Monday, July 30, 2012

#344: Rick Scarborough


Since the completely delusional Jonathan Sarfati, famous for his attempt at grounding logic in the Bible, hails from New Zealand, we jump right to another central force in the lunacy movement.

Rick Scarborough is a former Southern Baptist and head of Vision America, Vision America Action and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. Scarborough believes that the tenets of fundamentalist Christian morality apply to all civic affairs, and says: “I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. I'm a Christocrat”. Tom DeLay counts Scarborough as one of his closest friends, though Scarborough has been caught working closely with Alan Keyes as well – the purpose is of course to establish a theocracy by any means possible (especially by targeting school children). He doesn’t seem to like immigrants either, suggesting that “more non-white families” (in particular Hispanics) means more single-parent households, which in turn means less Christians.

He is also famous for opposing the otherwise moronic Texas Governor Rick Perry's decision to vaccinate sixth grade children against the most dangerous kinds of HPV (later repeated by Michele Bachmann), because STDs are God’s punishment for breaking His moral code about sex, and hence Just Punishment. “We can not overlook the moral dimension. The governor's action seems to signify that God's moral law regarding sex outside of marriage can be transgressed without consequence.” In other words, Scarborough unabashedly overlooks the moral dimension. Predictably, he has also claimed that AIDS is God’s punishment for the immoral sexual behavior of gays. In 2011 he even attempted to channel Reagan to condemn the CPAC decision to let conservative gay groups speak at the event. It is worth mentioning, however, that he appears to be a Rick Perry fan in general – at least he thinks Perry’s Response prayer rally actually did end the drought in Texas, and that prayer controlled the BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast - in spite of the fact that it didn't appear to do so particularly effectively (does it still count as a post hoc fallacy when the effect simply doesn’t exist?).

Scarborough is the author of dominionist books such as “Mixing Church and State” and “Liberalism Kills Kids” – the title of the latter, given Scarborough’s other views, may actually sound like an endorsement of liberalism for all the wrong reasons. He has asserted that “objective history shows that God gave us America”, though “objective” is obviously one of those three-syllable words Scarborough never mastered. He is also a firm critic of “activist judges” (and contributed to the book “Judicial Tyranny”), which apparently means anyone responsible for court rulings to the effect that other people and groups have the same rights he does.

Like wingnut Taliban extremists, Scarborough suffers from a severe persecution complex, and thus considers all political decisions he does not agree with to be personal attacks against him (or Him, but that amounts to the same thing, it seems) that surely violate the First Amendment.

He is also, shockingly, a birther.

A fine Scarborough resource can be found here.

Diagnosis: Taliban madman and theocrat. Usual stuff. Extremely influential and dangerous.

5 comments:

  1. Scarborough argues that the Affordable Care Act leads to tyranny, i.e. it is an intentional act of instituting tyranny from the Obama administration.

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  2. Scarborough weighs in on Christian persecution, and his "argument" is certainly not sensitive to the facts.

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  3. And now Scarborough, in what may be one of the most idiotic ideas in the 21st century, has decided that he wants to sue The Gay - a class action lawsuit against ... homosexuality. It's amazing that this guy even manages to put on his pants every morning, but it looks like he does.

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  4. With immigration reform, says Scarborough, Mexicans will storm the borders and end the two-party system. I'll let the comment speak for itself.

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  5. He's threatening to burn himself if gay marriage passes in Texas. Who's bringing the marshmallows?

    http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/06/19/texas-pastor-threatens-to-set-himself-on-fire-to-stop-gays-from-marrying/?utm_source=PNFBND&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=Texas

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