#681: Wayne Frair

Wayne Frair is the former president of the Creation Research Society, co-author (with Percival Davis) of the book “A Case for Creation”, contributor to the book “In Six Days” (edited by one John Ashton; the book was written as a response to Stephen Jay Gould’s assertion that no legitimate scientists believed in creationism, and the inclusion of people like Wayne Frair, who is definitely no scientist (he has done no science) kinda underlines Gould’s point), and author of several rants about baraminology, a field he is largely responsible for bringing into existence.

Frair was a witness for the Defendant in MacLean vs .Arkansas Board of Education, where he admitted that he accepts the Bible as literally and historically true, something that didn’t exactly help the Defendant’s case.

Diagnosis: Daft dullard with little time for aligning his opinions with reality. Not a particularly familiar name, perhaps, but nevertheless an important cogwheel in the denialist machinery.

#680: Virginia Foxx

Virginia Foxx is, like Randy Forbes two entries ago, a Republican member of the American House of Representatives, representing North Carolina. She is absolutely abysmally crazy, and able to give Michele Bachmann quite a run for her money. Now, Foxx actually did experience something of a scandal early in her career when she took a small donation from a gay rights group. But she emerged all the wiser, and that’s sure not gonna happen again.

Foxx’s stance on gay rights is easily illustrated by her comments on the Matthew Shepard case. As some will (and should) remember, Shepard was tortured and crucified because he was gay. Not according to Foxx; in fact, she claimed the murder was a “hoax”, though she offered few explanations of how the circumstances could constitute a hoax apart from flat denial.

She has also claimed that universal health care is more threatening than terrorists, which for most people would be just another instance of ridiculous hyperbole but which from Foxx’s mouth sounds as if she genuinely believes it (as is the case with her support for the “Christmas Resolution”). In fact, Foxx has blithely asserted that “there are no Americans who don’t have healthcare”. A states of denial doesn’t come more denialist than this.

She has also claimed that the Republican Party passed the Civil Rights Act with no help from the Democratic Party, despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson more or less forced it through Congress against howls of protest from Republicans, but historical revisionism is nothing new from wingnuts of Foxx’s ilk – in fact, Foxx’ revisionism sometimes reaches almost otherworldly standards, such as when she claimed that “[a]ctually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country,” said in connection with her vigorous opposition to such programs.

There’s a fine Virginia Foxx resource here.

Diagnosis: Blathering old fool, who is unable to recognize that wishful thinking is a fallacy, partially because she also fails to see that consistency is a virtue.

#679: Ezola Foster

We will reluctantly grant a brief entry also to Ezola Foster. Foster, as you may (or may – more likely – not) remember was Pat Buchanan’s running mate for the presidency in 2000, representing the Reform Party (the takeover of said party was legendary, though, with Buchanan and his allies finally managing to oust all the yogic fliers (!) in a final, epic battle of wills). Foster later left the Reform Party for the charming fellowship of the Constitution Party, but kept her obsession with family values. She is the author of What’s Right for All Americans, and president of Black Americans for Family Values, which means, of course, that she is opposed to most values valued by civilized people. She is also an outspoken opponent of pornography, the civil rights movement, sex education, AIDS education (just a cover for “pro-homosexuality propaganda”) and gay rights. Here is Foster on civil rights.

Like so many wingnut candidates, Foster has a backstory of curious and/or disconcerting behavior, most famously for collecting workers’ compensation payments for nearly a year for a mental disorder she promptly denied having had when she entered Buchanan’s ticket (the link also covers a series of bizarre lawsuits, based on even more bizarre interpretations of the law, from when she worked as a teacher in the 1980s). She (or her party) requested a seal on the records, but the courts were uncooperative (and Buchanan’s campaign had by then run out of money in any case).

Apparently Buchanan had no problems with Foster’s membership with the John Birch Society, which was very broad-minded of him.

Diagnosis: She seems to be still around howling at ghosts and immigrants and Obama, but her influence seems to be rather limited. 

#678: Glib Fortuna (real name?) and the StACLU

Stop the ACLU (StACLU) is a group of moronic fundies (the structure is unclear; seems to be two semi-competing websites, at least) devoted to fighting the efforts of the ACLU since they view civil rights as a threat to their privileges and ability to suppress others by way of having their religious, political views and bigotry receive special treatment (but, of course and in a typical Orwellian fashion, they frame their campaigns as pro-freedom). You see, the ACLU promotes deviancy – such as equal treatment of gays, blacks, and religious minorities – and that is in opposition to the Bible, and therefore, well, in opposition to the true meaning of “rights”, i.e. the right you have to live in strict accordance with the StACLU people’s views and creeds (and not be a “Bush hating enemy of freedom”). The “organization” is committed to the idea of the US as a Christian Nation (the post discussed here is a nice illustration of what the StACLU is up to), and does not shy away from rank dishonesty (though they may not realize this given their aforementioned Orwellian delusions). This post, penned by someone calling himself/herself bulldozetheaclu, is telling: “I found a NEW way to PROTEST THE LEFT! Number one … what do commies hate most of all? The Bible, God’s Word! So join me in sending NEW TESTAMENTS to Iran … On top of that, in doing so you will be protesting against the Radical Left here in America, who embrace terrorists as freedom fighters, who refer to Islam as the ‘religion of peace’, and make a practice out of persecuting Christians here in America by attacking the very essence of our Christian faith and heritage.” Sums them up their bipartisan defense of freedom and civil rights pretty well, methinks.

Glib Fortuna, whose favorite weapon is the false dichotomy, is, or at least used to be, among their most frequent and avid members, and is responsible for having penned an impressive number of idiotic screeds. Apparently, according to Fortuna, the ACLU is in a conspiracy to undermine the safety of Americans from terrorists, (though he has a less-than-surprising tendency not to get even the facts completely right). The ACLU really loves Fred Phelps as well, according to Fortuna, since they have defended his rights to protest – Fortuna doesn’t quite manage to grasp the distinction between defending someone’s rights and agreeing with them, which sort of explains where he is coming from intellectually.

Diagnosis: We don’t know exactly what Fortuna is up to these days, but at least parts of the organization still exists (one Warner Todd Huston seems particularly active), and although it is a fringe group it still has enough sympathizers that their misunderstandings of “freedom” and “liberty” are at the very least annoying. 

#677: Randy Forbes

James Randy Forbes is the U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 4th congressional district, and another legendary wingnut madman in Congress. Forbes is a self-appointed general of the culture wars and founder of what he calls the “Push Back Team” (well, it’s really a fundraising team) and the Congressional Prayer Caucus, the purpose of which is to encourage prayer through legislation (and which has, interestingly, made considerable efforts to infiltrate the Science Committee). He is, rather obviously, opposed to laws banning collective prayer led by school officials, and has recently proposed (for the at least a few thousandth time) officially designating the United States as a Judeo-Christian nation (rebutted here) and obtaining an official declaration that “the Holy Bible is God’s Word”.

He has also relatively recently proposed that the State should officially declare that religion is a prerequisite for freedom, reject “the notion that the laws and Constitution of the United States require the exclusion of God from matters of government,” and declare that religion forms “the inseparable foundation for America’s representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures.” No, he doesn’t understand “freedom”, nor the history and origin of the ideas behind the American Consistution, and has precisely the view of which issues are the real and important ones for his country (yes, he has on several occasions led fellow fundamentalists in campaigns to solve all the nation’s problems by – you guessed it – prayer that you’d expect from a crazy village idiot in the Bible Belt. “Only the supernatural hand of God can save America,” says Forbes, though it is unclear from what (and do note how well the claim explains Forbes's views and willingness to take action on political issues). Another example is here (some half-truths and irrelevancies are documented here). You can probably guess what he thinks about those who disagree with the efforts of his Prayer Caucus (yup, they are opposed to the First Amendment – indeed, America itself is on the verge of rejecting God, and thereby the rights encoded in the Constitution, the way Forbes sees it).

In 2011 he introduced his resolution for an annual spiritual heritage week. Nothing unusual for Forbes, of course, who seems to be doing little else. The interesting thing about the resolution, containing as it does a litany of Christian nationalist historical revisionism, is that it is picked pretty much straight out of David Barton (a close ally) – it contains the same kind of lies, misrepresentations, quote-minings, and revisionism (some here). And the really scary thing, of course, is how much influence Barton clearly has over Congress.

As for DADT, Forbes decided to team up with insane Taliban sycophant Harry Jackson to pray, and to attempt to have their bigotry codified into law (Harry Jackson tried the “Martin Luther King would oppose Marriage Equality,” for good measure). It’s not his first attempt to thwart the insidious conspiracies of the LGBT movement, which is, of course, the second most important battle with respect to saving the future of America, after imposing religion through law.

There is a fine Forbes resource here.

Diagnosis: Relentlessly ignorant moron who seems angry that the US fails to use Iran as the good example of government it evidently is. That he has any power at all is scary.