#613: Bradlee Dean

We are not completely convinced that Tony Davis of the International Legal Services counts as a loon, despite his assurations to clients that due to technicalities every conviction in the last 60 years is null and void (a theory rejected outright at every level of the legal system). There are other explanations for his behavior than craziness.

You can’t fake being Bradlee Dean, however. Dean is not a fraud. He is one of the most aggressively insane persons to spread his breathtaking mindrot in the US at the moment, challenging Fred Phelps himself for hatred and Ray Comfort for density. Dean is the founder of the Taliban satellite organization You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International. The Ministry has made itself famous for using bait-and-switch tactics to push a hardcore fundamentalist Christian agenda in American public schools by claiming to teach kids about how to fight drugs (that’s his gateway to public schools) but instead turning the sessions into frothingly insane Jesus events accompanied by psychotic gay-bashing – though it should be mentioned that his bait-and-switch technique did not go over particularly well in Dunkerton, Iowa.

Dean’s most frequently appreciated pastime, bashing gays, desevers a few words, starting with pointing out that when engaged in the activity Dean does not always observe the strictures of common decency or coherence. For instance, he supports castration of gays for the not entirely coherent or accurate reason that the Founding Fathers wanted that (he may actually believe that himself, or he may be lying; Dean has a well-established problem with that truth-thing). This should presumably be part of the legal punishment gays should face for their dirty thoughts and inclinations. In fact, jailing and castration are merely just punishment for the past sins of homosexuals; after all – according to Dean (who has jumped onto the Scott Lively bandwagon) – homosexuals were responsible for the Holocaust. Apparently they must have collaborated with the evolutionists (or the “religion of evolution”), given that Dean thinks the evolutionists are responsible for the holocaust as well.

In one of the most ridiculous displays of fatwa envy ever, Dean also praised Muslims for executing gays: “Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America. This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do.” (His subsequent attempt at backpedalling was rather feeble). Nevertheless, Dean is of course virulently anti-Islam, since there is “a correlation between the Muslims and the homosexual agenda.” Though he doesn’t say it in so many words, coherence is apparently an enemy of Dean’s as well. It is probably a gay-Muslim-liberal conspiracy. Here he argues that Muslims have infiltrated our schools and are teaching kids to be jihadists.

In 2011 Dean filed a 50 million dollar lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for defamation after Maddow reported on Dean’s anti-gay stance, presumably targeting her in particular because she is herself openly lesbian. In fact, Dean has a history of completely baseless lawsuits, which he tends to lose badly. He has indeed also been noticed for trying to censor his critics on youtube. It is less clear that censoring his critics really matters when his own screeds are so batshit insane that even the most hardcore wingnut would hesitate over them to begin with (here, though, is Dean arguing that negative reactions to his offensive bigotry are offensive). If you want to access any of said screeds, you can go here – we don’t feel particularly comfortable linking directly to any of it, though here is his rant at the 2013 Awakening conference, where he argued that the Supreme Court has “opened the door to Satanism” by ruling that the government can’t force kids to pray and that Obama is just like Chairman Mao. (And not only Mao – apparently the American government is “emulating many similarities” with Nazi Germany, such as freedom of religion, equality, tolerance and liberty; the similarity ostensibly being that the government, like the Nazis, is “setting itself at war with God”).

A particularly notable event in Dean’s career occurred when the Minnesota Republican Party invited him to lead the ceremonial prayer at the start of the Minnesota House's legislative session. Dean's prayer turned out to be, shall we say, controversial; he would only recognize Christian members of the legislature and, for good measure, accused Obama of being a Muslim. It was in fact sufficiently appalling for the Speaker of the House to order a full re-start of the session and issue an official apology for the event. Dean later lambasted the Republicans for not endorsing his ridiculously insane, incoherent piece of fuming rage. As indicated, Dean is of course also a hardcore dominionist, who calls liberals “criminals” and urges the right to take up weapons against a liberal government (his association with the Sovereign Citizen movement is discussed here). You can imagine he was upset when Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage. Apparently they did it “covert-like” so as not to draw unwanted attention, because apparently elected officials passing a bill with the attention of the whole state is being “covert” when Dean disagrees with the bill’s content.

In his daily life, Dean is the drummer for the band The Junkyard Prophet, a hardline Christian conservative band promoting and promoted by his front organization. They are evil, and the other members, Rene Benton (guitar/vocals) and Massey “Mass Dogg” Campos (bass/vocals), have voiced their share of crazy as well.

Dean’s local wingnut radio show, The Sons of Liberty, has also established itself as a legend of untarnished lunacy. Rick Santorum has appeared on the show praising Dean for his stance on homosexuality and voicing his support for criminalizing sodomy. He also occasionally writes columns for WND, primarily for promoting shit he has to sell you (check out the Ray Comfort quote in that link, by the way.

Oh, and he is of course a hardcore conspiracty theorist. In fact, Dean is a Sandy Hook truther; that is, he claims that the (Aurora and) Sandy Hook shootings were orchestrated by the government (I suppose disagreeing with him is still considered “offensive”). Public schools are also part of a conspiracy – the rigorous International Baccalaureate program is, according to Dean, part of a global scheme to disarm Americans and indoctrinate students in a homosexual agenda (as well as Islam). Dean himself, on the other hand, apparently learns the stuff he should have learned at school from David Barton, with predictably disastrous results.

It is probably little surprise that Dean is a supporter of – and is endorsed by – Michele Bachmann. I don’t know who comes off worse by that association. More here.

Diagnosis: His level of crazy is only matched by his malice and bigotry. A rather unsavory fellow, in other words.

#612: Stephen Davis

Ray M. Davis, Jr., a.k.a. “Florida man with no background in science”, may have been qualified for an entry on the basis of his remarkably fallacy-filled and incoherent letter to the Gainesville Sun – it’s a fairly typical rant displaying no understanding of any of the matters involved, and may represent a rather wide-spread kind of ignorance and denialism.

The purpose of the Encyclopedia is, however, primarily to expose the movers and shakers behind this kind of denialist anti-science attitude rather than confused, local clodpates, and Ray Davis is hardly an example of the former. Stephen Davis, however, is a good one; he may not be a creationist, but he is a HIV denialist, which is probably an even more insidious form of denialism. Davis is (at least allegedly) also a former Arizona State Senator and US Army “Physician’s Assistant” and author of a novel that claims to be “the true story of how government lies and incompetence, gross medical malpractice, and unbridled greed by a drug company cost 300,000 American lives in just ten years.” Yes, he is a crackpot conspiracy theorist and no, he has no background in science, any more than the above-mentioned Florida man. He is a little more zealous, however, and has produced some rather incoherent screeds in which – naturally – information made up and posted on his own website trumps anything published in peer-reviewed journals. His book Are You Positive was at least endorsed by Liam Scheff, who calls himself “The Conspiracy Realist”, and who praised it for his contribution to the literature on “morbid flaws in today’s quasi-religious medical establishment.”

A list of prominent HIV denialists (including Davis) can be found here. To get a feel for the level of incoherence among your general HIV denialists, you could peruse the comment threads on the otherwise excellent posts here, here, and here, though it is definitely a challenge to your mental health to do so (Stephen Davis’s claims are both, uh, defended and discussed in said comments).

Diagnosis: Appallingly crazy conspiracy theorist and jughead denialist. He is not among the most prominent proponents of this particular brand of madness, but his influence is substantial enough to be a real threat to civilization.

#611: Percival Davis

A.k.a. Bill Davis

Percival Davis is an author, young earth creationist, and proponent of teaching intelligent design in public education (since young earth creationism, what he really believes, won’t fly). Davis does indeed have a master of arts in zoology from Columbia, and is also a visiting professor of biology at Clearwater Christian College (which strongly suggests that this ain’t a place to go for an education), but is hardly a legitimate authority on biology.

In fact, Davis is – together with Dean Kenyon (to be covered) – responsible for popularizing the term “intelligent design,” particularly through writing the infamous ID creationist textbook Of Pandas and People, which presented intelligent design in a manner the creationists (after McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education) deemed suitable for school kids for legal purposes – in other words, Davis is another prime example of the creationist agenda of trying to convert kids instead of actually doing science to support their silly ideas. “Of Pandas and People” was of course the book that subsequently formed the backdrop for the Dover Trial, for those who are unfamiliar with the details of ID propagation.

The book suggested that Darwinism had outlived its usefulness, primarily because of irreducible complexity, which the authors took as good evidence for the unfalsifiable and hence unverifiable theory that an intelligent designer was behind it all. And yes, it contained all the standard creationist fallacies, PRATTs, quote-mining, and Gish gallops in the book; and yes, it is only about objecting to evolution – no positive case is made for ID, and the authors seem to assume that if evolution fails, creationism must be right, which is quite simply a mistake. It is reviewed here. Concerning the obvious agenda behind the book, Davis commented “Of course my motives were religious. There's no question about it.” Here is a selection from the Dover ruling showing what role Of Pandas and People was really supposed to play. You can read how the ID crowd reacted here.

Davis has also co-written Case for Creation (with Wayne Frair, also to be covered in the relatively near future). 

Diagnosis: One of the stalwarts of the utterly dishonest insanity movement that is the Intelligent Design movement, and a complete fucking moron. Dangerous.

#610: James Davis

Yet another end times kook, James Davis president of the Global Pastors Network’s “Billion Souls Initiative,” and a zealous missionary intent on bringing the word of Jesus to every person on the planet. That goal is a common one, but Davis’s agenda is unusually insidious: “As we advance around the world, we’ll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.” In other words, Davis is actually determined to do his best to bring about the end of the world, and the purpose of his missionary work is to accomplish exactly that – an agenda he shares with the most deranged comic book villains and which should really mark him out as one of the most evil persons alive. He should, of course, be viewed and treated accordingly (apart from the fact that he doesn’t quite possess the comic book villain’s means for achieving that goal), but for some reasons his motivations and goals are widely treated as acceptable if mildly weird by many.

Whoever runs this blog disagrees with Jim Davis for reasons that are even more insane than Davis himself. No, seriously.

Diagnosis: Demented fuckwit.

#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.