#1945: Gary Marx

At least we’re not in danger of running out of religious extremist loons anytime soon. Gary Marx is the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (at least the name suggest a certain dim awareness of a potential conflict between freedom and their version of faith); that’s Ralph Reed’s new group, which is as insanely looney and scarily influential as you'd expect.

Marx claims that democracy no longer exists because of gay marriage. In 2013, he said that the Supreme Court’s rulings on DOMA and Proposition 8 have made our democracy only an illusion and accused the court of “dismantling American democracy” and turning America into “a nation where democracy is a mere visual effect used to spawn a perception of self-rule that no longer ultimately exists.” Apparently, the courts undermine democracy because “traditional marriage activists” ostensibly “vastly outnumber their opponents”, which is, incidentally, demonstrably false, but does show that Marx doesn’t really understand the role of the courts or the Constitution. (Marx apparently even believed that when courts rule against what he perceive to be majority opinion they “trump Constitutional principles”; no, he doesn’t understand this at all; not that anyone would ever suspect him of being intellectually honest about these things in any case.

Marx is primarily associated with his position as director of the wingnut Judicial Confirmation Network, a group that putatively combats “judicial activism” (i.e. decisions they don’t personally agree with), but which in reality seeks precisely to influence court nominations so that appointees would not too slavishly adhere to the Constitution when the Constitution comes into conflict with how Marx thinks society should be organized, which it frequently does. Marx was formerly head of the Virginia Christian Coalition and the day-to-day coordinator of evangelical support for President W’s reelection campaign. He is also a Pat Robertson’s Regent “University” alumnus.

In 2012 Marx supported Tony Perkins for Senate, calling Perkins “a thoughtful public policy leader, credible candidate for U.S. Senate.” Lunacy comes no more deranged than calling Tony Perkins a “thoughtful public policy leader”.

Diagnosis: Deranged Taliban-style activist, who – like so many likeminded people – like to pretend to defend freedom and the Constitution while (fervently) doing the exact opposite. Marx is nevertheless one of the movers and shakers of the religious right, and worrisomely influential.