#2349: Steve Toth

Steven Hixson Toth is a wingnut who represented District 15 (suburban Montgomery County, part of the Houston Metro area) in the Texas House of Representatives between 2013 and 2015, and was reelected in 2018. Toth, who is partially responsible for allowing college and university officials to carry concealed weapons, the Firearms Protection Act (HB 1076) restricting federal control and regulations of firearms, and various heartbeat bills against abortion, is also the kind of wingnut who blames sex ed and Planned Parenthood for teen pregnancy and for kids having sex (no really: he seriously thinks instructions on proper use of condoms make teens who otherwise wouldn’t have thought about sex “hot and bothered”), supported by unverified and unverifiable anecdotes a person of his age and in his position really shouldn’t have had access to if they were true (unlikely). 

A long-time sufferer from the Obama-derangement syndrome, Toth has for instance claimed that “Obama is taking the US to war with Syria and Russia so he can support his friends from Al-Qaeda in Syria.”

He has also been involved in the Texas education wars, leading the 2013 wingnut campaign against CSCOPE, a curriculum management tool created through a collaboration of state Education Service Centers, based on the manufactured charge that the program’s lessons were anti-American and anti-Christian and promoted Marxism and Islam, a charge as baseless as it is revealing of the bias and post-truth-politization-of-facts mindset of people like Steve Toth (Dan Patrick and David Dewhurst were others making similar charges). He has more recently made good friends with the anti-vaccine group Texans for Vaccine Choice, who describes him as someone who “already has a strong baseline knowledge of our issue.”

And lest you’d think that Toth’s loss in the 2015 reflected a modicum of sense on the part of the Montgomery electorate, you should know that he was replaced by Mike Keough, who thinks that the separation of church is a humanist, socialist plot.

Diagnosis: Looney wingnut with a tendency toward endorsing deranged conspiracy theories – a typical representative of the post-truth phenomenon in the current political climate. Ultimately, however, it seems to be the voters of Montgomery County that are to blame here and who really should have been awarded with this entry.

#2348: Paul Topete

The rock group Poker Face received some national attention in 2010 when the Anti-Defamation league reported that it had licensed a song to and defended the violent wingnut Hutaree militia terrorist group. Not a very savory collection of people in other words, and the band’s frontman (the others are Dennis Beidler and Brett Griffiths), Paul Topete, is known as an unabashed anti-Semite who, according to the ADL, once called the Holocaust “one of the largest if not THEE [sic] largest scam every played on humanity”. Continued Topete: “.. Yes that right... the HOLOHAUX aka holocaust. 1985 and 1988 Ernst Zundel DESTROYED the Myth known as the cult of holohauzianity. In a canadien court of law, Ernst zundel took on the biggest frauds in the SHOAH Industry, and showed them to be the frauds that they were.” (More Topete quotes here).

Now, Topete and his group were not particularly happy about the ADL’s coverage of them, and released a response saying that “[w]e are not anti-Semitic, but, we will shine the spotlight on those of Jewish faith who use their heritage to escape criticism, especially when it comes to crimes against this country, but also against their own people” before doubling down on speculations that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks: “Was Israel involved? It’s not beyond the scope of reasonable doubt.” Topete has also claimed that “the Rothschilds set up the Illuminati in 1776 to subvert the Christian basis of civilization.”

Now, Topete’s views are sufficiently extreme that his band has “been kicked off venues at Rutgers University in 2006 and a Ron Paul campaign event in 2007.” However, when he hosted his “Freedompalooza” event in southern Pennsylvania in 2013 (primary sponsor: the American Free Press), its list of speakers included people like Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt, convicted felon Jim Traficant and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. And previously, in 2010, the Colbert Report reported that now-Sen. Rand Paul attended a gun rally at which Topete threatened an armed revolt against the government.

Other speakers at the Freedompalooza event, in addition to several writers for the American Free Press, were:

-       Jim Condit, jr., perennial candidate for Congress in Ohio who primarily used his candidate status as a platform to promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

-       Merlin Miller, the 2012 presidential candidate of the white supremacist American Freedom Party

-       Cynthia Steele, wife of the late white supremacist attorney Edgar Steele (who was then serving a 50-year sentence for conspiracy to murder Cynthia, a charge she claims is false).

-       Various militia group representatives

-       An Oath Keepers representative

-       Project Appleseed

-       Jeff Christopher, a Delaware sheriff with ties to Michael Peroutka

Diagnosis: And again, we have an illustration of how difficult it is to distinguish deranged and dumb, on the one hand, and evil, on the other. And yes, it is scary that they seem to have as many connections as they do, and – notably – both on the left and the right on the political spectrum. 

#2347: Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is a Methodist writer and president of the D.C.-based Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a wingnut fundie think tank vehemently opposed to any hint of religious or social liberalism. Tooley is also a signatory to the Manhattan declaration.

Like most fundies, Tooley is concerned with tendencies and movements that he perceives as threats to Christianity or as going against the gospels, and he interprets the latter threats pretty broadly. Occupy Wall Street, for instance, was not only a movement dominated by feelings of “grievance, entitlement, idealism, and youthful naiveté” but by activists who “want an all-powerful state to seize and redistribute wealth according to some imagined just formula […] It’s a utopian dream, not based on the Gospels [note the elegant way he just throws that in there, without even trying to back it up], always monstrous when attempted, and premised more on resentment than godly generosity,” wrote Tooley, “[b]ut it’s a message that will always have an audience in a covetous world.” Yes, in the process Tooley mistakes for reasoning, Occupy Wall Street turns into the greedy part here, driven by material desires. And yes: the reasoning is rather good for illustrating something important about Tooley’s (and his ilk’s) particular brand of Christianity: it’s the poor who exhibit greed and materialism and thus sin. 

Par for the course from this type of source, we suppose. As is Tooley’s views on gay marriage. To the World Congress of Families in 2015 he declared that too many Christians fail to realize that God himself has ordered government to fight same-sex marriage and access to abortion. Then he complained about unchristian government overreach, pointing out that “God’s vocation for government” is apparently limited to “providing for public order – jailing criminals and deterring or defeating external aggressors”, not to be a “maternal provider, who feeds, clothes, heals, educates and reaffirms,” callings that should be left to the discretion of parents, families and the church. Yet the state should apparently definitely intervene in social issues when people have views Tooley doesn’t like, and yes: he is utterly oblivious to his own flirtations with the limits of coherence here. The IRD has also criticized the U.S. State Department for promoting the human rights of LGBT people.

Tooley is generally very concerned about immigration border security and the IRD has criticized evangelicals supportive of immigration reform, such as the Evangelical Immigration Table, for being front groups for George Soros. Indeed, perhaps Tooley’s main qualification for receiving an entry in our Encyclopedia is his criticism of pro-immigration reform leaders’ ostensibly  “superficial ‘God-talk’” and his suggestion that religious leaders should not be spending their time on immigration reform, which is not of the same “moral order” as “marriage, human life, and religious liberty;” indeed, when speaking about immigration, Tooley says it is “very problematic when people of faith start to claim that the Bible gives them very direct guidance on a particular contemporary political issue.” Because he and the IRD would never invoke the Bible on immigration or other contemporary political issues.

Diagnosis: Lack of self-awareness is common, and we are probably all guilty of it at times, but rarely do anyone reach the rarefied levels of self-delusion inhabited by deranged fundie Mark Tooley. He is, however, a force to be reckoned with on the religious right.

#2346: Kathleen Tonn

Tonn and the sauna

Kathleen Tonn was a state senatorial candidate in Alaska back in 2014 whose main trick was speaking in tongues. As part of her campaign, Tonn posted a video of herself singing and witnessing to a woman identified as Suzie in the steam room at the Alaska Club West – ostensibly, Suzie “doesn’t know Jesus Christ as her savior,” yet nevertheless let Tonn “sing and deliver a message in the Holy Ghost and tongues,” Tonn said. Apparently speaking in tongues is a very powerful technique, since “the message cannot be understood by Satan. But the Holy Spirit can use that message to bring deliverance, to bring clarity, to bring discerning and words of wisdom and knowledge. And tongues is interpreted by a person who has the gift of interpretation.” One is forgiven for suspecting that clarity isn’t really the goal here. Back in 2013 she also posted a youtube video where she blamed an apparent lack of growth of daisies in the natural flora in Alaska on the presidency of Barack Obama and his support of same sex marriage. 

She didn’t win, but nevertheless returned in 2015 to deliver an impressively deranged diatribe, complete with props, to the Anchorage city assembly in opposition to a proposed ordinance to forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It is worth a watch, but is impossible to sum up (the conclusion was “now, since you want to create some ordinance to avoid discrimination for members of our community who engage in, I perceive, unhealthy, ungodly behavior, you might want to consider creating an ordinance for one who speaks in tongues.”)

Diagnosis: Mostly colorful and fun, though these days we are never completely sure that people like this won’t get elected to the positions of power they are running for, so it might be worth keeping an eye on them. 

#2345: Larry Tomczak

Larry Tomczak is an apostolic leader, evangelist and founder and leader of the fundamentalist organization People of Destiny International. He has also been editor of the People of Destiny magazine and author of multiple books, notably Clap Your Hands, the Church Planters Handbook (with Dick Benjamin, Jim Durkin and Terry Edwards), The Bullseye Challenge and the disconcertingly titled The Little Handbook On Loving Correction: How To Raise Happy, Obedient, Respectful Children and God, the rod, and Your child’s bod: The art of loving correction for Christian parents. It should go without saying that you don’t take parenting advice from people like Larry Tomczak. He is also a longtime board-menber of the Intercessors for America ministry and Executive Director of The Awareness Group. 

However, no matter what hat he is wearing, Tomczak is tirelessly combatting the influence of Satan. Why do you think American media is so biased against wingnut conspiracy theorists? That’s Satan, of course. “For hundreds of years, our beloved nation enjoyed a blessed reprieve from many aspects of Satan’s reign because of the prevailing influence of the gospel and our Judeo-Christian foundations,” claims Tomczak (black people and native Americans were presumably treated according to the will of God), but “[i]n the past few decades America has drifted rapidly away from our heritage,” and rather fallen under the sway of Satan (apparently the election of Trump was a prophetic “breakthrough” – Tomczak was positively giddy – though the more recent impeachment efforts have proved to him that “we are in perilous times of the Last Days.”). Though Tomczak has assiduously worked to reveal a variety of ways in which “the devil is using the Democratic Party to try to destroy America,” including the devil’s / Democratic party’s “6-point battle plan”, you can probably guess which of the devil’s most “diabolical schemes” is most clearly being pushed and by whom.

Yes, it’s the gays

Tomczak is, as you predicted, virulently and unhingedly anti-gay, and he has claimed that gays will destroy America like the Nazis did to Germany. In particular, gay people and their allies are putting America “on the path to destruction,” and events that “brazenly celebrate, legitimize and promote the gay lifestyle in America” are just symptoms of the country’s “downward spiral” and gay “tsunami”; as Tomczak puts it, “[i]t would do us well to recall that in Nazi Germany, only a small percentage of the people were part of the Nazi party. Amid the atrocities, the overwhelming majority were apathetic and afraid to speak up [not actually accurate]… Is history repeating itself?” Yes, that’s the entirety of the parallel, and it’s based on an easily demonstrable falsehood. But accuracy is, of course, not a relevant parameter here. He later likened opposition to homosexuality – including “courageous” African countries that “outlaw homosexuality”, thus “standing strong amidst this moral storm” – to the fight against Nazis; indeed, as Tomczak sees it, we are already “in a civil war” over gay rights. God, of course, is on his side, and is already punishing gay men and lesbians by making them “effeminate” or “mannish,” with Tomczak citing Romans 1:27 to claim that gays and lesbians “receive in their own bodies the penalty for their sin.”

Otherwise, Tomczak promotes most of the standard bullshit myths, such as the pseudoscientific “findings” of Paul Cameron, about  how people “become gay,” for instance through “spousal and child abuse; media influence, pornography; absence of a father; childhood experience; experimentation; seduction and molestation by peers or authority figures; [and] misunderstanding ‘artistic’ bent.” And among allegedly prudential reasons you have for rejecting the homosexual lifestyle is of course the idea that it inevitably leads to disease and misery: “Engaging in sodomy with the sewage system of another’s anatomy is contrary to God’s design and it will bring inevitable consequences,” says Tomczak. He also promotes the ex-gay movement.

Tomczak on popular culture

Like many other religious rights activists, Tomczak is no fan of Beyoncé, and is deeply concerned that Michelle Obama is apparently a fan because Beyoncé’s music will “lead naive young girls on a dangerous path that could lead some even into sex trafficking” and ultimately “abuse, abortions and abasement-sometimes death.” Tomczak’s criticisms of popular culture also encompasses “former Christian Katy Perry flaunting her sex in a satanic witchcraft spectacle with fire, horned men and a sacrificial offering to … ?”, Emma Stone (who is “compromising to defile our daughters”) and “closet lesbian” and same-sex-marriage supporter Queen Latifah. In general, Tomczak warns of the dangers of music festivals and says that if deceased rock stars could return to life, they would tell everyone to “steer clear” of rock music. He has also warned that “Archie comics embraces homosexuality, witchcraft demons and occult practices” and that the film “Love, Simon” is “a sham. It’s also another device of the devil to ‘steal, kill and destroy’ (John 10:10) our children.”

A particular nemesis is apparently Ellen DeGeneres, whom Tomczak has accused of recruiting children into homosexuality. When the accusation received some attention, Tomczak asserted that he was merely trying to create a respectful and civil dialogue regarding homosexuality, before insisting that Ellen and her “partner” (Tomczak’s scare quotes) are harming children and their caregivers, and that her marriage and support for marriage equality will potentially doom “5000 years of Western civilization” and “the future of our nation” because marriage equality “opens the floodgates for other arrangements and legitimizes a lifestyle replete with dangerous, at-risk sexual behavior such as HIV/AIDS and over 30 STDs that are endangering lives, jeopardizing healthcare and impacting our economy.” All in the name of respectfulness and civility, of course. He also insisted that he was simply speaking the truth by condemning homosexuality – his ability to assess what he says being what it is – just like Martin Luther King, Jr. denounced racism.

Duane “The Rock” Johnson, on the other hand, seems to be some kind of prophet – at least Tomczak thought his movie "San Andreas" was some kind of prophetic warning about the impending end times. But then, Tomczak sees signs of the end times everywhere, though mostly in conspiracy theories about things that simply never happened. In fact, Tomczak’s end game is somewhat unclear – on the one hand, he accuses gays and others (most people he disagrees with, in fact) of bringing about the end times, though on the other he is also literally and explicitly praying for God’s judgement to fall upon this nation because “apart from divine intervention in holy judgment, America will simply slide deeper down the spiral of sin and destruction.” It really does make it unclear what he is really trying to achieve here, but the source of any confusion is probably due to trying to ascribe coherence and sanity to Larry Tomczak.

Creationism

To no one’s surprise, Tomczak is a creationist and angry critic of evolution, a theory he doesn’t begin to comprehend and which belongs to a field (science) he doesn’t begin to comprehend either and is therefore deeply mistrustful of. In a criticism of current depictions of the Scopes trial and its aftermath for the WND, Tomczak laid out his misunderstandings of evolution with great fervor – for instance, according to Tomczak, the theory of evolution is the “dogmatic theory taught in schools and perpetuated by Hollywood [?] that human beings accidentally evolved over billions of years by ‘natural selection’,” and it “is mind-boggling. It’s akin to postulating that the images on Mount Rushmore formed spontaneously”; Tomczak is clearly referencing our common understanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution by spontaneous random manifestation. And he does, of course, have some damning refutations – most of it familiar creationist talking points, but some of it a bit novel, for instance his observation that “[I]n his 160-year-old ‘Origin of the Species,’ Darwin stated, ‘Let us assume …’ or ‘We may well suppose …’ over 800 times! We’re supposed to acquiesce so our youth base their lives on assumptions rather than the authoritative Word of God.” So yes, we’re headed for the end times, and it is partially Darwin’s fault. “Christians are not to be silent bystanders in the face of this tsunami of secular humanism,” implores Tomczak.

Diagnosis: We’ll grudgingly recognize the ability of such deranged fundies to come up with novel expressions of lunacy – the topics and general gist are the same, of course, but Tomczak does admittedly manage to add some individual touches of color. He also wields a bit of influence, and must be considered moderately dangerous. 

#2344: Sara Thyr

Sara Thyr, ND, is a naturopath who describes herself as a naturopathic midwife, and is also (at least a one-time) president of the American College of Naturopathic Obstetrics and a founding member of the American Association of Naturopathic Midwives (the former is the organization issuing credentials for the latter, of course). Naturopathy is, of course, bullshit, and the idea of naturopathic midwifery and naturopathic obstetrics downright scary. Looking at Thyr’s article “Pre-Conception Testing: A Naturopathic Perspective” is not conducive to allaying one’s fears and worries. 

If you wish to look at science-based recommendations for preconception care, you can go here. To Thyr and many likeminded deranged lunatics, what is wrong with the science-based recommendations seems to be primarily that they are boring. Since really, there is, for most normal women, not really that much to worry about. According to Thyr, however, science- and evidence-based practitioners don’t look at “all the factors”; in particular, they don’t look at the imaginary and not-science-based factors that Thyr and other naturopaths conveniently offer expensive tests and treatment regimes – pure woo – to treat you for. For instance, the first thing Thyr will look at when meeting women looking to become pregnant is “food allergies”, since, according entirely to her imagination, “undiscovered food allergies are the most common cause of unexplained infertility,” and naturopaths are really good at finding out that you are really allergic to common foods you haven’t noticed that you are allergic to and that real, legitimate tests show that you are, in fact, not allergic to. She also says that “[f]ood allergies are a very misunderstood topic,” which is pretty undeniable given the falsehoods and nonsense about food allergies she will go on to convey.

Next up on her list, of course, are toxins, in particular environmental toxins, understood the way woomeisters and hucksters usually understand them, and showing that Thyr’s understanding of chemistry and biochemistry (or biology – there is, predictably, some pseudoscientific handwaving about epigenetics included here) is as lacking as her understanding of immunology. (She learned – or didn’t – both at a naturopathy school, of course.) Thyr, unsurprisingly, offers a detoxification program to pretend to help remedy the situation. She also recommends adrenal testing; now adrenal dysfunction can indeed cause infertility and pregnancy loss, but Thyr is of course looking at “more subtle” adrenal problems that ordinary doctors wouldn’t find. Indeed, if you come to her you presumably suffer adrenal problems and should purchase a test. It’s an integral part of the grift.

There is a more thorough discussion of Thyr’s recommendations here.

Diagnosis: We’re sure she’s a true believer, but in these cases the moral difference between callous grifting and doing the exact same thing but believing that you help, is slim, and the latter might arguably be worse since people who are aware that they are grifting tend at least to be a bit more careful. The recommendations are pure, delusional bullshit no matter what.

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2343: Eric Thomson

Eric Thomson is a pretty obscure neo-nazi, most famous for coining the acronym ZOG – Zionist Occupation Government – back in 1976. ZOG is an iteration of the international Jewish conspiracy traditionally invoked in neo-Nazi, Christian Identity, and white supremacist circles, and the conspiracies associated with ZOG are more or less those of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, just somewhat adapted to more modern times, claiming for instance that Jewish people are controlling every social and governmental institution. It was popularized in part by David Duke, who would use if for more or less everything that doesn’t adhere to the principles of white supremacism.

Thomson was also co-author, with famous neo-nazi Ernst Zundel, of The Hitler We Loved and Why, which argued that “Hitler was well loved and loved in return, but this relationship between the Leader and his people was not the gushy, sickly sweet effusion of an obese Jewish mother for her pimply, draft-dodging son. This was Aryan love. Strong, steady and uplifting.”

Diagnosis: Though apparently somewhat influential, Thomson remains obscure and some of his activities lay so far back in time that we cannot take it for granted that he is still around. It is, in any case, worth being aware of him and his acronym. 

Hat-tip: rationalwiki