#773: Neal Horsley

Budd Hopkins, that legend of alien abduction and UFO research, has unfortunately passed away. That leads us to Otis O’Neal Horsley, whose brand of crazy admittedly takes a somewhat different direction. Horsley is a militant anti-abortion activist and wingnut maniac, who used to run a website – The Nuremberg Files – where he provided home addresses of abortion providers in the United States. James Charles Kopp, who murdered the Buffalo doctor Barnett Slepian in 1998, was an associate of Horsley’s, and used information from his site for his actions. The site has later been deemed not constitutionally protected by the courts.

Horsley has also achieved some fame for being arrested on charges of terroristic threats against Elton John, saying that “[w]hat Elton John has done is desecrated the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, blasphemed the Lord Jesus Christ,” apparently as a response to John’s assertion that Jesus was a “compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.”

In 2010, Horsley ran unsuccessfully for governor under his Creator’s Rights Party on a nullification platform. In the process he said that he was willing to kill his own son, a Sergeant in the Army, if he were sent to Georgia to stop him from seceding (Horsley advocated Georgia’s secession primarily on the grounds of Roe v. Wade). Nor was his response to Obama’s support of marriage equality entirely devoid of crazy.

Diagnosis: Rabid maniac who would have been funny if it wasn’t for the fact that he may arguably be held partially responsible for the deaths of real people. As it is, Horsley is not funny at all.