GOP 91st District Candidate Colleen Holcomb - A Far Right Extremist

Holcomb - an extremist in sheep's clothing as shown
on her Eagle Forum profile.

With the entire Virginia General Assembly up for re-election, one would think at first blush that the Republican Party of Virginia would have worked diligently to field sane, somewhat mainstream candidates in order to improve its chance of clinging to control of House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate. That first reaction would, however, would require forgetting just how extreme the Republican Party has become. In the person of Colleen Holcomb, the GOP candidate for the 91st District, where the GOP is seeking to retain a Democrat leaning seat held by a retiring Republican, the true extremism of the Virginia GOP is on full display.  Not that one would know this from Holcomb's campaign website which conveniently omits  much of her background and disturbing affiliations.

Based on opposition research I have seen, Holcomb embodies the all too typical far right wing "Christian" who is anti-gay, anti-choice (even in cases of rape or incest), anti-contraception, anti-women's rights, and anti-Obamacare.  Meanwhile, like so many "conservative Christians" her positions on marriage do not carry through to her own life.  She is the third wife of  her twice divorced husband. Her support of "covenant marriage laws" - which would make divorce far more difficult - apparently do not apply to her or her husband.  To understand Holcomb's hidden agenda, one must look at her past and present jobs and affiliations.  These are extremely telling: Regent University, Eagle Forum (which has endorsed Holcomb and continues to show her as part of its Washington DC office), the far right Family Foundation, extreme Christian "legal" groups.  In short, Holcomb's supporters and affiliates are a who's who of Christian extremist organizations who one could argue oppose modernity itself.  Again, not surprisingly Holcomb's campaign website omits all of these telling affiliations.

Unlike Holcomb, her Democrat opponent, Martha Mugler, the current Hampton school board chairwoman, is  a candidate of mainstream values and achievement.  More importantly, Ms. Mugler would not be pushing a hidden extremist agenda that would harm Virginia's future and likely frighten away progressive, future looking businesses and potential residents. 

Here are some highlights from the background research on Holcomb and the organizations with which she is in leadership roles (there is much, much more):   

When she was executive director she had “a leadership role in nearly all the Eagle Forum’s activities.” Colleen Holcomb, who has been on the Eagle Forum board of directors since 2017, said working there “was and still is my dream job.” Since college she considered Eagle Forum founder Phyllis “Schlafly to be a personal hero” and “an excellent role model.” Phyllis Schlafly, who was a “hero” and “role model” for Colleen Holcomb, thought “that President Obama is a secret Muslim,” embraced Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, and thought husbands cannot rape their wives within a marriage. She also blamed Africans for slavery in the United States. Colleen Holcomb is anti-reproductive choice. She was also the longtime executive director and is currently a board member of the Eagle Forum, which “has always been” anti-reproductive choice for rape and incest victims.

Colleen Holcomb helped write an article that said, “women are victimized by other women’s free exercise of…personal liberty. Colleen Holcomb is registered to lobby in Virginia for the anti-gay, anti-reproductive choice Family Foundation, which supports requiring women to be given an ultrasound prior to having an abortion. It “believes in marriage as a lifelong union between one man and one woman,” and it opposes adding “sexual orientation/gender identity to the list of protected classes in nondiscrimination laws,” since “no evidence of discrimination exists.”

The Family Foundation also supports the “Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit,” which is essentially a voucher program to divert moneys from public schools. The Eagle Forum opposes the Violence Against Women Act, which it calls “dangerous,” and equal pay legislation, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

It also stands with conservatives on numerous random political issues, including climate change and marijuana legalization. Colleen Holcomb, in 2008, was “scheming to dredge up gay ‘horror stories’ to convince the world that ‘homosexuality is wrong’ and gay troops – currently serving, and dying for, America – ‘threaten our national security’ and the ‘personal safety’ of other soldiers.”  She acknowledged in e-mails “that such ‘horror stories are very difficult to find,’ but could be one of the only tools left to combat growing acceptance of homosexuality.”  

Colleen Holcomb opposed legislation to protect people from hate crimes based on “race, religion, ethnicity or gender.” She called this hate crimes legislation “radical social engineering.” According to the Eagle Forum, “school shootings have nothing to do with guns themselves. The common thread of these shooters has been fatherlessness” and playing violent video games. It thinks “focusing on mental health is not a fix-all,” and “an increase in psychiatric evaluations can be very dangerous.” 

The Eagle Forum thinks “restricting gun laws devalues our freedoms.” It thinks people on the No Fly List should be allowed to buy guns and teachers should be allowed “to arm themselves while at school.” Colleen Holcomb, two months after Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed “in a TV interview …that victims of ‘legitimate rape’ very rarely get pregnant because their bodies prevent them from doing so,” campaigned for him.

 Eagle Forum supports anti-vaccine extremists.

Do not be fooled by Holcomb's campaign website or her efforts to hide her true extremism.  Sadly, Holcomb is not an exception in today's Republican Party.  If your House and Senate districts are not competitive, consider making donations to or volunteering for Democrat candidates in competitive districts. Virginia does not need more far right extremists in the General Assembly. 

Koch Brothers' Effort to Oust Tennessee Supreme Court Justices Fails

Personally, I have a problem with elected judges and Supreme Court justices.    When I first was practicing law in Alabama there was one local judge who while a good campaigner proved to be not only a terrible judge but perhaps insane to boot.  Things finally got so bad that the Alabama Supreme Court had to step in and have the judge removed.  Sadly, similar things can happen with appointed judges - one Norfolk District Court judge likewise proved insane (at least in my opinion) and was not reappointed.  My real problem with elected judges comes down to the problem of money - huge amounts of money that can be used to defeat competent judges  and set the stage for their replacement by those who will prostitute themselves to religious  or to political contributors.  In Tennessee, luckily voters saw this danger and rejected the efforts of the Koch brothers to remove three justices the evil brothers perceived to be insufficiently craven to their political agenda of creating a new Gilded Age.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

Participants in Tennessee’s judicial elections on Thursday rejected a malodorous effort to oust three capable sitting state Supreme Court justices: Chief Justice Gary Wade and Justices Cornelia Clark and Sharon Lee.

Conservative Republican groups, including the Republican State Leadership Committee and Americans for Prosperity — part of Charles and David Koch’s big-dollar political operation — underwrote a campaign against the judges. For weeks before Thursday’s election, they bombarded Tennessee with ads depicting them as “soft on crime,” hostile to business interests and supporters of “the Obama agenda” and “Obamacare.” But this was all nonsense: In fact the judges never ruled on a case involving the health care law.

Tennessee voters apparently saw through the lies, a victory not only for the three judges but for elected judges everywhere. The outcome of the election is a sign that judges can sign on to controversial decisions without losing their jobs — despite attack ads.

The downside of the judges’ success is that, to achieve it, they raised more than $1 million, much of it from lawyers who may appear before them. The judges’ next challenge is to be diligent about avoiding the appearance and reality of improper conflicts-of-interest by recusing themselves from cases involving significant financial backers.

“People can smell court tampering and tend to get their backs up,” says Bert Brandenburg of Justice at State, a group that advocates for the preservation of fair and impartial courts. But he warned that if judges take away from it the need to go out and raise lots more money, courts and ultimately justice will lose.

Michigan's Same-Sex Marriage Ban Rests on "Expert" Scorned by Peers

Christofascists on parade in Michigan

When Mark Regnerus - who took hundreds of thousands of far right money to conduct a study to come to a pre-ordained anti-gay conclusion - took the stand yesterday as an alleged expert witness for the state of Michigan in defense of that state's same sex marriage ban, it was not pretty.  Either in the courtroom or outside it.  Among other things, Regnerus was force to admit that only two of his subjects were actually raised in same sex couple households and that they had turned out "pretty good."  He was also forced to admit that his religious beliefs form the framework of his opinions.  Equally bad for Regnerus, he was forced to concede that his "study" has been widely condemned - even his own university has distanced itself from him.  First, here are highlights from the Detroit Free Press:

On the day he debuted as the star witness in defense of Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage, a University of Texas sociologist was denounced by his employer for peddling junk science.

Under cross-examination Tuesday, Regnerus stoically acknowledged the sting of his peers’ disavowal.

[F]ellow academics have taken issue with everything from the origins of Regnerus’ study (two conservative groups that oppose gay marriage paid the associate professor $785,000 to commission it) to his population sample (which was limited to children born long before same-sex marriages became legal anywhere in the U.S.).

The most damning criticism centers on Regnerus’ admission that he deliberately structured his study to compare children whose parents had a same-sex relationship with those who grew up in opposite-sex households undisturbed by separation or divorce.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case in which U.S. Supreme Court justices struck down a federal law barring recognition, the America Sociological Association charged that Regnerus had stacked the deck by comparing children of intact opposite-sex families with children whose families were distinguished mainly by their instability. In many cases, the association noted, those identified as children of gay or lesbian parents had never even lived with that parent.

Under cross-examination in Friedman’s courtroom Tuesday, Regnerus conceded that more than half of the respondents he classified as children of “gay dads” or “lesbian moms” were the offspring of failed heterosexual marriages, and that only two of the 3,000 respondents he interviewed had been raised by same-sex partners who remained together throughout their childhoods.

Like their peers in stable opposite-sex families, Regnerus conceded, both respondents who grew up in stable same-sex households “looked pretty good” in his study’s measures of adult outcomes.

The case before Friedman is the first in which any state has called Regnerus as an expert witness, and it’s likely to be the last. 

Ouch!  Aljazeera has an even longer and equally scathing account of Regnerus' testimony.  Here are excerpts:

The state of Michigan’s star witness opposing same-sex marriage acknowledged in court on Tuesday that children of gay couples could turn out just as well as any other kids.

What we’ve learned is that it’s possible to grow up in same-sex households and the children will be fine,” said Regnerus, who acknowledged in court he is a religious conservative. “We won’t know if it’s probable until we test it over time.”

Regnerus’ 2012 New Family Structure Study, which he acknowledged in court was funded and organized by conservative think tanks, has been the focus of the Michigan trial. The study examined the lives of 248 adults who said their parents had had a same-sex relationship during their childhood and found, he said, that they fared worse academically and behaviorally than children raised in intact homes with heterosexual parents.

Those findings have been cited by same-sex-marriage foes in several lawsuits around that nation, such as in Utah and Virginia, but have been ravaged by critics who say his conclusions were intentionally deceptive.

Critics said Regnerus’ 248-person study included just two who had been raised from birth to adulthood by gay couples. When asked Monday how those two fared, Regnerus replied, “Pretty good.” 

Part of the state’s and Regnerus’ argument has been that same-sex couples shouldn’t be permitted to marry if their children don’t fare as well as others. Cooper, a veteran gay rights attorney pivotal in cases that led to invalidating Florida’s ban on gay adoption, asked Regnerus if the state should also ban heterosexual marriage among the poor, the less educated and the remarried, given that those factors are statistically known to harm children.  Regnerus said no regarding the poor and less educated, but said he didn’t have an opinion about heterosexual remarriage.

Last week [Judge] Friedman heard from plaintiffs’ experts who said Regnerus’ study was flawed in part because almost all the 248 subjects were the products of divorce and other home-life disruptions known to harm child welfare. His results, they argued, don’t reflect the welfare of children born or adopted into households led by stable gay couples.

I'm sorry, but in my view  Regnerus is a religious extremist quack who structured his study to reach the conclusion his Christofascist financiers wanted.  One can only hope that he has as a result ruined his career and that he will soon find himself looking for work after the University of Texas finds a discrete basis to terminate his employment.  As noted before, perhaps he can get hired by the lunatics at Liberty University.