Janet Parshall is the host of the popular wingnut fundie talk show In the Market with Janet Parshall (replacing Talking it Over), broadcast on the Moody Radio network on over 700 stations. She was also the host for the 2004 documentary George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, for which she was awarded, by Bush, with an appointment to serve as a public US delegate at the 49th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2015. She is also on the board of directors of the National Religious Broadcasters, where her husband Craig Parshall is senior vice president, and has coauthored numerous books, mostly with her husband.
Parshall is a fanatic pusher of the Christian persecution myth, even claiming that the “Father of Lies” himself, no less, is working “through a UN resolution or funding from the United States to try to silence the proclamation of the gospel”. In 2008 she hosted the TV documentary series Speechless: Silencing the Christianson the Inspiration Network. Public schools, constitutionally unable as they are to force students to share Parshall’s religious convictions but instead pushing science, are an important Satanic pawn in the oppression of her Christians. Public schools are, as Parshall sees it, a “Hitlerian idea” and are run by atheist, communist teachers who may disagree with her just seek to eradicate Christianity – indeed, they are run by cabals of gay rights activists, no less. Parshall is notably a supporter of young-earth creationist high priest Ken Ham and Ham’s Creation Museum and Ark Park, saying for instance that hesitations over giving Ham’s park tax breaks means treating him “as a second class citizen” and making him the victim of “viewpoint discrimination.” This is incorrect.
Environmentalism is of course part of the plot. In 2012 Parshall narrated the wingnut conspiracy flick “Resisting the Green Dragon”, claiming that environmentalism is an anti-Christian religion. Many segments of her show have similarly been devoted to strikingly deranged anti-environmentalist campaigns (another example here). Parshall also took part in the efforts of the antiscience, climate change denialist wingnut organization American Environmental Coalition.
God is already punishing us for our audacity, though. The ebola virus, like most violent events the last few years, are a part of God’s judgment on us; apparently He “gives us a warning, another warning, another warning, another warning because he is a gentleman God.” Given the nature of ebola outbreaks it is interesting to consider how Parshall understands “gentlemanly”.
And of course, Parshall is vehemently opposed to gay rights. No shit. Equally predictably, Parshall maintains that it is really the devil that is behind LGBT rights efforts, the purpose apparently being “to tear down the idea of Christ’s unconditional love for us” (the relationship between means and end being, as usual, somewhat convoluted). Satan is ostensibly also behind legislation limiting ex-gay reparative therapy: “this really is spiritual warfare, it may look like a bit of legislation but in the end it’s really the old Deceiver rattling his tail,” like everything else Parshall disagrees with, of course. It seems inconceivable to her that those who disagree with her doesn’t really know that she is right; therefore, their lies must be the work of demons (she has explicitly stated for instance that it is impossible to be Christian and gay). Her self-awareness isn’t prime grade either. Satan, working through the “radical feminist movement”, is presumably also behind the efforts to allow the Army to put women in combat situations, something that apparently flies in the face of God and what is “natural”: “I thought men were made by God to defend women,” Parshall lamented.
Together with several other central religious rights figures, Parshall helped organize the 2012 American Prayer Initiative, which would offer its members a specific prayer for every day of each month until Election Day, including prayers condemning homosexuality and the separation of church and state; one message asked people to pray for God’s “healing for those who struggle with same-sex attraction” and to “replace unnatural affections”.
Diagnosis: Pretty much a personification of everything that is wrong with everything. She’s a pretty influential figure in the wingnut movement, however.
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