I often quote Ed Brayton, who follows crackpots and lunatics on the far fringes of the Religious Right and reports on their activities in his blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars. (I honestly don’t know how he manages to keep both his sanity and his sense of humor after daily encounters with these deeply disturbed individuals, but he has–I’ve met him and he’s very smart, very astute–and very funny.)
Just a few days ago, Ed revisited Randall Terry.
Anyone familiar with the effort to deny women our reproductive rights has encountered news of Terry at some point. He founded Operation Rescue, the group that blocked clinic entrances around the country and engaged in other semi-terrorist “pro life” activities. (Give him props for honesty, though–he admits what so many of his fellow “pro life” warriors pretend is untrue– he’s as opposed to birth control as he is to abortion. Keep those women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen like God intended!)
Not surprisingly, he’s also homophobic, and he’s recently fixated on Mayor Pete. As Ed writes,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg is polling well in Iowa and raising lots of money in the Democratic primary for president and now he’s going to be hounded by anti-choice crackpot Randall Terry. He’s headed to Iowa to confront Butegieg for being a babykiller who is locked in the sexual bondage of homosexuality. Or something.
Ed shared Randall Terry’s press release:
We are going to Iowa to confront the “new political sensation;” Pete Buttigieg.
We’ve sent a press release to every daily newspaper in the state of Iowa…telling them we are coming to welcome “Mayor Pete” AT ALL FIVE of his campaign stops next week!
As I read and read about this 37 year old, poor lost soul, I am filled with grief and rage.
I grieve for Pete Buttigieg – for his endangered soul, his sexual bondage – and I am enraged by what he is really doing.
He is a baby-killing politician, who is recruiting young people into homosexual bondage by his example, and trying to normalize what is an intrinsically evil behavior.
This rant reminds me of the greeting cards I got one Easter when I was Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU; there were a couple dozen of them, all with a praying Virgin Mary on the front. The inside of the cards was blank, and on each one, someone had written “We are praying for your sinful soul.”
Unfortunately, I still have my old, sinful soul. And from all accounts, Mayor Pete is still gay and still running for President.
People like Terry would be funny if they weren’t dangerous. Most simply pose a threat to religious liberty and the Constitution, which is troubling enough, but others are violent. All of them are locked in to an alternate reality.
And speaking of alternate realities, Ed also had a post about crazy lady Michelle Bachmann.
Michele Bachmann, the “pastor to the United Nations,” told crackpot Jan Markell that she had never seen a more Biblical president than Donald Trump and that she prays that God will help destroy the “deep state” so that Trump can “expose the hidden deeds of darkness” done by that amorphous, universal bunch of baddies.
If only the “deep state” of rightwing fever dreams really did exist and could do something about Trump…
How detached from reality do you have to be to consider Donald Trump “Biblical”?
Well, to be honest, I see shades of Trump in parts of the Bible, but not so much riding to town on a donkey, but more riding a pale horse – if that’s what she means as ‘biblical’.
People like Terry are what I call “Old Testament” Christians. They seem to care much more about “Deuteronomy” than about anything Jesus said or did.
I don’t like to refer to this peeps as crazies from the right fringe. Can we just call them lunatics?
When people’s minds are so warped, there is no chance for them to accept an alternative reality. They are not going to be walking along the river and suddenly have a flash of enlightenment.
I’m sure Pete has killed millions of babies as Mayor of South Bend. However, not as many as those who burn coal in Southern Indiana’s “asthma alley” or those who slaughter babies in the Middle East via videos leaked to Wikileaks. 😉
Lunatics don’t see their hypocrisy.
Trump is biblical, all right, but he is not the young rabbi on the donkey coming to town on Palm Sunday; he is more biblically aligned with the phony Pharisees who are making a bundle in the temple (whose counterparts we see these days by TV preachers who are selling religion like used car salesman – and women – preying on the gullible via fear of death, eternal burning etc.). Disgusting! (but protected by the First Amendment).
Two of my four adult children who live in Indiana are for Mayor Pete, who summed it up nicely when in coming out he said he had blue eyes, too. Choice is not involved; it’s baked in, and as I tell my kids and theirs, I happened to have been born straight or they wouldn’t be here. They have apparently listened to dad who tells them that sexual traits, like the color or one’s eyes, have nothing to do with how one can perform in public office.
I happen to know Mayor Pete personally; he calls me “dad.” He is not my current choice for president, however. I am pro-Warren at this point. He hasn’t fashioned out stands on important issues to me; she has. Things could change. We now have as of this morning some 20 candidates for president, some serious and some on ego trips. I may by primary time vote for neither Mayor Pete nor Liz in favor of someone else whose stand on the issues I prefer at such juncture but can’t know as of now. Liking or disliking a candidate is of marginal importance; I am 100% issue-oriented. If my brother were running for president and against progressive values, I would vote for his opponent. I got my druthers.
Randall Terry had to happen, speaking of those on ego trips. I have been and will be ignoring him.
Randall Terry represents that pack of self-righteous, self-absorbed, faux religious people that live to poison weak minds. Gerald is right about this lunatic being on an ego trip. That’s all he has, really, so those of you who pray, should pray that he somehow finds reality instead of living in a world of fairy tales, most of which he has created. Pathetic.
I just checked out Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the first time. One of the tags Brayton uses for his posts is “Dumbassery.” It won’t be the last time I visit.
Thank you Sheila,
Maybe all the hate these fools have helped keep them warm through the winter and kept their heating bills low. Still more examples of just how the basic tenants of Christianity have been warped out of recognition by them. As a Christian myself, I still find it being totally inexplicable that others support Trump as he almost by the hour acts totally contrary to what Christ stands for and how church-going people have so much hate in their hearts. A lot of this comes from pulpits but as lot comes from inside them which is truly sad. God is love so how can we really do otherwise? Nevertheless many do the opposite and pride themselves on it.
Probably the worst part of all these wild gyrations here is that the whole world sees all of them and every day our ability to influence world events in a positive way slips, slips away.
A few years ago some church of the holy rollers actively protested at the funerals of our dead soldiers, because the armed services were permitting homosexuals to enlist.
There is a chain that seems to tie the various groups such as anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, authoritarian male dominance, anti-evolution, NRA and extreme religious types together. They are not quietly willfully ignorant they proudly display it.
The mass murder in Sri-Lanka is one more example of religious extremists and their ability to manipulate minds.
ML,
Perfect summary. These creatures represent all that is wrong with humans’ minds that have been engulfed in institutionalized ignorance. They also tend to be pseudo-intellectuals and are afraid to look over their shoulders to see that they’ve taken the wrong and irresponsible path.
There seems to be two very large forces at war. The cause is the dichotomy in the world driven by an uncertain and scary future. One group embraces it as a necessary replacement for the failing old culture. The other group pretends that they have a choice to stay with it on it’s death bed. It’s ration vs learned culture, the combatants that were defined in the Great Enlightenment.
The same dichotomy has consumed the world of faith, creating a split between the faith full and the those using their cultural inheritance as an ad hoc political party in order to confer the power to continue to impose their culture on all of us.
I empathize with the faith full who see those once considered as brethren wandering off into grounds which religion has always sought to minimize as self centric vs other centric.
This dichotomy has taken on the same dimensions as slavery took antebellum. It has consumed the country as extremism with both sides fully defined by what started as one of many differences of diverse opinion.
Is there a way to end it less tragically than the solution of LIncoln?
I really don’t know any more.
Those who decide their DEM presidential candidate on “issues” will likely do one thing only – re-elect the Duck. He is counting on that. Because his followers, who are more likely than ever to vote, only have a single issue – MAGA.
Guardian news,perfect words for trumps planned visit,need a laugh,enjoy …
melting pot,all,the plans before trump come alive,except were spending too much time
talking about it,and the need is to inform. again as i speak with fellow workers, they seriously need a update,they are the voters..my e mail of colums and journalist speak, and is getting some bytes taken in my sent mail folder. im finding everyone is listening,and many are asking new questions,rather than throwing jibberish..id like the queen to throw trump under a london bus,and keep,her carriage in the garage with her toys. that would make my week.
best wishes
But they are always able to recruit new minds and souls to their totally pointless and useless “cause”.
What’s necessary is to restore legitimacy to government. That means not Trump assuming the GOP continues to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump International.
It could be any of the 20 current Democrat candidates. The most important factor is the wisdom supporting the Democrat Primary and Democrat unity behind the choice.
Gerald Stinson, “I may by primary time vote for neither Mayor Pete nor Liz in favor of someone else WHOSE STAND ON THE ISSUES I PREFER at such juncture …” (emphasis mine)
Not me! I don’t care if the candidate agrees with me on every one of the issues on my list, I will not support him or her unless he or she has a track record of fighting for those issues against the most powerful of special interests…and winning a few. And I want my candidate to have been knocked down a few times by big oil, big banks and big pharma, and to have gotten up and kept on pushing the cart of issues forward. Merely, talking my favorite issue will not cut it. Merely, inserting my favorite issues in the party platform will not cut it. Merely being nice, or being smart, or speaking umpteen languages, or playing the piano, or being a member of an abused special interest group will not cut it.
For the next president to do what has to be done, he or she will need to be on very familiar terms with power, wielding it and being smashed by it. I want my candidate to be someone who strikes fear into every business that appears to monopolize its industry, every politician who is engaged in selling votes, every bank that is engaged in money laundering, every oil company that knows it has risked catastrophes to drill faster and deeper…on and on it goes — this list of powerful dudes who will stomp on the next president, ruin his or her reputation, injure family members, blackmail and or murder the President…unless our new leader is fearless and experienced, clever and ruthless, and has a track record to prove it.
So far, not one of the current candidates meets the requirements of the job that must be done.
Larry – “My stand on the issues” at primary time is in keeping with your description of a candidate who can deliver the goods, so why the distinction? We agree. My point was to imply that we are quite early in the selection process and that I will be open to voting for someone I may not now be considering as the winnowing process proceeds and the candidates show us their wares, and I’ll bet you’re on the same track. My primary choice is not set in stone a year or so early, but whoever is selected for the general will have my support whether his or her opponent is Trump, Jeb, Ted, Mitt, or any Republican who is standing silent while their lying and arrogant president plays God.