#728: John Guardiano

John Guardiano is a “writer and analyst who focuses on political, military, and public-policy issues” for American Spectator. He generally takes a conservative stance. In fact, he usually takes the loony, ultraparanoid, Christian persecution complex-informed stance. For instance, Guardiano is concerned about the “war on Christmas”: “Why, walk into any store in any large metro area, and you'll rarely, if ever, hear someone say, ‘Merry Christmas.’ Those words are now taboo. ‘Happy Holidays’ is all the rage, and the implication is clear: Christmas is nothing special,” which must because of the conspiracy – “a concerted effort, by anti-religious secularists and God-haters, to deprecate the cultural significance of Christmas” – rather than, you now, commercially informed decisions made by the stores in question to boost sales. (Notice also the stocke wingnut interpretation of “secular”.) Furthermore, he is concerned about gay marriage because of bigotry the impact it may have on children, noting the increases in divorce rates and single parents the last thirty years. “What has that to do with gay marriage,” you might ask. “Everything,” says Guardiano: “Sure, this breakdown in the family has occurred independent of the push for ‘marriage equality.’ But it is still part and parcel of an overarching effort to undermine and deprecate traditional marriage and the traditional family.” Yes, another “overarching effort” by godless liberals (and even granting him the effort it is still very unclear what gay marriage has to do with the increase in single parents rather than the opposite). It is also “concentrated”, which means there is a conspiracy going on.

A typical Guardiano screed – in fact, the one that really made the difference for his application for inclusion in this Encyclopedia – is his lament on the death of DADT: “[J]ust as with same-sex marriage, DADT has never been about civil rights or equality. Lesbians and homosexuals have always enjoyed the same legal rights and protections as every other American – including the right to serve in the U.S. military, albeit not openly as gay men and women.” Yep, nothing to do with civil rights. Neither did the question of interracial marriage, presumably.

Here he defends Christine O’Donnell on the separation of church and state, because there is none in Guardiano’s rather reality-insulated mind either.

Diagnosis: Fairly typical rightwing conspiracy theorist – and he is, indeed, a conspiracy theorist, not really very different from Jeff Rense and Alex Jones.