Unhinged. My Life as a Right-Wing Nut Gatherer. A Short Memoir.

Around the time I started following the nuts.

I am a Rightwing- Crazy Magnet. Or maybe they are the magnet and I’m crazy. It’s the story of my life, and tonight, the story of my blog.

Since high school, I have followed religious wingnuts, local crackpots, Bible bangers, Christian Nationalists, and those who are otherwise considered social loons.

It started out innocently enough by calling the Minutemen phone line to listen to their daily toll-free conspiracy message, and it expanded from there. I moved on to locals Ernest Angley and Brother Dave Lombardi.

When I was in college I made my New Year’s Eve date take me home early so I could watch Rex Humbard and his all-night beg-a-thon. Rex’s wife, Maude Aimee, had hair. My mother kept yelling at me to come to bed. Her dislike for this kind of stuff was probably rooted in the fact that after her parents divorced her father married a Foursqauae evangelist cum prohibitionist named Viola, and they traveled through Texas and Oklahoma preaching the Gospel in a tent. This is real. My mom, a mainstream Methodist, thought this was awful and was terribly embarrassed, I thought it was…intriguing.

Dr. Patrick Johnston and Toy Newman (Operation Save America) Bibleing it up on the Scioto, Columbus, Ohio. November 2005. Photo by Bastardette.

This ramped up eventually to oppositional research and hanging with Central Ohio abortion obsessives like masculinist Dave Daubenmire (Pass the Salt and Minute Men– not to be confused with the Minutemen), Dr. Patrick Johnston,(old link but you’ll get the idea), and Mark Harrington, “the Truth Truck Guy.” (Created Equal and other organizations.) During a chilly November afternoon, sitting on a wall by the Scioto River with Johnston and Troy Newman (Operation Rescue) I watched with great amusement as Johnston beat Newman repeatedly over the head with his Bible. I once got in a prayer huddle at the Ohio Statehouse with Janet Folger Porter, creator of Ohio’s original Heartbeat Bill. A couple of years later, Flip Benham, then director of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, told me I nearly made him flub his prayer during a fetal funeral held by Fr. Frank Pavone (Priests for Life) in downtown Columbus when I heckled him with a line about a donkey and an embalmed fetus. It loses something without context. I’ll forgo it, but he got it.

Teen Mania, Wachiva Spectrum, Philadelphia, May 12, 2006/ Photo by Bastardette

Broadening my scope, I sat next to Jerry Falwell and Ken Starr at a food court in Fort Lauderdale while attending a Center for Reclaiming America for Christ/Coral Ridge Ministries conference. In, I think, 2000, I suffered through two days of Pat Robertson at a Christian Coalition Road to Victory conference at the Washington DC Capitol Hyatt, featuring Pat Boone, Donna Rice, Phyliss Schlafly (looking like a corpse in a blue suit), Frank Pavone, and a gaggle of rightwing politicians. On the first day, we waved little Israeli flags inside the auditorium after lunch since the weather had gone bad and the outdoor demo at the Ellipse was canceled. I rode the hotel elevator with Fr. Frank and imagined dragging him to my room for seduction. We smiled at each other.

Don’t get me started on Ron Luce and now-defunct Teen Mania/Acquire the Fire. During the first stadium event of the 4 or 5 that I attended, Luce implied that the parents of his teenage audience invented abortion and homosexuality and that their blood needed to run in the streets. It would be interesting to know how many of the misogynist, racist meth boys and girls running in our streets and the Halls of Congress today were Teen Maniacs.

Then there was that group of serious fundamentalists I met online, but not in person, who refused to have toilets installed in their churches since they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. ie, church toilets are unBiblical. I discussed this with Patrick Johnston later, who responded “Those people are crazy.” See, there is always somebody crazier than the crazies.

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Nothing prepared me, however, for the weird posts of seriously unhinged rightwing Catholics on Twitter. I mean real rightwing. These folks go beyond the definition. They are nothing like the normal Catholics I have known throughout my life. I don’t know if they are Blue Army. They might be, but the tweeters could be further to the right even them.

One debate a few weeks ago covered the question: are natural birth control (rhythm method) AND abstinence sins? Some of the less unhinged debated, not, and pointed out that both were permitted by the Church (which, btw, some of these people believe is currently Satanic because Pope Frank is the spawn of Vatican 2 and surely of Satan himself. But, the hardcore crazies said those practices are indeed a sin since they prevent babies from being conceived, much less born. Apparently, God wants us all to have sex on demand 24/7. Tiny souls are standing in line in Heaven waiting to slide into an available tummy mommy, and don’t appreciate standing in line waiting for somebody to open the door.

Or perhaps these folks just aren’t getting any.

The latest Tweet of the Absurd is not a sex lecture, but it might be the most unhinged yet. (I have no idea how they feel about toilets in churches since that’s a Protestant thing). As you may know, I am awful at screenshots, and this evening I don’t want to take the time to get somebody to make them for me. Here’s a cut-and-paste. I decided to do the polite thing and delete the addys of Ave Grace, CE Cole, and Medieval Frog (don’t ask!), but if you really want to prove that this convo is real and that I didn’t make it up, you can look them up on Twitter.

The theme: Social Security has destroyed the family. Dismantle it!

How could I make this up? Sure, there are politicians who would like to do that, but not for this reason.

Ava Grace @Ava… Hot take: Social Security did just as much to destroy the American family as contraception, divorce, abortion and the destruction of marriage. 5:41 PM · Nov 25, 2022

Ava Grace @Ava… Before social security people welcomed children b/c children would take care of them when they got older. Now most Americans see children as “investments” and desire fewer children and “perfect” children (aka eugenics) since social security fills the need for elderly care.

Ava Grace @Ava… · Nov 25 A truly pro-life position would be the dismantling of Social Security and bringing care of the elderly back to children and the family.

I asked AG what she would do about people without families to care for them and got this back, which doesn’t answer the question, just reiterates:

Ava Grace

@AvaGrac4Replying to

@StopSHBB

That’s why you incentivize having a family. If there was so social security or other state welfare we’d rely on our families for mutual aid. People would be far less likely to abort or contracept if they knew their children would be the ones providing for them in old age.

I asked again. If she responds to my second request, I will come back and add it.

What would she have done with this family:

When a 1961 airplane crash left Mrs. Beth Scheib and her I I children without a husband and father, the future looked dark. Expecting her twelfth child, Mrs. Scheib felt sure that the family would lose their farm and might have to be broken up. But with a steady income of $212 in social security survivors benefits and a monthly check based on her husband’s military service, the family has been able to stay together. Social Security Administration. For the rest of their story go here.

Here are a couple of comments from AG supporters:

C.E. Cole @CE… Replying to @Ava… Yep. First it was FDR with “social security,” then LBJ with “Medicare” and his “Great Society,” then BHO with his “fundamental transformation of the USA,” and now it’s Dementia Man reading the Obama-prepared scripts off his teleprompter. These are BOLSHEVIKS, pure and simple

Medæval Frog

@bavarican…

Bingo. The just society is the society where nursing homes are unnecessary and illegal. I already had this view, Covid radicalized me on it.

If I had a bottle of Jack sitting around the house tonight, I’d be hittin’ it. Oddly, I have no memory of this gang discussing adoption.

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Don’t let BOLSHEVIKS throw you!

Bolshies are maybe the second most popular topic with the unhinged. They live unspoken in the majority of tweets that appear amongst AG’s minions. AG, whose tag is “Exposing abortion and communism,” particularly spends a lot of time discussing Communist and anarchist infiltration of the Catholic Church in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We once had a short discussion on the Wobbly-turned-Communist labor organizer William Z Foster.

Although she promotes “mutual aid” as a cure for Social Security, AG doesn’t seem to grasp that mutual aid is a key drawing point in contemporary anarchism. Oops! See, Kropotkin. Mutual Aid: a Factor in Evolution

See, the ultimate Communist/Anarchist plan (despite their opposing points of view and a long history of Communists murdering anarchists or sending them off to camps in the Urals) is to destroy the family. Communists, anarchists, Antifa, and liberals (and, I think, feminists) hate the family, children, babies, heterosexuality, and the church–presumably Catholic. I guess that’s why in the Soviet Union male queerity was illegal under numerous constitutions and male queers were sent off to gulags. Lesbians weren’t considered queer since the male framers believed that if it wasn’t with a man it wasn’t sex. Let their families deal with the problem! And under Stalin, and probably beyond, women were awarded for breeding. I am, in fact, the proud owner of a Hero Mother medal, although the number of children I bore for the state isn’t engraved on it. It’s been a long time. I’ve forgotten.

I have learned from AG and her retweet friends that female teachers are “bad'”(woke). “Rest in Peace” is praying for the dead and “bad” (Protestant). (I checked that one online and the RCC seems fine with it). Disney is evil and Hegel was a Freemason. We need to encourage people who can’t afford children to have them. AG herself is extremely worried about sex or birth strikes where women Just Say No.–especially after Dobbs. The strike idea, she claims, came from Commies. Perhaps a Hero Mother Medal would encourage women to have sex for babies? I’ve asked her twice if Aristophanes was a Commie, but have received no response.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on AG. It’s just that I follow her and many of the crazies land on her page. I am actually quite fond of AG. She’s a mystery. I worry about her. Does she ever leave her home? Has she ever been in a room alone with a man? Does she knit? Has she ever had a job? Does she have friends? A husband? Kids? Does she do it every night? Does she eat healthy?

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My Theoconia blog contains several years of oppositional articles I wrote for the Columbus Free Press and a lot more which are just blog material. Due to changes in my phone number and email addys over the years, I am unable to get back into it and my other Bogger sites to write more.