#1548: Ryan Dobson

Ryan Dobson is the spawn of James Dobson, and generally cut from the same cloth. And that is pretty much all the information you need (they host a radio program together, Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk). Dobson jr. hopes that when abortion is re-criminalized the government will force people who lived near Planned Parenthood clinics to walk through them just as Germans during the post-war occupation had to go through concentration camps (and apparently believes all and any conspiracy theories ever forwarded in chain emails about Planned Parenthood). Like his father he also believes that Obama is a dictator, and that Obama may accordingly deny healthcare to conservatives like his father, since in Ryan Dobson’s mind the Affordable Health Care Act entails that all healthcare-related decisions are ultimately Obama’s to make at his personal discretion: “You can’t trust them. Clearly they are targeting people.” The evidence for the latter claim seems to be his assumption that Obama can deny healthcare to his father. So it goes. And that’s not the only wingnut conspiracy theory Dobson jr. has promoted. When it comes to homosexuals, Dobson believes that most of them were abused as children and that homosexuality is like alcoholism; therefore gay marriage is morally wrong.

Diagnosis: Quite simply another James Dobson, though possibly without the charm, clout and political impact.