#725: David Grisham

David Grisham, a security guard at the nuclear-bomb facility Pantex, is the leader of the quasi-militaristic Christonazi organization Repent Amarillo, a branch of the Texas Taliban whose motto is “Army of God”, a rough translation of “Hizbollah”. The group advocates the “spiritual mapping” and targeting of specific local areas and venues in order to exorcise “demons” from those areas. Of course, they generally target minorities and vulnerable or small groups, something that has earned them the well-deserved epithet “hate group”. Among their more notable actions are their protests against a small, discrete swingers group, LGBT people, abortion clinics, Muslims, Buddhists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Universalists (who “teaches that everyone is going to heaven. This calls Christ a liar. You cannot be a Christian if you call Christ a liar,” according to Repent), Unitarians (“Pagan and witchcraft headquarters for Amarillo; pagan and witchcraft celebrations and rites are performed here”), and other groups deemed “not Christian”, as well as events such as gay pride events, “Earth worship events”, “Pro-abortion events” or places such as Planned Parenthood, breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” (they claim that they want more focus on the – thoroughly discredited – alleged link between abortion and breast cancer), opening days of public schools to reach out to students, spring break events, “Demonically based concerts”, Halloween events, and other “events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.” “As Christians, we cannot stand by and watch 67,000 of our neighbors walking through the gates of hell,” states the group, and accordingly views it as their mission to forcibly stopeveryone else from doing what Grisham doesn’t think he would like to do if he got the chance. As for the swingers case, Repent set out to destroy the club through harassment after discovering its existence. On New Years eve, they showed up in military fatigues and bullhorns, blaring Christian music at the swingers’ club building, thereafter stalking the members at every following visit to the club, took video of each member, obtained the swingers’ license plates, dug through their trash, and informed neighbors and coworkers of the activities. Their tactics have frequently involved attempting to get people associated with viewpoints they don’t like fired, but since their charges often include accusations of “witchcraft” their success rate is variable. Their attempt to burn the Quran was unsuccessful as well. Their execution of Santa Claus by a firing squad was more, uh, successful, but only given certain particular criteria for success.

Grisham has also tried to run for office on a dominionist platform, asserting that “so as far as I’m concerned there is no separation of church andstate.”

In fairness, quite a few of Amarillo’s inhabitants have grown tired of the group’s antics, and the groups evangelizing outreach campaigns seem to have backlashed.

Repent Amarillo is part of  RAVEN International, headed by one Troy Bohn. Bohn takes credit for the spiritual mapping (i.e. recognizing where the evil demons lay hidden in Amarillo), and it was Bohn and RAVEN leader Alex Hill who initiated the “Adopt-a-Block” program to organize efforts to remove the demons.

Diagnosis: The group and its members resemble the groups one reads about in horror stories from parts of Africa or Afghanistan. In short, there is really absolutely nothing to distinguish this group from the Taliban or Grisham from a zealous, fundie Taliban mullah. Or a raving madman, which he is.

#569: Warren Chisum

Warren Chisum is a former Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives hailing from the Panhandle, and member the Texas Conservative Coalition, a consortium of rightwing nut jobs.

He is nationally known for his opposition to same-sex marriages and adoptions, as well as to hate crimes legislation – he fought tooth and claw to keep the sodomy laws on the books (and to emphasize his vileness, see this). In a similar vein he has repeatedly tried to establish requirements that parents have to provide their signatures in order for their children to take part in sex education (which would, one suspects, kinda defeat the purpose of such education), and in 2008, he announced that he would introduce a bill to prolong the waiting time in Texas to finalize a divorce. All in the spirit of liberty, of course.

Chisum’s abysmal levels of delusional ignorance is very much in evidence in the memo from Georgia state representative Ben Bridges he delivered in February 2007 attacking “the evolution monopoly in the schools,” and claiming that in teaching evolution, schools are indoctrinating students in the beliefs of the ancient Jewish Pharisees sect. In more detail, the memo claimed that “Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion ... This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia,” and for good measure Chisum’s memo directed readers to the Fair Education Foundation Inc., an organization claiming that the Earth is not rotating or orbiting the Sun. Of course, Chisum didn’t read what he advocated before he advocated it (what would you expect), but his response when he finally read it wasn’t much less loonsome.

His dominionist leanings are rather well-documented as well (also here). And to continue in the same vein: with one Charlie Howard he submitted the act “relating to voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints in public schools” discussed here (also here).

Chisum didn’t seek reelection in 2012, trying instead to get elected for a seat on the Texas Railroad Comission, which he failed.

Diagnosis: Blatant, shameless Liar for Jesus with strong dominionist leanings, who wouldn’t hesitate to use every fallacy in the book to get his way. Hopefully neutralized, to an extent, by now.

#560: David Castillo

David Castillo is a member of the school board in San Marcos, Texas, and otherwise completely unimportant. In fact, Castillo’s only claim to notability stems from an occurrence in 2010, when the board had voted to do away with abstinence-only sex education and replace it with abstinence-plus sex education. Castillo was opposed to the move and offered the following quote to the local newspaper: ”I assume that the majority of students at San Marcos High School are Christian. And if that is the case, then this whole thing is anti-Christian.”

That’s quite an inference.

Diagnosis: Well, at least the Internet remembers your inanities, Castillo, and you get to be immortalized in our Encyclopedia for this astounding absence of judgment. Congratulations.

#557: Leonso Canales jr.

Leonso Canales, Jr., a flea market owner of Kingsville, Texas, is immortalized through his campaign to replace the greeting ”hello” with the more friendly and God-fearing ”heavenO”. As he writes on his website ”The ’O’ is not enough to hide the most negative word (Hell) printed in every dictionary,” while the ”Universal greeting ’HeavenO’ is a symbol of Peace, Friendship and Welcome.” He achieved a measure of success in 1997 when the dingbats of Kleberg County (also Texas) were convinced to adopt ”HeavenO” as the county’s preferred form of greeting. According to Canales, his campaigns have led to the decline of “hello”, even where “HeavenO” has not been officially adopted, but his documentation for the claim is a little weak.

Of course, there were trouble ahead. Carl Matthews of North Carolina claimed to have been the real originator of this remarkable idea, and that “[t]he copyright means the property belongs to me and cannot be commercialized on,” though the officials didn’t agree.

Diagnosis: Completely harmless village idiots add color to life; the slightly ominous part of the story is the Kleberg County officials’ decision to adopt his ideas, suggesting a certain susceptibility to the kinds of ideas officials would ideally not be susceptible to.

#527: Stephen Broden

Stephen Broden is a former Republican political candidate from Texas’s 30th congressional district for the U.S. House (unsuccessfully). In ordinary life Broden is a businessman, political commentator (having appeared on Glenn Beck, for instance), dominionist, Tea Partier, pastor, activist for pro-life causes (abortion is a genocidal plot against African-Americans, according to Broden), and a founder of Ebony Berean, an organization whose mission includes informing African-American Pastors of the ”Culture War”. There is more on Broden’s anti-abortion views, including his attempt to argue that Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted to deliberately trying to achieve genocide, here. Indeed, Broden has argued that the Theory of Evolution was invented precisely to give scientific legitimacy to exterminating African-Americans; Broden’s own words on the matter are here.

Indeed, Broden is a revolutionary. He has actually claimed that violent revolution is an option “on the table”, because America today is just like Nazi Germany. The perceived similarities arise primarily out of things like health care reform (“this [Obama] administration is […] doing end-of-life counseling in order to depopulate that particular group of people”) and the purported fact that Obama is deliberately causing a financial crisis for rather undisclosed reasons. You can see a video of some of his crazier statements here. During the 2011-12 Republican primaries Broden was among Rick Perry’s valued partners and a staunch supporter of Todd Akin.

Diagnosis: Completely and utterly insane, of course, and it is interesting to see how such people manage to retain a substantial amount of influence.