David Barton, the religious right’s favorite phony historian, seems to have a serious problem with telling the truth. As we reported in April, Barton shamelessly misled hundreds of pastors gathered for a Texas Renewal Project event in Austin that month. Barton told pastors at that right-wing event that San Antonio’s new Nondiscrimination Ordinance made it against the law to criticize homosexuality or same-sex marriage and even barred people from running for City Council if they expressed such views.
In fact, none of that is true. But Barton has apparently decided to keep repeating the same lies before other audiences. Our friends at Right Wing Watch are noting one recent example in which Barton was speaking on AmericaStands2014.com, a right-wing website focused on this year’s elections. The website appears to be run by Eagle Mountain International Church, a North Texas church and extension of Kenneth Copeland Ministries.
Speaking in a video program on the website, Barton went after the San Antonio ordinance once again. “That City Council voted, by a margin of 8-3, to criminalize Christian beliefs and behavior,” Barton insists. But that’s simply not true.
In the video Barton repeats many of the same lies he told at the Texas Renewal Project in April, including the falsehood that criticizing homosexuality or same-sex marriage now disqualifies a person from serving on the San Antonio City Council. The city’s new Nondiscrimination Ordinance does no such thing. Right Wing Watch has a short video clip of Barton’s remarks on the program:
5 Comments
The four first words of the title would have been fully sufficient. Now back to our scheduled program of hotly debated topics:
Water still wet under certain circumstances?
Pope still suspected of being Catholic?
Barton only survives within the confines of the Echo Chamber.
When his latest book o’ lies was published, Jefferson something, the reviews by actual historians were so scathing that the publisher pulled the book!
Yes, the publisher pulled the book!
Sort of hard to spin that one. Barton diligently avoids being confronted by anyone who has a scintilla of actual knowledge because his lies will be revealed immediately.
Now it’s official where he gets his history: He just makes it all up.
Sorry John. It will never happen. Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are taught from childhood that their ministers and their favorite characters are possessed by the Holy Spirit and that every word coming out of their mouths is either inspired by the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit is plucking their vocal cords like a guitar. It is impossible for one of their own to lie to them, and questions (intelligent or otherwise) are discouraged. One’s sole job is to go glass-eyed and believe whatever assorted people tell you to believe. Whether it is true or not is really irrelevant as long as it serves the cause. If one is a natural-born leader and his major goal in life is to accumulate and wield power over people without being questioned, the Christian fundamentalist and conservative evangelical pastorate is your dream come true.
By the way, and this may explain some things, Richard N. Bolles, author of the famous career planning and development manual “What Color Is Your Parachute?” is a former Episcopal priest. His research indicates that Christian ministry jobs at churches and parachurch organizations PRIMARILY attract men with the classic corporate America/MBA skills and mindset. In other words, if you are a two-bit bast*&^% with brain wiring minted by John D. Rockefeller and you miss your calling at a Koch Brothers subsidiary, you will likely end up working in some aspect of pastoring a church. Think about that for a while. Did Jesus intend his pastors to be motion picture moguls?
How can Barton’s lies be refuted so his followers will see the errors or that he can show where he got his “facts”? Where does he get that $500 fine nonsense?
The full text of the SA NDO is here:
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/politics/files/2013/09/13-0910-NDO-FINAL.pdf
I searched for “5” “five” and “$” to see if htere were any dollar fines in the NDO for anything — no results! No fines!