#2013: Tom Minnery

Tom Minnery is president emeritus of CitizenLink and the vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family, a fundamentalist institution devoted to homophobia, gun policy, wingnuttery, science denialism and supporting corporal punishment for unruly children. They are also vigorously in favor of banning unsuitable books (“libraries’ policies” of making available books the contents of which Minnery disagrees with “are anti-family,” says Minnery), the power of prayer (e.g. against Obama) and committed to anti-environmentalism and climate change denialism; Minnery has himself appeared for instance in the anti-environment conspiracy theory documentary The Green Dragon, according to which environmentalism is a secular religion trying to supplant Christianity in order to set up a world government to implement a population control scheme (you wondered how Minnery would be considered even remotely conceivably relevantly qualified to talk about environmental issues, didn’t you?). Minnery is also a member of the secretive religious right lobbyist group the Council for National Policy, which is closely connected to the Dominionist movement and also apparently quite influential. It is also worth mentioning that Minnery in 2006 vigorously attempted to deflect questions about his organization’s relationship with Jack Abramoff. It is also worth mentioning the group’s rather intsense support for Russia and Russia’s policies on gay people, religion and how to deal with unpatriotic journalists. 

Minnery is also a great fan of reparative therapy, claiming that reparative therapy is “common and there is a history of them working well, many people have lost their confusion about sexuality as a result of them to the good.” This is false. Minnery, however, followed up by criticizing then-governor Christ Christie for signing a bill barring the practice of ex-gay therapy on minors, rhetorically asking if Christie also approves of adultery. Nor is Minnery a fan of feminism because the Bible (“how many feminists know who it was who gave us the very name ‘woman’ (Genesis 1:26),” asks Minnery).

He has also argued claimed that religion can substitute for and thus offset the costs of healthcare. It’s accordingly no wonder that he’s opposed to Obamacare.

There’s a fine Tom Minnery resource here.

Diagnosis: Fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist who toys with dominionism, fueled by bigotry, denialism and a striking inability to draw relevant moral distinctions. He is also extremely influential. Dangerous.