7 worst right-wing moments of the week — Rick Perry takes homophobia to new heights

The Texas governor makes a startlingly offensive comment (even for him), while Pat Robertson goes off about guns

Published June 16, 2014 2:55PM (EDT)

Rick Perry                            (AP/Justin Hayworth)
Rick Perry (AP/Justin Hayworth)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. Rick Perry: Homosexuality = alcoholism. Same thing.

The Texas GOP unveiled an all-out crazy platform this week, which includes climate denialism, appointment rather than election of senators, and a repeal of the state’s hate-crimes law. It also includes support forreparative therapy and treatment to patients who are seeking escape from the homosexual lifestyle, which has, of course been completely discredited.

Asked what he thought of the inclusion of “gay cure therapy” in the platform, Gov. Rick Perry first said he didn't know if it works (no, Rick, it doesn’t), then added:

"Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that," he responded, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way."

Putting homosexuality and alcoholism in the same category is beyond offensive. And not too bright. But then Perry is the guy who said evolution is ”a theory that’s out there,” and thought that was all he needed to say about it. The contemptible comparison between homosexuality and alcoholism only required him to hold two things in his head at the same time, instead of three, which he has a well-known problem doing.

Comic Paul Rudnick wrote a brief and hilarious response to the governor’s confusion called“Driving While Gay,” in which he chronicles some of the things he’s done “under the influence of homosexuality.”

- While driving gay, I once killed a busload of schoolchildren. With an offhand remark.

- I once became visibly gay at a party, and I vomited. Because of the wallpaper.

- A policeman once pulled me over and administered a test to determine how gay I was. The policeman was one of the Village People.

- I once became so gay that I lapsed into a coma. This was right after seeing Gypsy, Cage Aux Folles and Follies all in one weekend.

- I like to think of myself as only an occasional homosexual, but sometimes my gayness gets much worse. Sometimes I wake up gay.

- I once became so gay that I thought Rick Perry was cute. That was when I knew I needed help.

We aren't even going to attempt to top that.

2. Laura Ingraham: Now that same-sex marriage is legal, polyamorous marriages are next.

Laura Ingraham took time out from bashing immigrants and celebrating her anti-immigration, libertarian boy Dave Brat’s upset victory over Eric Cantor this week to bash gay marriage. First, she aired an interview with a young boy being raised in a polyamorous family, a household which the boy described as having “two dads, one mom, and two other people dating each other.”

“That’s a lot to keep track of,” the interviewer said.

“Not really,” the boy replied.

He may have been unperturbed, but Ingraham was very upset to hear this. (She loves children, except those immigrant kids, who kind of scare her.)

“I thought that was beyond sad and disturbing and very predictable,” she began. “The polyamorous cases for marriage are already making their way through the court system, I believe. I don’t know how the Supreme Court could possibly conclude that marriage isn’t appropriate for them. What’s so special about two? Why not three or four or five? Why not one? Why can’t I be married to myself?”

Yeah, why can’t she marry herself? She’s perfect for herself. Come to think of it, Laura, we fully support your right to be married to yourself, and live happily ever after.

But Laura is not happy.

“The logic just isn’t there,” she concluded. “Once you take it away from the biological underpinning, from the Judeo-Christian idea... anything goes.”

Sounds like a good idea for a musical.

3. Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid: Pot not guns made Vegas shooters kill.

The Daily Beast's John Avlon wrote a rather convincing piece about Jerad and Amanda Miller, the couple who murdered two Las Vegas police officers last week, being right-wing Alex Jones fans and anti-government nuts. But, of course, this little nugget of truth about “hatriot politics” sent the right-wingnuts scurrying for another explanation.

Cliff Kincaid of right-wing Accuracy in Media sprung into action, claiming “progressives” had to take blame for the Millers because they supported legalization of pot. He also sought to make conspiracy theorist Alex Jones a progressive problem.

“[Alex] Jones is not a right-wing talk-radio host. He is a marijuana enthusiast who promoted a movie called Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom,” he wrote. “The liberals would prefer to focus on the guns, not the drugs.”

Maybe that’s because weed doesn’t kill people, guns do.

For the remainder of the piece, Kincaid called Miller a pothead.

Hey Kincaid, potheads don’t kill people either, but guns do, with jarring and deplorable regularity. And guns together with combustible right-wing hate rhetoric? Deadly combo.

See more.

4. Pat Robertson to kid: Don’t call the cops on your gun-wielding dad. You wouldn’t want to get him in trouble.

The doddering “700 Club” preacher gave some highly questionable advice to a terrified child this week. The kid wrote in:

“Whenever my parents fight, my dad threatens my mom with his gun. Fortunately, this now means nothing to my mom, and she never goes nuts about it; she is very calm. But as a child, I get nervous and worried when this happens. Even my younger brother saw this incident. What should we do about it and him?”

"Well, you don't want to get your father busted... but you could," Robertson replied.

That was his first reaction.

"Say, 'Mom, this thing is scaring me and I ask you, please, to get my father to have some help,'" Robertson said.

Robertson rambled on, reassuring the child that the situation was indeed dangerous. "One day he's gonna pull the trigger. It doesn't take too much if you've got a loaded weapon and you're brandishing it around, 'I'm gonna kill you,' and the next thing you know the thing goes off. Maybe accidentally, but the mother will wind up dead," he said. "You need to do something to intervene but you're a kid, what do you do, y'know? Your mother ought to take care of that."

Hopefully, dad won’t shoot mom when she “takes care of that.”

h/t: rawstory

5. Creationist Darek Isaacs: If evolution is true, then rape must be okay.

What a confused little puppy Darek Isaacs is. That’s what comes of reading too much of the Bible, and taking it all very literally. Giant leaps of offensive illogic often ensue. In what has to be one of the more desperate attempts on record to discredit evolution, Isaacs claimed this week on an episode of “Creation Today” that if evolution is true, rape must be okay.

His exact words: “You have to start asking questions: Well, if evolution is true, and it’s just all about the male propagating their DNA, we had to ask hard questions, like, well, is rape wrong?”

Marriage should also be “anathema” in the evolutionary worldview, he added. “According to the evolutionary worldview, [if] that male is strong enough and he had wonderful genes, he should propagate his DNA as much as possible so that the species can progress,” Isaacs said. “So it redefines everything about our society.”

We have a feeling that Isaacs is just hoping that people will see the light of creationism when they turn these statements around. Rape is not okay, and we do have marriage, therefore... God obviously created the world in six days, exactly 6,000 years ago.

See? Makes perfect sense.

6. Tony Perkins: Gays plan a ‘holocaust’ against Christians. They are readying the boxcars.

Bill Maher has declared the culture wars over, citing the fact that Michael Sam kissed his white boyfriend on television during the NFL draft as evidence. But the cultural warriors on the other side are amping up the rhetoric (see above Rick Perry, and Laura Ingraham, for starters). And then there’s Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who is immersed in the ongoing right-wing apoplexia about the fact that the homophobic Colorado baker who refused to sell cakes to same-sex couples has been found to have unlawfully discriminated against them by Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission.

While discussing the case with the baker’s attorney, Perkins compared the whole thing to the Holocaust.

“I’m beginning to think, are re-education camps next?” he said. “When are they going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?”

The attorney agreed it was nothing short of a “witch hunt.”

Hoo boy. The crazy metaphors are flying tonight.

See more.

7. Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran: I grew up doing all sorts of indecent things with animals.

Eric Cantor’s loss seems to have sent all sorts of Republicans off the deep end this week.

In a campaign appearance on Tuesday, embattled Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R), who is fighting off Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, thought he would connect with audience by referring to his youthful shenanigans and boyhood bestiality.

Cochran was addressing a group of donors and supporters at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg, and thought this would be a good way to establish his connection to the area.

“I grew up coming down here for Christmas,” he said. “My father’s family was here. My mother’s family was from rural Hinds County in Utica.”

“It was fun, it was an adventure to be out there in the country and to see what goes on,” he said of his boyhood visits to Hattiesburg. “Picking up pecans, from that to all kinds of indecent things with animals.”

The audience chuckled. Politely, we’re going to say. At least we hope it was just polite. Cochran thought it was something else.

“And I know some of you know what that is,” Cochran said. Wink wink.

Boy, if that doesn’t get out the votes, we don’t know what will.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Alternet Conservatism Laura Ingraham Pat Robertson Rick Perry Tony Perkins