as thorough investigation, he has conlcuded that drug-induced hallucinations are demonic spirits.

    He is also (still) absolutely convinced that gay people are all pedophiles, and that they just want to get married so they can have access to children (he also argued that homosexuality is wrong because the species would die out if everyone were gay, which by the same token would make being a man immoral as well, one assumes). Therefore, when gay couples raise children it is child abuse by default, and child molestation is, as Gordo sees things, the favorite recruitment tool of adult gays.

    It is not only the gays. It is also their allies, the liberals. Thus, he argued that a non-discrimination bill backed by Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Jared Polis should be called the "No Child Left Unmolested’ amendment," warning that the lawmakers are "recruiting your kids" and "bullying public school kids aggressively." He also, tastefully, accused Franken (who is Jewish) of being a Nazi. Expanding upon his accusation, he claimed that Franken is really trying to require pedophilia in all public schools.

    I dare you to find anyone significantly more unhinged and delusional than Gordon Klingenschmitt.

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  14. Of course, his insanity extends well beyond his bigoted focus on sexuality. His feeble war on rightwingwatch's youtube account is a case in point. He also responded to the Hobby Lobby case at the Supreme Court by warning that President Obama is forcing Christians to kill children as part of "a spiritual war to save or destroy unborn babies and the elderly."

    But it is mostly about gays. For instance, Gordo evidently believes that only those who go to Heaven should get benefits in the US.; hence, the government should not prevent discrimination against gay people because gay people aren’t going to heaven and “If they’re not going to get eternal benefits in Heaven, why should we give them government rewards here on this earth? I don’t think we should.” Which is one of the most extreme theocratic suggestion we have encountered in a while - nonetheless, Klingenschmitt, who is currently running for the state legislature in Colorado (partly because he is opposed to the legalization of pot, which Gordo - as we mentioned earlier - thinks is (literally) demonic, tries to portray himself as the anti-theocracy candidate in the race. His reasoning is a bit unclear, but it may have something to do with not imposing religious rule on people being imposing religious rule on them nonetheless.

    He has also presented a new argument for not letting gay people serve in the military: because they’re always “taking breaks on the combat field to change diapers all because their treacherous sin causes them to lose control of their bowels.”

    But this; this may be the most extreme one yet (just think for a moment about what he is actually saying).

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  15. And guess who got himself elected to the Colorado state legislature.

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