This Week In Crazy: We’re All Mad Here

This Week In Crazy: We’re All Mad Here

I may not agree with your beliefs, but I will defend to the death my right to ridicule them. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Judge James DePiazza

Now that marriage equality is the law of the land, there’s been a stampede of magistrates, clerks, and judges seeking ways to avoid fulfilling their sworn duties — whether its by opting out of performing marriages altogether or invoking religious freedom protections.

Judge James DePiazza of Denton County, Texas, found a simpler solution: He asked gay couples to sign an acknowledgement that he doesn’t believe in their right to marriage before he would marry them.

In an interview with The New Civil Rights MovementDePiazza expressed confusion as to why this move was controversial: It appeared to the judge the simplest way to balance his religious beliefs with the new law.

“It’s to let them know where I stand. I would want to know that if I was getting married,” he told theHouston Chronicle. “There are some couples of the same sex who don’t want to be married by someone who doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage.”

The Chronicle reported that the form all gay couples had to sign read as follows:

Judge DePiazza prefers to NOT conduct same-sex ceremonies, but will not decline anyone who chooses to schedule with him. While we may not necessarily agree with, we acknowledge Judge DePiazza’s position that he prefers not to conduct same-sex marriages and agree not to address the topic of same-sex marriages with Judge DePiazza before, during or after the ceremony.

The form on the Denton County Courthouse website, which NCRM and the Chronicle both link to, no longer includes this language. It does seem to state that the judge will require a verbal affirmation of an unspecified declaration: “A civil declaration will be read by Judge DePiazza that both parties respond with affirmation.”

The form further clarifies that the paperwork required and ceremony performed for same-sex couples are exactly the same as for opposite-sex couples.

DePiazza has recorded a new voicemail message for his chambers’ phone line, stating that his “intention is not consistent” with what has been reported in the media. With apparent remorse, he offered his sincere apologies to anyone who was offended, claiming that he had acted in good faith and meant the new policies to be a courtesy, in order to make gay couples aware of his stance and to give them the option to be married by someone else.

Well, now I feel just terrible including him on this page. Because of all the public officials opposed to marriage equality, rattling their religious-liberty sabers and vowing to stand in righteous opposition against Obergefell from this day till Doomsday… it is possible Judge DePiazza may just be the sanest, most conscientious of them all. Which itself is kind of scary.

Via The New Civil Rights Movement

Next: Sean Hannity 

4. Sean Hannity

Okay, Sean, it’s 20 seconds till commercial. And you may be down, but you’re not out.

You’ve got a guest who’s pitching a lot of curveballs at you: compelling arguments about the Iran deal, bolstered by a bevy of confusing data; he’s throwing your own stated principles back at you and calling you out for your kneejerk negative reactions to anything Obama related.

You’ve already muttered “Wow,” you’ve accused him of smoking dope. Try screaming: “You’re out of your mind!”

Yes! Well done. Whose name is on the studio door? Whose name? Your name, that’s whose.

But he’s still talking, with his pesky facts, and it’s getting close to the bell. Any minute now, they’re gonna cut to William Devane selling gold, Fred Thompson peddling catheters, or the two together maybe — who knows?

It’s time. Unleash The Hitler Comparison.

“This is the equivalent of giving Adolf Hitler weapons of mass destruction,” you proclaim.

And that’s how you do it. Way to go, Sean. Way to go.

Via Media Matters

Next: Pat Buchanan 

3. Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan has words of comfort for the pizzeria owners who came under fire for announcing on national television that they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding: Be strong, pizzerians. Rosa Parks once sat in your seat.

In a recent op-ed for WorldNetDaily, the onetime Republican presidential candidate recently warned of a coming “era of civil disobedience” from Americans of good conscience who can no longer abide a nation that lets gays marry or allows the Ten Commandments to be removed from public grounds.

Left America, be forewarned: We are entering a new age when “court orders are defied and laws ignored in the name of conscience and a higher law. Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.”

In his argument exhorting right-wing America to demand a rollback to the good old Eisenhower days, Buchanan aligns the current Christian conservative cause with a long history of righteous rebellion, including: Thomas Jefferson killing the sedition act, Harriet Tubman and “anti-slavery fanatic” John Brown, and, yes, Rosa Parks.

Buchanan laments:

Rosa Parks is celebrated. But the pizza lady who said her Christian beliefs would not permit her to cater a same-sex wedding was declared a bigot. And the LGBT crowd, crowing over its Supreme Court triumph, is writing legislation to make it a violation of federal civil rights law for that lady to refuse to cater that wedding

Buchanan is in good company. Lest we forget, the fight against same-sex marriage compelled Glenn Beck to announce recently that he was going to become the new MLK Jr.

ViaSamuel-Warde

Next: Greg Abbott

2. Greg Abbott

When Texas governor Greg Abbott isn’t busy caving to insane anti-federalists who think Obama’s invading their state, he’s caving to insane people who don’t believe in medical science.

For reasons that shall remain jealously guarded by the voices in Abbott’s head, the Lone Star guv recently killed a bill that had miraculously passed the state legislature with bipartisan support, and really should be about the furthest thing from controversial.

According to Addicting Info, Senate Bill 359 was written in the hope that it would “give doctors and medical facilities more resources to help patients with mental health issues.”

The bill would have allowed physicians to place a “four-hour hold on a mentally ill patient if they are suspected of being a danger to themselves or others.” It hoped to address the problem of people who are suffering from mental health episodes checking themselves out of hospitals or treatment centers while still posing a risk. The bill had the support of two of the nation’s largest medical associations, including Texas’ own Hospital Association.

Texas Tribune is reporting that Abbott vetoed the bill after capitulating to pressure from a cabal calling itself the “SB 359 Veto Coalition,” which includes the Citizen Commission on Human Rights — a Scientology group founded to “investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.” In practice, this means opposing psychiatry and promoting the notion that mental illness is a hoax created by Big Pharma to sell drugs (and presumably advocating their own perfectly logical practice of exorcising volcano-souls).

Per Addicting Info, the net result of this and other baffling moves by Abbott, has been to convert Texas into “a state defined by oxymorons. A public school system run by a homeschooler. A government kowtowed by anti-government zealots. And now a medical community led by an anti-medicine religious group.”

ViaAddicting Info

Next: Avi Lipkin

1. Avi Lipkin

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Avi Lipkin (who has published books under the alias Victor Mordecai, for “security reasons”) has devoted the last several years to being one of the louder, less reality-tethered figures to espouse the Muslim Obama hypothesis. For instance, Lipkin has speculated in the past that our secretly Saudi president is importing Muslims into the country in order to turn American women into “baby factories for Islam.”

The “Israeli activist” joined conservative minister Rick Wiles on his TruNews radio program Tuesday to share his thoughts on the Iranian nuclear deal, which Lipkin says is part of Obama’s master plan to force Israel to go to war with Iran.

But that’s just an overture for Obama’s “real mission, which is to make America a Muslim country.” Right Wing Watchhas the audio:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214848308″ params=”color=ff5500″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Lipkin goes on to claim that this diabolical plan really shouldn’t surprise anyone, once you remember that “Obama is a Muslim,” and “if you’re a Muslim, your god is Satan; if you’re a Muslim, then you are criminally psychotic.” And this is all part of a plot to “destroy the human race,” which is “something that Allah wants.”

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214848258″ params=”color=ff5500″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

ViaRight Wing Watch

Illustration: Mad American Tea Party (Eric Kleefeld and Sam Reisman/The National Memo)

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