#1025: Kevin Pezzi

Another village kook, Kevin Pezzi’s main claim to notability may be to have some screed about Shirley Sherrod published on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government site (then quietly deleted a few hours later). To get an idea of what kind of fellow Pezzi is, you can have a look at his bio. “Dr. Pezzi has over 850 inventions to date, and is currently developing a device that will make you wonder if you’ve been teleported a century into the future,” he claims, and he has “developed a new technique of fractional multiplication, in spite of his lifelong aversion to math […] A government official once claimed that Dr. Pezzi achieved the highest score ever attained on an IQ test administered nationwide, although Pezzi dismisses this as disingenuous pandering.” Pretty amazing stuff. He has also found the cure for cancer, but Big Pharma is blocking it because they can’t make a profit on it.

Most importantly, Pezzi knows how to enlarge your penis. He is president (and client) of the Penis Growth Club for Men, and can tell you how to achieve amazing results in his Advanced Enlargement; and in his Science of Sex, he can teach you how to enhance your libido, sexual pleasure and performance. At least it worked for him, which, given his credentials, may not even count as anecdotal evidence. What is particularly interesting is that he is apparently not even at present trying to sell you these books (he offers no reasons why not).

He has also been caught sockpuppeteering to praise his own work.

Diagnosis: Yet another Internet kook; insignificant, but our Encyclopedia would have been seriously incomplete if we hadn’t included at least one person who buys into the penis enlargement woo – and Pezzi is apparently the guy who takes spam to be some kind of religiously toned revelation of our fantastic future. A remarkable fellow.

#1024: Douglas Peterson

Douglas Peterson is a radically insane Christian fundamentalist who appears to run a number of websites. The names alone should give you a clue. “America’s Christian Heritage” seems primarily devoted to complaining that the Bible isn’t “read and taught as a divine revelation in the school?” Apparently that’s what Peterson thinks the Constitution says it should be; he doesn’t seem to have read it, but he has read David Barton’s writings. His website “The American Holocaust Memorial” argues that the legality of abortion is a deliberate genocide of African Americans (the link is to a discussion of Gregg Cunningham’s pamphlet). His website “Evolution Sucks!” is devoted to his arguments against evolution. And ok, he’s got some novel ones. Try this: According to Peterson evolutionists claim that whales evolved from land-dwelling creatures and also that land animals evolved from fish. Apparently those two claims cannot be true together according to Peterson, so his challenge is: “Can you show the transitional fossils that prove ANY of this?” (No, he hasn’t bothered to look.) Then you can try to make sense of this challenge. He has a few others, generally suggesting that he has had a look at a variety of creationist materials but not quite succeeded in grasping even the standard canards; the results are rather fascinating.

Diagnosis: Insignificant internet kook with some websites. Not very influential, but Peterson can nevertheless serve as a representative for that particular species of loon.

#1023: Dennis Petersen

The infamously insane fundie conspiracy theorist Peter J. Peters, famous for this one, seems to have passed away.

But there are plenty of others ready to take his place. Dennis Petersen is another fundie conspiracy theorist, and founder of The Creation Resource Foundation, which is devoted to “helping families build a confidently Bible-based world view through multi-media seminars, books, videos, newsletters, media interviews, and field trips. Every production is designed to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ as The Creator, to whom every human must be ultimately accountable.” He is also author of Unlocking The Mysteries of Creation, which seems to enjoy some popularity among homeschoolers. Both his organization and book are hardcore young earth creationist. His objections to evolution are rather familiar: how could all the complexity happen by random chance (which rather clearly demonstrates that he doesn’t even understand the fundamentals of the theory he purports to criticize)? And what about the second law of thermodynamics?

In other words, Petersen promotes your standard creationist talking points, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they have been refuted a thousand times. But then, Petersen’s goal isn’t truth or accuracy, but Jesus.

Diagnosis: Facts, evidence and reason simply have no traction with this kind of people, and Petersen appears to carry some influence among the less reality-apt segments of the population.

#1022: Michael Peroutka

Michael Anthony Peroutka is the founder of the Institute on the Constitution (with his brother Stephen), co-host of The American View radio program, and prominent member of the Constitution Party, being their candidate for president in 2004. His candidacy – the campaign theme being “God, Family, Republic” – emphasized in particular the Bible and the idea of America as a Christian Nation, advocating for instance a revision of the First Amendment to affirm Triune Christianity as the officially established religion of the United States. Peroutka was accordingly endorsed by several prominent Dominionists, the League of the South, and Alex Jones. (In 2014 his ambitions are a bit lower, but he is registered to run for spots on a county commission and on the Republican party committee in Anne Arundel County, Maryland; less power, perhaps, but also a greater chance of succeeding – and this guy is seriously dangerous.)

Yes, he is a staunch theocrat, claiming that the church–state separation a myth and a lie and that the Constitution, in reality, mandates just the opposite (which makes it a bit unclear why he thinks it needs to be changed, but fair enough). According to Peroutka “[a] revolution has happened in America […] over the past 150 years. Evolution is at the bottom of it, and some very un-American people have been and are behind it. The purpose of the revolution is to stop you from being able to think and believe like an American [i.e. like Peroutka] any more …. It’s been a calculated and evil anti-God, anti-Christian revolution.” You don’t get much more insane than that; though he is probably right that people with a modicum of education and critical thinking skills probably won’t think and believe like him. He has elsewhere argued that teahching evolution is “disloyalty to America”. To support the claim, he quotes the Declaration of Independence: “There exists a creator God. He is the God of the Bible. He is not Allah, nor any of the Hindu deities, nor is he the God that is in the wind or in the trees or some other impersonal force. He created us. We did not evolve from apes or slimy, swampy things.” Evidently secular scholars must have missed that passage.

In 2012, the Human Rights Campaign called Peroutka an “active white supremacist and secessionist sympathizer,” though Peroutka denies the charges. He does, however, refer to the Confederate flag as “the American flag”. Interestingly, Peroutka does (at least occasionally) take his own goals to be in line e.g. with Martin Luther King’s goals, though he does have his own interpretation of MLK’s words, claiming for instance that MLK did not call for civil rights in the 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech (but rather for Biblical law). Indeed, Peroutka has said that all civil rights laws are unjust because “there is no such thing as a civil right.”

Peroutka is perhaps (or used to be) most noted for his anti-abortion stance, advocating that the anti-choice movement should begin to use different and more extreme tactics and that local officials should begin prosecuting women for murder if they have an abortion. He apparently refuses to recognize Roe v. Wade; according to Peroutka that case doesn’t have any impact on the law because it violates the Bible. He doesn’t like gays either (surprise), and was part of the coalition to file the motherof all Proposition 8 briefs in 2013 (arguing for instance that laws against homosexuality and sodomy affirm rather than deny the humanity of gay people). Peroutka has elsewhere emphasized that if we followed God’s laws then there would be “no way we are ever going to validate homo or sodomite-unmarriage,” compared gay marriage to bank robbery, claimed that ENDA isn’t about civil rights (there are none, remember) but an insidious attempt by the government to force you to be gay, and argued that the apparently un-Biblical victory of the Union in the Civil War led directly to gay marriage – according to Peroutka the South’s defeat opened the door to a “huge black hole of centralized power,” which means that people began looking to the government, rather than God, as the source of their rights; “the real effect of the War and the Reconstruction after the war was to take the very foundation of our understanding of our rights away from us, that is to say that they come from God, and put them in the hands of men,” who can then change the meaning of concepts like marriage. Yes, it is all going down the drains; according to Peroutka, America is “heading toward Haiti” because we are disobeying God’s laws.

Of course, due to its failure to align itself with God’s laws, Peroutka does not trust the legal system. He is accordingly for instance pessimistic about the Hobby Lobby case – Justice Anthony Kennedy will rule against Hobby Lobby because he hates God: “The reason he hates God is because he thinks he is God. And if you think you’re God, then you hate anybody else or any other entity or being that anybody would give homage to that would interfere with what you see yourself as; he is jealous of any other God.”

On the other hand, Peroutka is very fond of home-schooling, and argues that the solution to school violence is to abolish schools, which … well …

Diagnosis: At least he is reasonably clear about his goals. It is rather interesting that he has earned the respect of several people who also claim to have America’s best interests in mind (Peroutka, on his side, doesn’t even really recognize America).

#1021: Michael & Debi Pearl

Michael Pearl a Christian fundamentalist pastor, missionary, and evangelist. His day job is to run the No Greater Joy organization, but he is most famous for his, shall we say, controversial book To Train Up A Child written with his wife Debi. The Pearls claim to have sold 670,000 copies of that one, though the Nielsen BookScan records only 9,579 sales since 2001. Given the contents of the book one would hope the Nielsen numbers are more accurate.

To Train Up A Child is, simply put, a handbook in child abuse in which the Pearls book advises parents to use objects like a quarter-inch plumbing tube to spank children and “break their will,” as well as to subject them to other forms of torture (such as putting children under a cold garden hose and advice that “a little fasting is good training”) to ensure that they succumb to Jesus. The book has been linked to at least three child deaths, but according to the Pearls it is apparently a good way of teaching children arithmentics: “I have told a child I was going to give him 10 licks. I count out loud as I go … Pretending to forget the count, I would again stop at about eight and ask him the number. Have him subtract eight from ten, (a little homeschooling) and continue with the final two licks.”

The book claims to espouse “simple, Biblical principles.” In their own words: “If you are just beginning to attempt to control an already rebellious child who runs from discipline and is too incoherent to listen, then use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring, and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise. You are to rule over him as a benevolent sovereign. Your word is final.” It’s really an epic battle of the wills, like Jesus against Satan. Carri Williams, home-schooling mother of one of the children who died, claimed that her daughter rebelled herself to death.

At least the Pearls have some empathy for parents who don’t follow their ways, comparing such parents to Holocaust victims on the way to the concentration camp, and the toddlers their deranged concentration camp abusers, or something (the medical and civil authorities, on the other hand, are consistently referred to as “the Gestapo”)

Part of the purpose is to keep the child away from the New World Order: “If you want a child who will integrate into the New World Order and wait his turn in line for condoms, a government funded abortion, sexually transmitted disease treatment, psychological evaluation and a mark on the forehead, then follow the popular guidelines in education, entertainment and discipline, but if you want a son or daughter of God, you will have to do it my God’s way.”

The Pearls are not alone. Similar books for parents are Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp; and Don’t Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Plowman.

Diagnosis: You’ll hardly find much more repugnant people in the US.