RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
As the Radical Right continues its never-ending quest to stoop to new lows, this week conservative activists and Republican politicians claimed that progressives are sanctioning rape, planning to scrap the First Amendment and causing mass shootings by supporting marriage equality.
5) First Amendment About To Be Repealed
It seems that Ted Cruz isn’t even trying to pretend that he is anything more than a shameless con artist. The Texas senator told a summit of Religious Right pastors this week that “Senate Democrats are going to be voting on a constitutional amendment to repeal the First Amendment” as part of their plan to “muzzle” pastors who “speak the truth.”
Cruz’s audience gasped in surprise at this bombshell announcement. It seems they hadn’t heard of this diabolical plan before – perhaps because it doesn’t exist.
It turns out that Cruz was referring to a proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United and related decisions such as this year’s McCutcheon ruling. The amendment seeks to restore to Congress and state legislatures the authority to reduce the role of unchecked and often undisclosed campaign donations from corporations and wealthy individuals.
But Cruz blatantly misrepresented these efforts to claim that Senate leaders are “repealing the First Amendment” because they want to quash the church and “don’t like it when the citizenry in their community has the temerity to criticize what they’ve done.”
4) Immigration Reform All About Hating America
Rush Limbaugh has a new theory that he hopes will incite conservative opposition to immigration reform: Democrats support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants because they hate America, hope to demonize the country and “undermine, sabotage if you will, elements of this nation’s founding.”
3. Liberals Want To Rape Your Kids
“Dr. Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt has a history of sending out insanely anti-LGBT screeds to members of his Religious Right group, Pray In Jesus Name, and this week no was no different.
Klingenschmitt, a Republican candidate for the Colorado House, warned members that liberals want to “rape” children by defending the rights of LGBT students: “‘Transgenders’ want your children. Liberals demand public access to rape your girls, at least visually in public bathrooms, or to expose themselves to your girls at school, without parental consent or protection of any kind.”
This latest rant should come as no surprise, as Klingenschmitt once accused a same-sex couple of looking at their infant with “lust” and speculated that gay people have “something unhman inside of them.”
2. Houston Promoting Violence Against Women
Despite the attempts of anti-LGBT activists to derail an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance in Houston, the city council approved the measure this week in an 11-6 vote.
Opponents of the nondiscrimination measure waged a nasty campaign linking the ordinance to Satan, child abuse, assault and rape.
As always, conservatives pushed false claims about purported negative effects of nondiscrimination laws on religious freedom, with Jonathan Saenz of Texas Values warning that “these laws will be used as a weapon to actually run over people’s religious liberty rights” and Mike Huckabee suggesting that “this ordinance will take away your rights to live what you believe.”
1. Isla Vista Shooting: Blame Gay Marriage
It was only a matter of time until right-wing pundits blamed women’s rights advocates for the Isla Vista shooting spree by Elliot Rodger, who said he was driven by his hatred of women.
Media Matters points out that Fox News contributor Erick Erickson connected Rodger’s actions to the purported “war on masculinity” and gender equality, while another network commentator accused women tweeting under the #YesAllWomen hashtag of “man-hating.”
Glenn Beck similarly mocked women posting under #YesAllWomen for “man-bashing.”
But the Right also returned to one of their favorite targets: gay people.
Another Fox News guest, Dr. Robi Ludwig, alleged that Rodger was motivated by repressed “homosexual impulses.”
She wasn’t the only one to link the shooting to homosexuality: Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council connected Rodger’s massacre to gay marriage. Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state and GOP gubernatorial candidate, also serves on the board of the National Rifle Association.
