#609: Cynthia Davis

Cynthia L. Davis is a former Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives who currently runs the Back to Basics Christian Bookstore in O'Fallon. You can probably feel the direction in which this entry is going, and true enough: her political career was characterized by anti-abortion activism and suchlike (her antics regarding sex education is appalling), to the extent that she finally left the Republican Party over “the loss of party principles,” and teamed up with the Constitution Party instead.

Of course, Davis is, despite her concern for the unborn, not particularly concerned with such issues as child welfare (see for instance this astonishing piece, which is one among many), and she received national attention in 2009 when she attacked programs providing subsidized meals for school-age children from lower-income families during the summer months, saying that such programs “could break apart more families” and that “hunger can be a positive motivator.” She drew some criticism on that one even from fellow wingnuts.

It was also noted that Davis has earlier been observed “stealing food at state dinners to take home to her children.”

Here’s Cynthia Davis on sex. The piece does not flaunt erudition.

Davis has, as expected, also made repeated efforts to have creationism incorporated in public school curricula – and Missouri seems fertile ground for such projects, with people like Sherry “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school” Melby and David Awbrey running around).

Diagnosis: Comple whacko. As ignorant, stupid, and blockheaded as elected representatives come; Bachmann class.

#607: Dave Daubenmire

A.k.a. Coach Daubenmire

A.k.a. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Demagogue

Coach Daubenmire is a former high school football coach who ran into some career trouble in the late 1990s for coercing his students to pray. He was sued by ACLU, though according to himself “the ACLU relented and offered Coach an out of court settlement. God honored his stand and the ACLU backed off,” which sort of fails to mention the fact that the court ordered Daubenmire to stop leading religious activities at school and that the school board paid an $ 18,000 settlement. But Daubenmire is a traditional Liar-for-Jesus, so you wouldn’t expect much honesty from that source. “As a result of the experience, Coach heard the call to move out of coaching a high school team, to the job of coaching God’s team,” is not entirely accurate either.

Well, Daubenmire has built his entire post-coaching career on telling people how his first amendment rights were violated by the Constitution, and on running the ministry he founded, Pass the Salt Ministries (no kidding). Pass the Salt is perhaps most famous for hosting the right wing conference “A gathering of Eagles”, promoted as a “NON-POLITICAL event […] designed to educate Christians about the great moral issues facing this country [,…] such as The Gay Agenda, Abortion, Individual Liberty, Hate Crime Legislation, and the religion of Secular Humanism,” which does not sound distinctly non-political but there you go. Guests included several famous non-partisan Christians such as Flip Benham, Rick Scarborough, and Peter Labarbera.

Daubenmire also runs something called “Minutemen united”, a group of people who disrupts church services to proclaim their anti-gay stance. Those activities have landed him several high-profile television appearances, where he has attempted to (chime in on the Freshwater case and) portray himself as your humble, friendly servant of God – he doesn’t hate his opponents, you see, it is just that they are “enemies of God”. He also advocates revolution to obliterate the distinction between church and state, and is apparently a big fan of David Barton’s dominionist mangling of history.

Now, Daubenmire asserts that he is “not homo-phobic. I'm not homo-hateful. I'm not homo-latent. I'm homo-nauseous. I really couldn’t care less where a man desires to put his appendage. But I’m sick of hearing about it. I’m sick of talking about it. I’m sick of it being force fed to me on TV,” which would at least made slightly more sense if Daubenmire hadn’t so tirelessly talked about it and weren’t so all-consumingly obsessed with it. One wonders how he squares being tired of the debate with his repeated calls on Obama to come clean and admit that he is gay (as well as admit that he is a socialist who is trying to destroy the economy and that he is not really a Christian; Obama is apparently also a sociopath). Then he complains that people say that he says stupid shit.

He didn’t quite get through the Jason Collins affair with his dignity intact either. Daubenmire was predictably outraged that Obama supported him. He also boldly declared that he hates homosexuality, which apparently must be consistent with being “not homo-hateful”, primarily one supposes in virtue of the lying-for-Jesus discourse mandate he seems to possess. He furthermore claimed that homosexuality only exists “because men like you and men like me are letting it go on and won’t stand up and push back and say anything about it.” Because there is surely a shortage of rabid bigots fuming about homosexuality at the moment.

Diagnosis: Homo-hateful, abysmally ignorant theocrat. He’s pretty loud, so he has apparently made some impact.

#595: Caroline Crocker

Caroline Crocker is another Intelligent Design creationist and another martyr for the cause of religiously motivated pseudoscience. She was prominently featured in the hackjob documentary Expelled (analyzed here, and here), where she was presented as one of the “scientists who are being persecuted for their views.” More precisely, Expelled claimed that Crocker was fired because she mentioned Intelligent Design in a class she was teaching. And Crocker was indeed teaching demonstrably false creationist material (for instance about this), so there would have been good reasons to fire her. As a matter of fact, however, Crocker wasn’t fired. She was teaching on a one-year contract, and was simply not rehired at the end of the year for undisclosed reasons – like so many adjuncts. The whole, true story is here.

Crocker later ended up on wingnut welfare with a gig at the ID creationist IDEA center (which blithely lies about her incompetence). There, she tells us, she helped create “safe houses” and fake identities so students could secretly come “out of the closet.” It is interesting, once again, to notice the depth of the persecution complex among the denialists, and Crocker – despite the complete groundlessness of the accusations – has frequently been used as an example by Intelligent Design creationists in their dishonest outcries about oppression and calls for“Academic Freedom”.

Diagnosis: Crocker is in other words indeed a fine example of the alleged persecution faced by fundamentalist pseudoscientists, but not in the way they see it. She also splendidly illustrates Intelligent Design Creationist tactics: the abject failure of science to support any of their claims with evidence is not an interesting detail, as long as there are other routes to victory, such as screaming “persecution”.

#569: Warren Chisum

Warren Chisum is a former Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives hailing from the Panhandle, and member the Texas Conservative Coalition, a consortium of rightwing nut jobs.

He is nationally known for his opposition to same-sex marriages and adoptions, as well as to hate crimes legislation – he fought tooth and claw to keep the sodomy laws on the books (and to emphasize his vileness, see this). In a similar vein he has repeatedly tried to establish requirements that parents have to provide their signatures in order for their children to take part in sex education (which would, one suspects, kinda defeat the purpose of such education), and in 2008, he announced that he would introduce a bill to prolong the waiting time in Texas to finalize a divorce. All in the spirit of liberty, of course.

Chisum’s abysmal levels of delusional ignorance is very much in evidence in the memo from Georgia state representative Ben Bridges he delivered in February 2007 attacking “the evolution monopoly in the schools,” and claiming that in teaching evolution, schools are indoctrinating students in the beliefs of the ancient Jewish Pharisees sect. In more detail, the memo claimed that “Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion ... This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia,” and for good measure Chisum’s memo directed readers to the Fair Education Foundation Inc., an organization claiming that the Earth is not rotating or orbiting the Sun. Of course, Chisum didn’t read what he advocated before he advocated it (what would you expect), but his response when he finally read it wasn’t much less loonsome.

His dominionist leanings are rather well-documented as well (also here). And to continue in the same vein: with one Charlie Howard he submitted the act “relating to voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints in public schools” discussed here (also here).

Chisum didn’t seek reelection in 2012, trying instead to get elected for a seat on the Texas Railroad Comission, which he failed.

Diagnosis: Blatant, shameless Liar for Jesus with strong dominionist leanings, who wouldn’t hesitate to use every fallacy in the book to get his way. Hopefully neutralized, to an extent, by now.

#224: Andrea Lafferty

Andrea Sheldon Lafferty is the Executive Director of the Traditional Values Coalition , TVC, which means that we are dealing with yet another rabid anti-gay activist. In fact, the TVC endorses most of the traditional Traditional Values™, such as anti-abortion, anti-pornography, anti-immigration, anti-gambling, anti-drugs/alcohol/tobacco, anti-premarital sex, and pro-patriotism (meaning tea party ideology) and pro-converting infidels to Christianity. Lafferty's response to a Gallup poll suggesting a change in public opinion towards gay rights was that “Jesus didn't ask for a 'show of hands' at the Sermon on the Mount. We, His followers, should not ask America to vote on which of his teachings they choose to obey.” Lafferty is not known for honesty and critical thinking skills, but she made a disconcertingly high number of visits to the White House during Bush’s presidency. Lafferty is also on the record arguing (asserting) that Obama is using the stimulus bill to curb religious freedom at universities.

Lafferty is also the daughter of the organization's chairman, Louis P. Sheldon, famous for his links to the Abramoff scandal and for claiming that America is currently under siege by a dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition (i.e. gay rights activism) with Mao as their hero, and which is currently involved in a conspiracy against the TVC. Andrea Lafferty is married to James Lafferty, chairman of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, founded by Tim LaHaye and Robert Grant, whose goal is … exactly the same as TVC’s. James Lafferty was, among other things, outraged by Pete Stark’s admission of non-belief, invoking the whole spectrum of non-arguments in response.

Diagnosis: Kooky wingnut and fundamentalist; zealous, and part of Tim LaHaye’s web of delusional extremism. She has gained a name for herself, and must therefore be considered relatively influential.

#215: Gordon Klingenschmitt

Gordon Klingenschmitt is a former navy chaplain (removed by the Pentagon, but refuses to admit to having being thrown out), occasional columnist for WorldNetDaily, and vehemently insane. He is fanatically anti-gay and a fan of imprecatory prayer. He applied it, for instance, against Mikey Weinstein, leader of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The tone is fascinatingly old Testament: “Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus' name. Amen” (his second attempt is discussed here). Charming fellow, in other words.

Klingenschmitt is in fact a champion of religious freedom, but only if it is understood his way – i.e. as observing God’s first commandment. I am not sure he is a liar for Jesus as much as an ignorant moron and willful misunderstander for Jesus. He is, unsurprisingly, also a DeMar style revisionist and theocrat.

Klingenschmitt may have been thrown out of the military (as was Jim Ammerman), but people like James Linzey remain. And that is indeed cause for concern.

Diagnosis: Batshit crazy raging fundamentalist and nutjob (and Liar for Jesus). Probably too insane to be any real danger, but one never knows.

190: James Inhofe

If not the densest, Oklahoma senator James Inhofe is at least among the most ignorant and dangerous US Senators, primarily for being perhaps the most vocal (and dishonest) global warming skeptic in the US Congress (he also supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage – and he campaigned for his Senate seat in 1994 using the phrase "God, guns, and gays"; see also this). Inhofe's statements on AGW have been reputiated even by the handful of contrarian scientists Inhofe constantly cites.

In his own words, climate science "kind of reminds ... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie ...” He has also pulled a Delay and compared the United States Environmental Agency to the Gestapo and compared EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose. I think this quote is revealing: According to Inhofe AGW is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state." In fact, the UN cooked it up to destroy America. His evidence? The Oregon Petition, at least.

He is constantly caught lying, but persists in saying that there is a scientific consensus that climate is getting cooler. In general, he has pretty much declared war on science, although he doesn’t seem to have a clue to what it is. His most famous stunt was compiling a list of “high-profile scientists” (such as Chris Allen) who oppose AGW, a list overlapping with the Discovery Institute rooster and known HIV denialists, plus several climate scientists who explicitly accept AGW (here, here, and here; the point doesn’t seem to have been honesty anyway). After massive criticism Inhofe changed the list to “scientists whose research undermines AGW” – despite the complaints from the scientists that their research did no such thing.

His stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict is firm, and he appears to think that the only legitimate guideline is – the Bible (more here, and some curious tidbits here).

If you are wondering where people like Inhofe are coming from (apart from Oklahoma), you may look at this rather disconcerting discussion.

Diagnosis: Confirmation bias incarnate; blindly flailing fanatic who is unable to separate facts from political opinions or evidence from Stalin-strength ideology. Extremely dangerous.

#171: Tim Harlow

An exceptionally dense creationist, pastor Tim Harlow is hardly a major figure, and it seems to be a coincidence that his pamphlet containing some of the most common creationist canards (mixtures of ignorance, fallacious reasoning, wishful thinking and dubious respect for veracity) has come to the attention of the rest of us. The pamphlet, “Creationism for my Child’s Teacher”, is apparently intended for parents among Harlow’s flock, to be handed out to teachers (for discussion of various points, see here and here). It really is a collection of quote-mining, dishonesty and desperate twisting of facts, patched up with, uhm, inaccuracies where even the standard dishonest techniques do not work.

There is nothing unusual about Harlow, of course. There are people like Harlow in every small town, people who are diligently doing their own small parts in forwarding delusion, religious fundamentalism, anti-science and anti-rationality. It is their numbers that makes Harlow and his band of liars for Jesus dangerous, of course, and Harlow deserves an entry as a representation of all those delusionally lunatic minor players that seemingly exist everywhere. And for this beautiful takedown by PZ Myers, of course.

Diagnosis: Kook and Liar for Jesus. Apparently a nice chap, but his ignorance and bias make him dangerous nonetheless.