Mark Burns, an unabashed Christian nationalist MAGA pastor who is running for Congress in South Carolina, declared that if he is elected, he will reinstate the House Un-American Activities Committee so that the government can “start executing people” guilty of treason. Who does Burns believe is guilty of treason? Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham whose supposed crime is potentially supporting some gun control measures, and LGBTQ-supporting parents and teachers.

During an appearance on “The Stew Peters Show” Wednesday, Burns was asked by guest host Lauren Witzke what he would do to fight “LGBTQ indoctrination” if elected to Congress. Burns replied that the LGBTQ agenda represents “a national security threat” and therefore anyone promoting it is guilty of treason and should be executed.

"I vote to make sure that those parents be held for child abuse,” Burns said. “There is no such thing as trans kids, there are only abusive parents who are pushing that evil, evil sexual orientation onto their child’s mind.”

"I want to make sure that those parents have been held accountable,” he continued. “We should start putting some of those parents in jail for abusing their child’s minds. Especially in the school system, any teacher that is teaching that LGBT, transgenderism, furries, the groomers, any sexual orientation communication in the school system should be immediately terminated but [teachers should also] be held for abusing young children.”

Burns then declared that the current situation in the United States is “Nazi Germany all over again,” claiming that students today are being “indoctrinated” just as they were by the Nazis to become “future stormtroopers” and members of “the hit squads, the murder squads.”

"They were indoctrinating those young minds then; they are doing the very same thing here in America,” Burns said. “The LGBT, transgender grooming our children’s minds is a national security threat because it is ultimately designed to destabilize the republic we call the United States of America. That’s why when I’m elected, I don’t want to just vote, I want to start holding people accountable for treason to the Constitution.”

"I am going to push to reenact HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee,” Burns vowed. “It is a committee that we should reenact that starts holding these people accountable for treason. Lindsey Graham should be held accountable for treason for supporting Joe Biden’s gun-grabbing Second Amendment law that he’s trying to push forward. … Mitch McConnell just [urged] other Republican senators to support Lindsey Graham to come after our guns, to confiscate our guns. That should be held for treason.”

“We need to hold people for treason, start having some public hearings, and start executing people who are found guilty for their treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United States of America, just like they did back in 1776,” Burns proclaimed.

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

The Supreme Court majority built by the hard-right legal movement with help from Republican presidents and senators, and turbocharged by three Trump-McConnell justices, is apparently preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating a constitutional right to abortion and potentially eviscerating the constitutional underpinning of rulings protecting privacy and the rights of LGBTQ Americans.

While overturning Roe has been an intense focus and will be a massive victory for the religious right and right-wing legal movement, reversing Roe is just one part of a much broader agenda that has been promoted by the right-wing Federalist Society and allied political operatives who have worked with it to pack the federal courts. Trump basically outsourced his judicial picks to the group’s activists. Now, with the Trump justices cementing a hard-right majority on the Court, Federalist Society lawyers and judges and their political allies can move even more aggressively to reverse a century’s worth of precedents, pulling the constitutional rug out from under the New Deal and Great Society anti-poverty programs like Medicare and Social Security; further gutting voting rights in favor of states’ rights; weakening the separation of church and state; and undermining the federal government’s ability to regulate corporations and protect workers and communities.

Seeking a National Abortion Ban

A leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision written by Justice Samuel Alito dispenses with any notions of nuance in favor of a complete repudiation and reversal of Roe. If the court ultimately rules along the lines set out in Alito’s draft, abortion would be banned or severely restricted in more than half the states immediately or in short order.

Some states already have bans in place. Some have passed “trigger” laws, most of which would take effect at the moment of Roe’s demise. Others, including Michigan and Wisconsin, still have old laws on the books that will come back into force once Alito and his colleagues have removed the constitutional barrier to their enforcement. While some anti-choice groups have talked about preparing for a “50-state battle,” they have already won many of those battles.

Eliminating Roe would intensify the already existing disparities in access to abortion between states. Many people seeking that care will be forced to travel elsewhere—a fundamental freedom that is also being targeted by anti-abortion legislators.

And for all the federalism-embracing, give-it-back-to-the-states rhetoric, expect anti-choice activists to quickly demand a national ban on abortion. The state-by-state approach pursued by anti-choice activists was a strategic decision to bypass Congress, chip away at Roe, and build momentum toward a day when the Court was in their ideological grasp. But a nationwide ban is their goal.

This is not speculation. The amicus brief submitted by Princeton University professor Robert P. George, a brief cited in Alito’s draft, is clear. George argues that “prenatal persons” and “unborn children” are persons under the 14th Amendment from the moment of conception, and therefore that states should be required to treat abortion as homicide. He argues that Congress would have to enforce such a ruling “if States failed in their duties.” George’s brief mirrors the arguments of the hard-core “personhood” wing of the anti-choice movement, which has successfully pushed anti-choice legislators away from even granting exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape and incest. The right to contraception is at risk, too, as anti-abortion activists are hard at work to make the public believe that some widely used forms of contraception are the equivalent of abortion.

Eliminating Equality for LGBTQ Americans

Alito’s draft includes language seemingly meant to suggest that if adopted by the majority, his ruling would not put LGBTQ equality at risk. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Referring to the Court’s rulings in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned state laws criminalizing homosexual conduct, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized marriage equality, Alito’s draft says that the Court ruling against a right to abortion “does not undermine them in any way,” in part because those decisions do not involve “the critical moral question posed by abortion.”

But that reads as high-level gaslighting.

In a 2020 comment on the court’s decision not to hear a case brought by a marriage-resisting county court clerk, Alito and Clarence Thomas disparaged Obergefell, saying that a right to same-sex marriage cannot be found in the Constitution. And many anti-choice activists have portrayed opposition to marriage equality as inhabiting the same legal and moral plane as opposition to abortion.

A brief submitted by Texas Right to Life was filed by Jonathan Mitchell, the author of the Texas abortion ban that the Supreme Court has allowed to take effect. The brief sneers at “court-invented rights to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage,” calling the Lawrence and Obergefell decisions “as lawless as Roe.”

Robert George, who argues that states must treat abortion as homicide, is also intensely opposed to legal equality for LGBTQ people. A founder of the National Organization for Marriage, George co-authored The Manhattan Declaration, a 2009 manifesto whose signers frame opposition to abortion and marriage equality as similarly non-negotiable. The manifesto concludes with this:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.

Anti-LGBTQ activist Ryan Anderson, a Robert George protégé, has urged anti-marriage equality activists to follow his road map to overturning Obergefell, with the religious right’s anti-Roe campaign as a guide. The first step in his plan was to denounce the marriage equality decision as illegitimate, which George and others have done relentlessly. Other anti-LGBTQ leaders, like Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown, have also expressed hope that success in eradicating a right to abortion points the way toward doing the same for marriage equality.

And it is not just about marriage. Many religious-right legal and political advocacy groups defended state laws that made gay people de facto criminals and opposed the Lawrence decision. You can hear that in the rhetoric of anti-LGBTQ activists who express a desire to return to a time when gay people were disfavored in law and demonized in popular culture, and already, they are working to return us to that time with a wave of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation smearing LGBTQ people and their allies as “groomers” and sexual predators.

Indeed, anti-choice activist Janet Porter recently said she hopes to apply the nefarious strategy of Texas’s abortion ban, which allows anyone to sue anyone who helps a person obtain an abortion, to LGBTQ issues in schools, making teachers, librarians, and school board members vulnerable to lawsuits for “pushing this garbage on our children.”

‘Rome Wasn’t Burned in a Day’: Return to a States’ Rights Constitution

In the name of federalism, the Supreme Court’s conservative and far-right justices have repeatedly weakened the federal Voting Rights Act, giving a green light to state legislators to pass wave after wave of voting restrictions. That is far from the only way that the right-wing legal movement hopes Trump’s justices can continue to “fundamentally change the country.”

In 2017, Republican congressional and White House aides told a conference of religious-right activists that getting a second Supreme Court justice would allow Trump to create “epic, titanic” shifts and undo New Deal and Great Society programs created when Democrats had wide congressional majorities. Trump also filled lower federal courts with ideologically minded judges who give hard-right justices like Alito and Thomas the “troops” to carry out their judicial counterrevolution.

Dismantling much of what the federal government does to address poverty and access to education and health care has been a long-term project, a reality reflected in a bit of Federalist Society humor: “Rome wasn’t burned in a day.” But right-wing funders knew their long-term investments could bring huge returns.

The confirmation of Trump’s third Supreme Court pick, Justice Amy Coney Barrett—who some anti-choice activists believe was anointed by God to help the Supreme Court overturn Roe—could also strengthen the religious right’s already successful push to weaponize and redefine religious liberty in ways that weaken the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the establishment of religion by Congress, and the separation between church and state.

The net result is all too clear. As tragic as it is, the reversal of Roe is just one step in the far-right campaign to rewrite the Constitution and gut fundamental rights, harming millions of Americans in the process.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins preached at Westgate Chapel in Edmonds, Washington, Sunday. Following his sermon, Perkins sat down with Westgate’s senior pastor Alec Rowlands for a wide-ranging discussion on the issue of “The Church and Politics.”

During the discussion, Perkins declared that the push for LGBTQ rights is “the zenith of man’s rebellion against God” and that the people who fight for such rights are controlled by “demonic spirits.”

"This whole thing with LGBT is the zenith of man’s rebellion against God,” Perkins said. “The Creator who created us in his own image, we’re saying, ‘No, we will decide—not biology, not science—we will decide what our gender is.’ This is the zenith of rebellion against God. That is the only explanation for how people are surrendering to this agenda, how adamant the advocates of this agenda are, and why we as believers in Jesus Christ who love people and do not want to see our children condemned to confusion for the rest of their lives must speak the truth of God’s word.”

“Jesus made very clear there are two genders, not 52,” Perkins continued. “We can never accommodate darkness. I’m going to be very clear about this tonight: Those that are opposing us on these issues are not our enemies. We know that our enemies are spiritual. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Our enemies are not flesh and blood; they’re the spirits, the demonic spirits that control so much.”

Despite his long history of incendiary comments about the LGBTQ community, Perkins is an influential voice in conservative politics, regularly hosting Republican members of Congress on his “Washington Watch” radio show. The Family Research Council, which has been designated an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had a hand in the formation of Trump administration policy on a wide variety of issues.

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

Lauren Witzke, the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate from Delaware in 2020, gushed with praise for Vladimir Putin this week after the Russian dictator unleashed a military invasion against Ukraine. While somewhat shocking given the timing, Witzke’s admiration of Putin’s “Christian nationalism” has a long precedent among U.S. Christian right leaders, who embraced Putin as a “savior of Christian civilization” during the Obama administration.

Shortly after Donald Trump became president, far-right activist Pat Buchanan praised Putin as “a God-and-country Russian patriot” and champion of Christianity “against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be.”

In 2018, prominent Trump-aligned dominionist Lance Wallnau brushed aside Putin’s tendency to kill journalists and run the country “like a mafia state,” and praised Putin’s anti-LGBTQ policies as having been “shaped by Christians,” adding, “I fear more liberals in America than I fear Putin in Russia.”

At an infamous 2018 press conference with Putin and Trump, the U.S. president said he was more inclined to believe Putin than U.S. intelligence agencies that had concluded the Russian government had interfered with the 2016 election. Far-right figures like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones were thrilled when Putin mentioned philanthropist George Soros, who many on the far-right portray as the embodiment of sinister globalism. InfoWars’ Jerome Corsi declared Trump and Putin were working together in a “fight to death with the deep state.”

Christian nationalists in the U.S. cry “religious persecution” over business owners being required to abide by anti-discrimination laws, but they don’t spend much time decrying Putin’s actual assaults on the religious freedom of non-Russian Orthodox Christians and other religious minorities in Russia—and in Russian-occupied Eastern Ukraine.

Putin’s government has been a key ally of American Christian right groups who happily partner with the world’s most repressive regimes in order to promote “traditional” views of family, sexuality, and gender, as well as to try to prevent and reverse international recognition of reproductive rights or the equality of LGBTQ people.

The alliance between U.S. and Russian promoters of “traditional values” goes back further than the Trump administration to the creation of the World Congress of Families. When the WCF’s parent organization was rebranded as the International Organization for Families with anti-marriage-equality crusader Brian Brown at the helm, he made a trip to Russia to seek funding from oligarchs and political operatives aligned with Putin. Indeed, Brown spends enough time in Russia to have a favorite restaurant at Moscow’s airport. In 2013, Brown joined far-right European activists on a trip to Russia where he praised pending legislation to ban adoption by same-sex couples. In 2014, when the WCF announced plans for a Moscow summit, WCF leaders defended Putin from Western critics.

A major funder of the World Congress of Families is Putin-aligned billionaire Konstantin Malofeev, known as “God’s Oligarch” for his close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. Malofeev wants to bring back the Russian monarchy, with Putin himself as a possible tsar. At WCF’s global summit in 2013, Malofeev reportedly told the “traditional values” activists that “Christian Russia can help liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma.”

Right Wing Watch reported on the adoration showered on Putin by the U.S. Christian right in 2015:

Evangelist Franklin Graham hailed Putin as a hero for taking “a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda” even as “America’s own morality has fallen so far on this issue”; Bryan Fischer called Putin a “lion of Christianity” and called upon U.S. lawmakers to adopt similar speech prohibitions; Matt Barber marveled that Putin was able to “out-Christian our once-Christian nation”; Sam Rohrer called Putin “the moral leader of the world”; Scott Lively lavished praise on Putin for “championing traditional marriage and Christian values”; and Rush Limbaugh applauded Putin for stopping “a full-frontal assault on what has always been considered normalcy.”

That same year, radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones praised Putin for promoting “masculine men” and homeschooling.

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

Early in 2021, Christian nationalist home-schooling advocate, author, and podcaster Heidi St. John launched a bid for U.S. Congress in Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District. Outraged by incumbent Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s vote to impeach former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, St. John decided to try and unseat her in the GOP primary by appealing to MAGA voters, denouncing public libraries as “evil organizations,” and pledging to “be a mom for America.”

Earlier this month, St. John appeared on the “Stand Up For The Truth” podcast, where she sounded Seven Mountains and Christian nationalist themes that have been central to her campaign, describing politics as “a spiritual battle” and vowing to “bring back the name of God into the political sphere.”

“[Politics is] in my blood,” St. John said. “And I think it should be in the blood of every Christ follower. Politics determined policy, and it is policy that has murdered 63 million of our unborn in this country. It is policy that has gotten us into the mess that we are in as a nation, and we need wise people and godly people to ascend to positions of authority in the nation.”

“What we’ve observed over years and years and years is a church deciding to pull itself out of arguably one of the most important aspects of the culture, which is determining our laws and determining the policy that governs the people here,” she continued. “Christians belong in every sphere of influence. We have a command to be strong and courageous. [God] did not say, ‘Be strong and courageous except for in the political sphere, stay out of that one.’ No, we belong in every sphere of influence. We belong in medicine. We belong in entertainment. We belong in education. And we belong in politics.”

“[Christians] should be canvassing, they should be helping clean up the voter rolls, they should be running for positions of authority in every sphere of influence,” St. John added. “We bring back the name of Jesus, we bring back the name of God into the political sphere and we say out loud, ‘What is the biggest problem in our country? We have turned away from God.'”

“This is a spiritual battle,” St. John declared. “We know that we serve the Lord of Heaven’s armies. We serve the creator of the universe, the one who spoke the world into being. He can do anything. And I think he’s calling his people back out of hiding and out of the shadows and into the battle and onto the battlefield.”

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

Right-wing activist Lauren Witzke appeared on "The Alex Jones Show" Thursday, where she warned that the Equality Act will "illegalize Jesus Christ" if it becomes law.

Witzke—the GOP's 2020 Senate candidate in Delaware and a flat Earth, QAnon-believing conspiracy theorist with ties to white nationalists and antisemites—appeared on Jones' program to discuss the fact that Wells Fargo recently shut down her bank account. While the bank insists its decision had nothing to do with her political views, Witzke asserted that it was done in retaliation for her opposition to the Equality Act, proposed legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity protections to federal civil rights laws.

"There is a war on Christians," Witzke said. "They targeted me, and they made an example out of me because I'm an outspoken Christian who vocally opposes the Equality Act. … They're trying to illegalize Jesus Christ and the Scripture and categorize it as hate speech."

"What it will do is it will classify scripture, belief in traditional marriage, as hate speech," she continued. "If an abortionist wants to make the decision to not perform an abortion, they can arrest that abortionist or that doctor or that nurse that chooses to take the biblical approach and change their lives. Children who struggle with gender identity—now it's going to make it illegal for them to pursue therapy to change their mind. This is absolutely an attack on Christians. Even just quoting scripture will be classified as hate speech. … It is going to make Christianity a crime on a federal level."

"We cannot allow this to go any further. We're going to lose everything," Witzke warned. "It's gotten to the point now where we're all going to end up in Kamala [Harris'] gulags unless we all stand up together and fight back as Christians."