#2628: Dan Calabrese

Dan Calabrese is a serious wingnut, conspiracy theorist, and editor-in-chief of the North Star Writers Group, which was operative a decade or so ago. Calabrese went on to be editor-in-chief of Herman Cain’s Best of Cain website, a position he used to promote various anti-gay nonsense and general wingnuttery. According to Calabrese, gay rights advocates and websites like OKCupid are promoting fascism and Bolshevism while acting just like The Borg of Star Trek: “This movement is evil. The gay movement understands something. They understand that in order for their movement to ultimately succeed, they need to turn the entire culture into a mindless army of obedient adherents like the Borg on Star Trek.” The occasion was the CEO of Mozilla stepping down after being revealed to donate to a campaign to repeal marriage equality in California in 2014. What it has to do with Bolshevism is unexplained but obvious enough. It’s instructive, however, to note that Calabrese thinks trying to get people to agree with him means turning them into a “mindless army of obedient adherents”. Don’t agree with Calabrese is the obvious lesson here.

 

Calabrese has weighed in on a number of equality-related issues, however. When Burger King launched an LGBT pride themed burger at one San Francisco location, Calabrese complained that when he was eating lunch, he didn’t want to “be thinking about is dude-on-dude action.” It’s unclear why he would, but he desperately yelled at Burger King that “You’re the ones who are making it an issue, not me.” But that’s incorrect; it’s Calabrese who makes it an issue because he can’t stop thinking about dude-on-dude action. “I don’t remember the last time adulterers, murderers or drunk drivers convinced a burger chain to name a product after them,” he lamented, because gay people are exactly like murderers and drunk drivers.

 

And that happened at the same time then-President Obama ensured he would keep gay people “in a state of demonic oppression” since he backed efforts to curtail the practice of conversion therapy on minors. Homosexuality is “demonic” and a gay person is in need of “a deliverance minister [who] can help him to get rid of the evil spirit.” Obama, by extension, is a phony Christian.

 

He was also, in 2014, appalled that Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer chose to pick Lisa Brown to be his running mate, since Brown in 2012 mentioned the word “vagina” in a House floor speech against an anti-choice bill. That’s a word no civilized person would use for a body part (at least unless it’s prefaced by ‘grabbed’, we suspect), and to Calabrese, Brown will forever be the “Vagina Woman” (it is, in other words, OK to use the word as a slur, but not to refer to a body part – you see the difference?)

 

Meanwhile, activists working to reform marijuana laws are “idiotic” and “dumb”. They are dumb primarily because they overlook “the spiritual implications of this issue”, namely that smoking marijuana “invites demonic infestation” and “puts a person at serious risk of demonic attack”. You see, “strident marijuana activists” have turned marijuana into their “god” and thereby given themselves “over to the spiritual enemies of God.” So there. Dumb.

 

Calabrese was also one of the main proponents of the Hilary Clinton shoe truther conspiracy theory. It’s not his only Clinton conspiracy. His ability to assess information is, in general, questionable.

 

Diagnosis: “Everyone who disagrees with me is possessed by demons!” is not a good starting point, but Calabrese starts and ends up there. Idiotic. Dumb.