#2693: Mary Colbert

A.k.a. Paulette Todd (real name)

 

Mary Colbert is a fundie and self-declared prophet, and one of the central promoters of the genre of Trump-finds-God fan fiction; notably, she is co-author of the book (later movie) The Trump Prophecies with another self-declared prophet – a “firefighter prophet”, in fact – Mark Taylor (they later seem to have had a falling out of sorts); you’ll be hard pressed to find a more insane piece of dingbattery this side of the vanity press. In any case, Colbert claims that she had been supporting Ted Cruz during the 2016 primary until she came across a prophecy that Taylor claims to have received from God declaring that Trump would be president; “What I felt when I read the prophecy was like a Holy Ghost slap in my face,” said Colbert. She still needed confirmation directly from God, however, but that was easy: Colbert self-reportedly had a dream in which she was told to watch the Belmont Stakes horse race, and lo and behold, when she looked up the results, she saw the headline “Creator Wins By A Photo Finish.” (The dream was reported after the events, of course, because prophets who try to state their predictions before the fact tends to lose credibility, and she doesn’t want that.) “Now, you can’t make this stuff up,” said Colbert, so you better believe her. Among Colbert’s other prophecies is her 2017 prophecy that God will vindicate Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama special election (apparently God told her “directly”).

 

Given that Trump is anointed and declared by God, opposing him is a sin. Colbert has warned people that God will curse Trump’s opponents, as well as their children and grandchildren. Protection through divine endorsement apparently extends to Colbert-approved self-declared prophets as well, including Jim Bakker, whom Colbert warned people not to mock because he is a prophet of God: “He’s a mouthpiece, he’s an oracle for God, so when he speaks and when he says something, you better listen because it’s true.” As evidence, Colbert cited the fact that Bakker has warned people to “prepare” and that we are currently “seeing catastrophe behind catastrophe”; Bakker is almost as precise and concrete as a glossy tabloid horoscope written by an intern.

 

She also defended Trump’s use of coarse language (e.g. ‘grab’), which in Colbert’s eyes made Trump like Jesus, who also used coarse language when he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees and said, ‘You vipers, you snakes’ (as for the ‘grab’ comment: Colbert asserted that Trump asked God for forgiveness over that one, in direct contradiction with Trump’s own statement on the matter). Moreover, when Trump calls people names, he’s acting just like Jesus, and you can’t take offense at it “because you don’t want to take offense to Jesus.” (Of course, that argument is not supposed to extend to people who call Trump names.) Here is Colbert’s response to some concerns some Christians have had over Trump: Trump’s border wall, for instance, is OK, according to Colbert, because “Heaven has gates”. Also remember that “the actual name ‘Donald’ means in Hebrew ‘national leader,’ so he is a national leader who is a trumpet for God.” ‘Donald’ is not a Hebrew name, of course, but hey: we are far beyond the point where “making things up as you go” is considered a problem here; Colbert has a long history of employing the “making things up as you go” technique (the legitimacy of the technique is apparently a prophetic superpower): Weighing in on the January 6 insurrection, for instance, Colbert baselessly claimed that the woman who was shot and killed while storming the Capitol was “killed not by capital police but by Vice President Biden’s security detail.”

 

As for climate change, Colbert blames Satan. That is, Satan is not causing climate change – Colbert is a climate change denialist – but is rather using the issue of climate change to distract humanity from the fact that the End Times are rapidly approaching. And it is sin, not climate change, that is causing extreme weather and natural disasters. Accordingly, what “man needs to do is repent”, though it is admittedly a bit unclear what repentance is supposed to achieve given that these are sign of an inevitable End Times. She also has views on the origin of Covid: according to Colbert, China caused coronavirus by eating ‘biblically unclean’ animals (like … pork?)

 

She is married to Don Colbert, with whom she runs a business called Divine Health in Florida and who is apparently also a prophet. That “health” part matters: Much of the pair’s work is devoted to pushing various types of insane woo, such as alkaline water.

 

Diagnosis: Calling her a ‘liar for Jesus’ seems to ascribe to her a level of mental acuity – being able, at a general level, to distinguish truth from falsehood – she simply doesn’t possess. She is probably just stupid and insane. Large swaths of people are attracted to that combo, however, so she’ll probably continue to have an audience.

#2692: Patrick Colbeck

Patrick Colbeck is an absolutely batshit insane Michigan-based conspiracy theorist and denialist, who nevertheless (or more likely: therefore) managed to get himself elected to the the Michigan Senate for a northwestern part of Wayne County, representing the Tea Party, where he served from 2011 to 2019. He later tried unsuccessfully to run for governor, and has published two books about his experiences – at least their titles nicely encapsulate Colbeck’s political positions: Wrestling Gators: An Outsider’s Guide to Draining the Swamp and The 2020 Coup: What happened? What we can do?.

 

Election fraud conspiracy theories

After leaving the state Senate, Colbeck has been a major proponent of unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories. Already in November 2020, he appeared before several Board of Canvassers to spew unsubstantiated and barely coherent conspiracy theories about election fraud, and for instance filed an affidavit claiming that the computers used by election officials were connected to the Internet, which “opens the door” to vote manipulation. He did not produce a single piece of relevant evidence for his claims, of course, beyond prefacing them with “I’m telling you”. He also insisted that only fraud could explain how a wonderful guy and magnificent politician like Trump could get only 5% of the vote in Democratic-stronghold Detroit, despite that number being, in fact, an increase compared to the 2016 election.

 

Colbeck subsequently teamed up with Mike Lindell to produce the wild-eyed documentary Absolute Proof (a corollary of this), which asserted that Chinese cyber hacking was largely responsible for the Biden 2020 victory based on discredited testimony and incoherent speculation; even OAN was apparently hesitant about promoting its claims. Colbeck, however, went on to promote the documentary on Rick Wiles’s show and Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel (which don’t maintain the editorial standards of OAN), insisting that the documentary stuck to “100% objective facts” and not “conjecture” because he says so.

 

In 2021, at a rally in Lansing, Colbeck again called for an audit of Michigan’s 2020 election, describing the effort as a “spiritual battle” and comparing the 2020 election to the persecution of Jesus Christ. “When are we going to start prosecuting people for these violations?” asked Colbeck, who is more than ready to move beyond the stage of trying to provide even a shred of indication that any crime has taken place to punishing the alleged perpetrators.

 

Anti-vaccine views

Colbeck was antivaccine before it became the mainstream wingnut position during COVID, and was, together with Jeff Noble, the leading antivaxx activist in the Michigan legislature for a while. Already in 2015, Colbeck was palling around with antivaccine activists and promoting the Robert Kennedy jr.-endorsed movie Trace Amounts; Colbeck encouraged people to join him at a screening because “the responsible exercise of freedom depends upon an informed citizenry” because words mean what Colbeck wants them to mean: The last thing someone like Colbeck wants is of course citizens who are actually informed, and early exposure to denialist propaganda might as such be helpful to ensure that they remain uninformed. Similarly, when Colbeck champions health freedom, choice and “an individual’s/parent’s right to informed consent” with regard to vaccination, he doesn’t mean informed.

 

In addition to Orwellian Newspeak (“informed”), Colbeck has also been caught using a range of antivaccine dogwhistles. He has for instance expressed his support for “independent basic scientific research on the link between vaccination and chronic disease”. Sounds reasonable? Well, an important thing to remember is that such research is already plentiful (e.g. these) – it just doesn’t give the answers antivaxxers would like to have, so they want to keep trying until they, by chance, get an outlier with a different result that they can tout as absolute proof. Colbeck also endorsed the thoroughly debunked antivaccine flick Vaxxed.

 

 

It’s important to emphasize, though, that Colbeck didn’t just express anti-vaccine proclivities to appease his delusional voter based; he also fought hard to rescind Michigan’s requirement that parents needed to consult with a doctor before claiming non-medical exemptions to vaccine mandates. The requirement, Colbeck realized in 2017, made it harder for parents to neglect their children’s health and made measles outbreaks less likely, and he promptly introduced bills (with Jeff Noble) to strip the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’s power to put in place such measures. In the process, Colbeck both accepted antivaccine activists’ claims about “adverse effects” of vaccines and invoked the “aborted fetal cells” gambit (the latter was also the basis for Bill No. 1055, sponsored by Colbeck, Tonya Schuitmaker, Mike Kowall, Judy Emmons, Joe Hune, and Mike Shirkey), as well as misinformation about the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

 

More pseudoscience and conspiracy theories

Colbeck is, of course, a climate change denialist. Instead of climate change, Colbeck believes that the #1 environmental issue of our day is wireless technology. In December 2018, he even hosted a forum in Lansing to disseminate wifi woo and, as he saw it, discuss the benefits and risks of wireless technology such as smart meters, cell phones and 5G networks – there was, of course, no discussion of benefits, and not of any real risks either – and he introduced legislation that he claimed would empower consumers with increased choice as to the source of their electricity.

 

Yes, Colbeck is pushing electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) nonsense. According to Colbeck, wireless internet threatens “the health of many of our citizens most notably children babies in the womb and even adults who suffer from hyper sensitivity to wireless transitions”, and he has been spamming people with conspiratorial rants and pseudoscience from various EHS activist websites, such as Bioinitiative 2012 (whose schtick is to claim evidence for a link between wireless technology and an impressive range of conditions based on extreme cherry picking – no really, Bioinitiative’s employment of cherry-picking is somewhat legendary).

 

And just in case you should ever doubt his commitment to denialism and pseudoscience, Colbeck also expresses “doubt” about the theory of evolution and supports teaching intelligent design creationism in public schools.

 

Bigotry

Colbeck’s state senate tenure (and other activities) have been characterized also by conspiracy-fueled bigotry.

 

He got some national attention for his claim that one of his Democratic opponents in the 2018 gubernatorial election had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and (unfounded, of course) was part of an Muslim plot to engage in “civilization jihad” that is attempting to take over the country, based on nothing whatsoever but his opponent’s religious background and skin color. “This is scary stuff”, said Colbeck. It is, though not in the way Colbeck thinks. According to Colbeck, however, “[t]here’s a lot of pressure being applied in our society right now. You’re seeing Muslim legislators in the state legislature. And you’re seeing also a push at the local level at city councils;” these are part of what Colbeck calls “Civilization Jihad Techniques”, and that means that his opponent in question, a Muslim, might be secretly trying to take over Michigan for ISIS. Colbeck’s position was endorsed by various wingnut hate groups like United West. Colbeck’s claims were relatively widely criticized. He responded to criticism by accusing his critics of trying to “silence” him.

 

Colbeck’s run for governor was endorsed by e.g. David Barton. Colbeck had previously been on Barton’s program to claim that the passage Michigan’s anti-union “right to work” legislation, primarily pushed by him and the aforementioned Mike Shirkey, could be attributed to “divine providence”; God, for some reason, hates unions.

 

Diagnosis: State legislatures tend to attract nonsense, but Colbeck is deranged even by state legislature batshit wingnut standards. In a reasonable age, people like him would be relegated to basement conspiracy blogging and pity; these are not reasonable times.

#2691: Lorenzo Cohen

Quackery is ubiquitous, and most of it is associated with alternative medicine practitioners relying on overt pseudoscience. But there are also real researchers with real credentials who occasionally engages in quackery-related pseudoscience, and few examples are more obvious than Lorenzo Cohen, professor in the Department of General Oncology and Behavioral Science at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as well as director of its Integrative Medicine Program. Cohen is a founding member and past president of the Society for Integrative Oncology. For information about how quackery and bad medicine has infected the otherwise Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Cohen’s role in the tragedy, this one is helpful. There is a general portrait of Cohen and his work here.

 

Cohen has been involved with numerous studies examining psychosocial and integrative medicine interventions to improve quality of life and outcomes for patients with e.g. cancer, including reiki, energy medicine, acupuncture, and yoga, and he is not afraid to integrate pseudoscience into his inquiries. At best, it’s a waste of resources and taxpayer dollars to investigate implausible claims we already have significant evidence to think are false, but an (even) more worrisome consequence is the sheen of legitimacy Cohen’s projects give various quack treatments, especially when the results are spun as providing support for these modalities. And of course they are spun that way. Here is a (discussion of a) fine example of an acupuncture study led by Cohen himself.

 

So Cohen claims for instance (in a HuffPo piece) that it is “time for acupuncture to become part of standard care” citing a (then) recent review article of which he is the senior author (he doesn’t mention that!) in which, as he put it, “41 studies were found” that evaluated acupuncture for treating symptoms of cancer therapy: pain, nausea, hot flashes, fatigue, dry mouth, constipation, anxiety, and sleep disturbance. He doesn’t mention that of these 41, all but one (concerning nausea) were found to be highly biased and scientifically worthless by his own review. The last one, on nausea, was a small, unblinded study with serious group selection problems and whose results are contradicted by a newer, larger and better done study that tried to replicate the results and failed resoundingly. Cohen doesn’t mention that, of course, for that’s not the kind of person he is. Rather, Cohen is the kind of guy who at the time of his HuffPo piece, had a $777,886 grant to study acupuncture and was director of the center’s Integrative Medicine Program, where offering acupuncture to cancer patients (at steep costs) is an important part of their activities. Acupuncture, for the record, is theatrical placebo. But despite the dearth of real evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture, Cohen – undaunted – continues to promote it. Here is a discussion of another try.

 

Cohen’s cancer quackery isn’t limited to acupuncture (though acupuncture is a mainstay), and his channels for promoting such quackery aren’t limited to places like HuffPo – Cohen’s got clout, and in 2014, for instance, he was a keynote at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) session Integrative Oncology: The Evidence Base, where he talked about “Mind-Body Practices in Cancer”. Yes, it’s woo, and although Cohen is good at spinning, his justification of mind–body practices in question is precisely a mix of speculative victim-blaming (‘you should work on your attitude to your disease’) and rebranding. According to Cohen, though really not the evidence (and he was admittedly careful about lying about the evidence outright), reversing “bad” mental states can contribute to improved cancer survival, citing e.g. this study, which in reality found “no significant association” between (in this case) support group support and ovarian cancer survival. As for rebranding, Cohen also cited exercise and beta-blockers, which may well be beneficial, as examples of mind-body practices. ASCO later even endorsed the Society of Integrative Oncology’s pseudoscience-laden guidelines for breast cancer care, written by Cohen and a number of other serious woo-proponents (like Heather Greenlee and Judith Fouladbakhsh). “But what is really integrative oncology?” you may ask, and yes: that is indeed an illuminating question to ask.

 

Cohen’s books include Integrative Oncology: Incorporating Complementary Medicine into Conventional Cancer Care (with Maurie Markman) and Integrative Medicine in Oncology: Hematology/Oncology Clinics of North America (with Moshe Frenkel). The former book is discussed here. Together with Jun J. Mao – another important and influential promoter of quackery in cancer treatment – Cohen is also the editor of a monograph on The Role of Integrative Oncology for Cancer Survivorship (defending integrative oncology) published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Care“, which is briefly discussed here. And yes, in their propagandistic introduction, Cohen & Mao cover all the usually talking points: that patients are requesting integration of quackery into their treatments (appealing, of course, to the common dishonest ploy of including e.g. diet, exercise and lifestyle changes as part of the “complementary” umbrella to inflate the popularity of CAM), and the anthology as a whole is (predictably) striking in it focus on promoting the concept of integrative oncology rather than on examining the ideas and concepts of integrative oncology, or the (lack of) evidence underpinning it. As David Gorski points out, integrative oncology is “a brand, not a specialty, and it’s a brand that, as Mao and Cohen put it, they want to see ‘incorporated within the standard of care worldwide’.”

 

And what does he say to his critics? Well, he sometimes admits that his suggestions aren’t always unambiguously supported by science, but remember: science was wrong before (yes: he actually pulls that gambit – as well as, for good measure, the Galileo gambit.

 

Diagnosis: One of the most important and influential promoters of woo and quackery in the US, and though Cohen is admittedly hardly a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, his techniques for promoting quackery (bait-and-switch, rebranding, spinning negative results) are, despite a veneer of scientific legitimacy, your typical pseudoscience gambits. The sad thing, though, is that Cohen, by all hallmarks, has the skills and resources to do real good; that he wastes those skills on bullshit instead is a real tragedy.

#2690: David Codrea

David Codrea is a former investigative reporter (Operation Fast & Furious), gun rights activist and Oath Keepers affiliate. His investigative abilities are in general … moderate: Codrea was also central in creating and disseminating a report about the government’s attempt to “destroy the Republic” through housing refugees: The US are accepting refugees who may “harbor terrorist intentions” because Democratic politicians who want their votes don’t care about committing “national suicide”, and they (the Democrats) are assisted by various progressive organizations, the UN and, of course, George Soros as a means to push their left-wing policies on America. “I can say, without hyperbole,” wrote Codrea – hyperbolically – “this is a vital report addressing nothing less than the survival of the Founder’s Republic in the 21st Century, one that you ignore at your peril, and at the peril of everyone you love.” And to emphasize: risk of terrorism is a smoke screen; Codrea’s real fear is replacement, that political elites are orchestrating the “cultural terraforming” of America.

 

His Second Amendment and anti-immigrant stances are, of course, two sides of the same coin for David Codrea: “If oath-breaking representatives weren’t ignoring and subverting the Second Amendment every chance they get, we’d have the border problem pretty much solved peaceably via ‘a well regulated militia’ standing guard to discourage and deter things getting out of hand.” Unfortunately for him, many people disagree, and Codrea has for instance denounced Parkland shooting survivors campaigning for gun legislation as “the enemy” (also “communist”). And of course there is a conspiracy behind such efforts to disagree with him (don’t you ever believe that school shooting survivors could on their own come to promote gun legislation): “To minimize the role of the totalitarian lobby’s newest citizen disarmament rock star [Parkland survivor and student David Hogg] to that of ‘survivor’ is to mask the well-organized, well-funded and well-connected interests bankrolling the March for Our Lives.” Indeed, according to Codrea, Hogg is, in fact, pro-school shootings because “[t]hey want ­– they need – vulnerable school children” to achieve their communist aims.

 

Diagnosis: Dingbat conspiracy theorist. But he’s enormously prolific, and his rants tend to observe basic rules of grammar and coherence, so we’re sure he’s got some impact.

#2689: Todd Coconato

Todd Coconato is a Tennessee-based rightwing conspiracy theorist, fundie, pastor and host of The Remnant News and Remnant Godcast podcast. His shows consist of a predictable mess of rightwing politics and religion, delivered with the expected fervor, incoherent threats and SPAGging. So for instance, Coconato warns that God will punish those responsible for the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and the “persecution” of Donald Trump: “Their crimes have reached the courts of heaven and a guilty verdict is coming down soon! Listen to this oh wicked and unruly people: Anything you do against the people of God or His anointed will boomerang back on you! If you indict, YOU [unless you’re Coconato, of course] will be indicted. Whatever you attempt to do against Gods people, or His anointed, will be done to you! If you arrest, you will be arrested. You are cursed by your evil doings.” Yeah, that kind. And he doesn’t care if you call him a conspiracy theorist because he knows that all the pedophiles, Satanists, and critics will eventually be cut down by God anyways. 

 

So as Coconato sees it, God is doing his (Coconato’s) political work. Unfortunately, there are people who disagree with him, and that they disagree with him (God) means that they’re in league with demons and Satan, and feel threatened to respond violently – such as when “the devil and forces of darkness” targeted Florida with Hurricane Ian because “this state has stood during the plague and did not bow to Nebuchadnezzar. The Governor has taken a stand against wickedness, against the push of the demonic and the cancel culture & Baal ideology.” And in 2023, he predicted that the “deep state” will fake an alien invasion in order to “discredit God, discredit the Bible” and “discredit Christianity.” 

 

Indeed, Satan has rigged the entire system: Trump was, for instance, unfortunately unable to steal the 2020 election because “our institutions systematically failed us one by one” through the application of the oppressive tools of transparency, accountability, facts, the Constitution, democracy and the rule of law. Of course, as Coconato sees it (or wishes it to be – the distinction between wishes and beliefs is unclear for Coconato especially given his pathological tendency to confuse his wishful thinking with God tells me), Trump won the election “by the biggest landslide in the history of our country.” And God Coconato is downright outraged that conservative Christians are being criticized for supporting Trump, given that “the alternative is a baby-killing, Luciferian, demonic agenda of darkness and communism.” Yep, anyone or anything he doesn’t like is Satan. 

 

Unfortunately, “most Americans are blind to what is happening” because they “believe a media that is 90% owned by 6 corporations who spew talking points from the same woke corporations that are pushing that there are 68 genders and who are telling us we are racists and full of hate because we love our country and stand for our flag”  and will possibly “sleep walk right into UN Agenda 2030 with no resistance at all”. “All we have to do is study history,” says Coconato, who has decidedly not studied history. Fortunately, all Christians see through the deception; they don’t, for instance, believe that Biden is president since God’s “mantle of anointing” remains on Trump. Coconato has talked to God about the matter, and “I’ll tell you what God said to me was kind of shocking”, namely that “just like David, President Trump has the mantle of leadership” or, in other words, precisely the non-shocking answer Coconato gets whenever he asks his own fevered mind what it wants to be the case. But he is confident that when God finally gets around to overturning the 2020 election results, “it’s going to be such a miracle and sign and wonder” that it will convert all the atheists working against him: “even the godless, even the atheists, are going to look and say, ‘Wow, look at the God that they serve! Look at the God that they serve!’ .”

 

Despite the patent lunacy of his ravings, Coconato is not a nobody on the US far-right circus; he’s got followers as well as political connections, such as Tennessee governor Bill Lee. 

 

That said, Coconato did at one point stream a video on his Facebook page – on his way to a gig at Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America tour – in which he dismissed the legitimacy of QAnon and told MAGA activists to stop spreading the false claim that Trump is still the president and in charge of the U.S. military. He quickly deleted that video, of course, but it does suggest that Coconato is just as much a fraud as he is a loon. In 2021, Coconato praised actor Jim Caviezel for spreading the Qanon conspiracy theory that “elites” are torturing children to harvest adrenaline from them, saying “this is real stuff. It’s not conspiracy” because asserting that it is real makes it real.

 

Diagnosis: If you’re confused, angry, paranoid and dense, using religious fanaticism (and SPAGging) to close the gap between what you believe is the case and what you wish were the case, is a familiar adaptive technique. For Todd Coconato such distinctions – not only between beliefs and wish but between God and his own addled mix of wishes and beliefs – are decidedly blurry. Though if you nevertheless go on to assert things with sufficient confidence, rage and hate, a certain type of people will apparently listen; Coconato’s influence is far from negligible even if his ability to convert anyone not already deeply lost down the rabbit hole is doubtful.

#2688: John M. Cobin

John M. Cobin is a libertarian madman and social commentator. As a matter of fact, Cobin is only borderline qualified for an entry in this encyclopedia on the grounds that he renounced his American citizenship in 2015, settling in Chile, where he currently resides – in jail, after having opened fire at protesters during the Chilean social unrest of 2019 in Reñaca, injuring several. Before that, however, he ran (and lost) for Congress in South Carolina’s 4th congressional district (in 2006), representing the Libertarian party. 

 

Cobin is, however, best known for being one of the architects behind Galt’s Gulch, Chile, which was supposed to become a libertarian paradise and which completely unsurprisingly turned into a fraud-riddled disaster. Beyond that, Cobin is known for his far-right associations and for being a Pinochet apologist, which is par for the course for American-style, self-declared libertarianism. 

 

Diagnosis: And that’s all we can be bothered to say about John M. Cobin. Wingnut nutter.

#2687: Doug Cobb

Doug Cobb is a Kentucky-based wingnut fundie conspiracy theorist, entrepreneur and an elder at Louisville’s Southeast Christian Church, whom then-governor Matt Bevin appointed to the University of Louisville Board of Trustees in 2016 because Bevin dislikes facts, science and education almost as much as Cobb does. The appointment was ultimately withdrawn after criticism and then a round of support from other wingnuts conflating “freedom of speech” with “every opinion is equally valid”.

 

Cobb is a:

 

-       Climate change denialist, having argued that climate change is “a big hoax from beginning to end” because there is still snow. In particular, global warming is a hoax “[i]nvented by the progressive left” as a socialist ploy to achieve something.

-       Creationist: “Remember, the same people who are lying to you today about global warming have been lying to you for 150 years about evolution”. He has in that context claimed that science educator Bill Nye is “a total fraud” because he disagrees with Nye and everyone with a different opinion than Cobb is a fraud.

 

He has also said that being gay and being Christian are incompatible – they are “incompatible terms of identity.”

 

Diagnosis: Fundie village idiot. Now, as an angry, denialist conspiracy theory clown, Cobb would mostly be laughable; the trouble, really, is that wingnut politicians are, because it’s politically expedient, more than willing to give people like Cobb power to do genuine harm.