#1645: Debra Gauthier

We endeavor to cover people who accuse others of having made a covenant with or being in league with Satan. We are a bit more wary of calling out people who think that they themselves have made covenants with Satan, since such beliefs are usually indicative of other types of issues than the critical thinking wreckage incidents we aim to cover. But Debra Gauthier has tried to push her delusions in public, so we’ll give her some attention. Gauthier, a Nevada police officer, is an ex-gay who “bought the lie” about homosexuality until she became a Christian and renounced her identity as a lesbian, and she is currently engaged in projecting her fundamentalist, rabid delusions onto her former self as part of an effort to justify her portrayal of homosexuality as a practice inspired by the devil. According to herself, she turned heterosexual after attending an Exodus International conference, but while she lived “the homosexual lifestyle” she made a “covenant with Satan” during a same-sex wedding ceremony and also ended up dating a “practicing witch,” who she “met at a New Age conference. [The witch] introduced me to demon worship and a new level of darkness.” And “one evening as she began to seduce me, my spiritual eyes were opened, and I saw the demon in her sneering back at me.” No, really: They are literally demons. Like on TV. Or like in Mike Warnke’s imaginary Satanic Panic stories from the 80s. Here is Gauthier on the 700 Club talking about her experiences.

She has also written a book, Bright Lights, Dark Places, about life in a male-dominated Las Vegas police department. The message of that book is somewhat compromised by her obvious derangedness.

Diagnosis: She does have a wikipedia article, but that one doesn’t even mention her demonology and ex-gay ventures. Her influence with regard to such things beyond already wild-eyed, frothing fundamentalists is accordingly questionable.