#643: John Eidsmoe

John Eidsmoe is a legendary Alabama attorney and Christian reconstructionist (dominionist) who is on the record demanding a “full scale offensive” to take over the nation and impose Christianity by force of law (also here). He also has, as you may suspect from an Alabama dominionist, what could perhaps be characterized as a more “nuanced position” on slavery.

Eidsmoe is the proud possessor of, in addition to a J.D, a doctorate in “ministry from the Oral Roberts University” and in fact a variety of (unaccredited) degrees from other rather shady places trying to pass as educational institutions. Then again, Eidsmoe is severely mistrustful of education, and is on the recording dismissing accredited education as brainwashing since education introduce kids to reality and Eidsmoe disagrees with reality. Given his expertise on such matters it is little surprise that Eidsmoe was the legal advisor to Roy Moore during the latter’s 10 commandments statue debacle.

Eidsmoe’s rise to fame is primarily related to the fact that Michelle Bachmann was one of his students while she attended Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University. Indeed, Bachmann describes Eidsmoe as “one of the professors who had a great influence on me” (she still has the audacity to criticize Obama for Obama’s connection to Jeremiah Wright, by the way), and Bachmann his research assistant on the 1987 book “Christianity and the Constitution”. That book argues that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, which of course is in blatant contradiction with the facts, but being in contradiction with reality has never have never mattered for professional Liars for Jesus and is a necessary qualification for being, as Eidsmoe was, enlisted by the rabidly fundamentalist pseudo-science organization WallBuilders – which is how he came to be hired by Ohio’s Springboro School District for their summer course on the Constitution. One may wonder how Bachmann aligns herself with Eidsmoe’s opinion that “women must submit to their husband”, but come to think of it Bachmann has in fact said precisely that herself. Bachmann also seems to have got her theocratic sympathies from Eidsmoe.

No points for guessing Eidsmoe’s attitude toward zeh gays (they are destroying society by incurring the wrath of God, if you ever wondered). In Gays & Guns he writes that “one cannot help wondering why homosexuals would persist in a life-style that is in fact a ‘death-style’,” and urges the military to adopt reparative therapy as a means to change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian servicemembers. In said screed he uses phrases such as “considerable evidence indicates that,” but unfortunately seems to think that “considerable evidence” is just a nicer word for “the zealous bigotry I have decided to adopt.” The proposed measure is apparently needed since gays who join the military will molest children.

Eidsmoe has been considered too extreme and asked towithdraw as a speaker by Tea Party rally organizers. That should tell you something.

There’s a fairly comprehensive Eidsmoe resource here.

Diagnosis: A significant source of evil in the world. Should be approached with care and preferably not at all.

#606: Larry Darby

Larry Darby is a practicing Alabama attorney, founder of the Atheist Law Center and former state director of American Atheists (he was forced to resign when he invited David Irving to speak), as well as a runner-up candidate for Alabama Attorney-General in the 2006 Democratic Party Primary. That campaign started to flail when Darby began questioning the veracity and scale of the Holocaust (less support from some quarters; more from others). He also wanted to “reawake white racial awareness”. Specifically, Darby questioned the number of Jews who died during the Third Reich (suggesting around 140,000, but that many of those succumbed to typhus rather than systematic murder). I don’t know what it tells you about Alabama that he got pretty close to winning the primary, but one suspects that it may not have been because of his atheism (indeed, he claims to have converted to Christianity later on in the process, blaming his fellow atheists’ penchant for jumping onto the “Judeo-Marxist” bandwagon).

Darby even agreed to the term Holocaust denier: “I am what the propagandists call a Holocaust denier, but I do not deny mass deaths that included some Jews,” a comment upon which he elaborated with “there was no systematic extermination of Jews. There's no evidence of that at all.” Apparently the “millions of deaths” claim originated instead with “the Holocaust Industry”. You can review more of Darby’s breathtaking conspiracy theories here.

He has also declared that the United States is undergoing a “Mexican invasion” – that one is a common one, but Darby added some personal flavor by comparing the current immigration to the 1960s civil rights movement since both were events that in Darby’s eyes have hurt the South. To deal with the immigrant situation Darby suggested bringing the Alabama National Guard back from Iraq because “they're fighting for Israeli interests and not for Alabama or the United States’ interests,” and rather deploy them to ferret out illegal immigrants. If elected he said he would ask for the governor to declare martial law “so we could act freely and stop the illegal immigrants from crossing our border.” Apparently he didn’t mean immigrants from Mississippi, but if he didn’t it is a little unclear which border he was referring to.

Diagnosis: An amazing character; that he managed to achieve some limited but significant popularity in Alabama – even despite his atheism – tells you something about something.

#48: Bradley Byrne

GOP, Alabama-style fashion, launched the following astoundingly bizarre series of events about a month ago: First The True Republican PAC ran this ad in the Alabama gubernatorial race, attacking Bradley Byrne (R) because he supports the teaching of evolution in schools.

That drew some attention, but is perhaps to be expected from The True Republican PAC who are batshit unhinged fundamentalist uneducated loons of the worst sort anyway. The appalling turn came with Byrne’s response. The predictable godbottery apart, Byrne also pointed out the following:

“As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.” (read more here)

I am not sure Byrne really knows what ”distorted, twisted and misrepresented” means, but notice that the True Republican PAC’s attack was not that Byrne favored teaching evolution (i.e. science) exclusively, but that he defended teaching evolution at all. For Byrne is, in fact, a proponent of teaching the “controversy” (manufactroversy), which he promptly pointed out. But as it turns out, maybe he isn't.

That’s not really the point, however. The appalling thing isn’t really Byrne’s views or non-views. The appalling thing is the situation – the lunacy of his putative voters – that makes offering this reply appear to be a necessary thing to do.

So this entry doesn’t really indict Byrne per se, but Byrne as a symbol for the unhinged lunacy that apparently runs rampant among Alabama’s GOP voters, voters who apparently support Byrne’s official statement or even the Republican PAC on this. The loon of the day is the State of Alabama.

Diagnosis: This is bad. Really, really scary.