Another day, another fundie wingnut talkshow host. This time it’s Carmen Pate, currently producer and host of Saving Grace, a podcast ministry of Grace School of Theology. She is apparently also a “Principal with Alliance Ministries, Inc.,” and affiliated with the Human Coalition. Her podcast/show is devoted to the promotion of ridiculous fundamentalism (this kind), in particular from the Truth in Action Ministries, with a clear focus on – of course – anti-gay conspiracy theories associated with the “gay agenda”, such as “the sad belief that they [i.e. gay people] have that they were born with this propensity to engage in sexual sin.” And it really is a conspiracy; given all the homosexuals “struggling with that lifestyle” and “desiring to leave it”, says Pate (ex-gays are systematically oppressed by the media and the government, apparently), it’s really important that religious fanatics step in “when we consider that our government ignores the truth and instead supports an agenda that really keeps them in bondage;” it is “important that we speak truth so they might find that healing and restoration.” Pate does not speak truth.
She did, however, use to host (and may still be – we cannot really be bothered to pay close attention) Truth in Action Ministries’ flagship radio program Truth that Transforms. She is also a former Concerned Women for America president.
But not only is society being corrupted by homosexuals; Pate also complains that evolution and feminism have “infiltrated” almost all aspects of society: “our education system, even our churches and certainly our entertainment, our media,” which means that “we have lost sight of what God’s word has said about the protection of the innocent.” You fill in the blanks in that piece of reasoning. In particular, the education system is controlled by “those who really don’t want our kids to understand what the Constitution has to say”, which is apparently (as John Hostettler put it) that “government is an institution that is not just a God-centered one, but it was ordained by God,” which of course means that e.g. the separation of church and state is a myth and that the Bible should be the central book of all education by Constitutional demand. Why don’t you know that? “Not to sound conspiratorial here,” says Pate, and promptly goes full frontal conspiratorial: it is because of “attempts perhaps by those secular humanists, those on the left, to really not allow or to take away some of the opportunities for learning more about what the Constitution has to say.” It must have worked very well. At least Carmen Pate has no idea what the Constitution says.
She is also worried about the “occult underlying themes” in children’s cartoons and books like Harry Potter, suggesting that public school-sponsored Earth Day events have a “focus on Gaia worship” and the “worshiping of Mother Nature.” Of course, when you have no reasoning abilities yourself, any opinion or belief anyone else holds will probably seem like a matter of blind faith, too.
Pate has also participated in a number of religious right promotional efforts, such as their short film Losing Liberty, about the alleged moral decline and spiritual collapse of America.
Diagnosis: Pretty much a personification of everything that is wrong with everything. And yes, that’s the same diagnosis as former entry’s Janet Parshall. Like Parshall, Pate wields quite a bit of influence on the religious right as an enabler of all sorts of deranged fundie extremism.
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