Wallbuilders

Recently, David Barton delivered his stock presentation at during a service at Whitesburg Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama where he once again falsely asserted that the Supreme Court banned the practice of requiring Bible reading in public school because it could give students brain damage, as well as the various other false claims that he routinely makes.

But, as he frequently does, he added in a few new bits of information; in this case, a  pronouncement that Christians cannot drink Starbucks coffee because the company supports marriage equality.

"Biblically, there is no way a Christian can help support what is attacking God," Barton said, adding "I'm sorry, you've got to find some other coffee to drink.  You can't drink Starbucks and be biblically right on this thing.  It's just a real simple principle":

David Barton isn’t just a terrible and unaccredited historian, he’s also an awful amateur sociologist. While talking to co-host Rick Green on today’s edition of WallBuilders Live about how same-sex marriage will take away from society the benefits of marriage, Barton argued that “spousal abuse is through the roof, up to ten times higher in homosexual couples whether they be gay or lesbian, male or female, spousal abuse is higher.”

He also said that “no sociological study out there” is supportive of same-sex parenting, adding that “we know that kids coming out of those homes are having much more difficulty.”

Green: If you were to come and totally rearrange my house when I wasn’t here and do something totally different than what it was intended for that would— if you do that with marriage and government does that with marriage it also changes the benefits of that institution that God created. Now you’re not going to have that stability of the home, you’re not going to have that environment for a child to be raised where they won’t go down those paths that you were talking about. Just like if you were to change my house I wouldn’t have the benefit of the way that we designed our house and the things that we enjoy about our house, so if we allow government to go outside its jurisdiction and redefine what marriage is we’re going to lose all those benefits of the family and marriage as one man and one woman.

Barton: Lose is the right word because you don’t create new benefits, I mean there is no sociological study out there that says ‘hey look kids do so much better when they are in a home without a mother and a father, when they are in a home with two mothers, two fathers.’ By the way, we know that in those homes where gay marriage exists, spousal abuse is through the roof, up to ten times higher in homosexual couples whether they be gay or lesbian, male or female, spousal abuse is higher; we know that kids coming out of those homes are having much more difficulty.

But the CDC’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey [PDF] notes that lesbian women experience slightly higher rates of intimate partner violence (43.8%) than heterosexual women (35.0%) and found comparable rates among gay men (26.0%) and heterosexual men (29.0%).

Bisexuals are much more likely to experience partner violence, but the CDC notes that the vast majority of them — 89.5% of bisexual women and 78.5% of bisexual men — reported that an opposite-sex partner was the perpetrator.

The anti-violence group Jane Doe Inc. found that “Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals are abused at approximately the same levels as heterosexual couples, but the abuse may be exacerbated by social isolation caused by societal oppression and discrimination,” and the Center for American Progress similarly reports that “studies have found that domestic violence occurs among same-sex couples at comparable rates to straight couples.”

Barton’s claim about children is also erroneous.

The American Sociological Association maintained in an amicus brief that “the social science consensus is both conclusive and clear: children fare just as well when they are raised by same-sex parents as when they are raised by opposite-sex parents.” The Washington Post adds that “there is a growing consensus among experts that the sexual orientation of parents is not a major determinant in hos well children fare in school, on cognitive tests and in terms of their emotional development,” noting that one recent survey found that children of lesbian parents “did fine—better even, than children in a similar study involving more diverse families.”

After watching the Republican presidential candidates lose the last two elections, right-wing activist Ken Blackwell cooked up a scheme whereby states would move away from winner-take-all allocations of electors to a system in which Electoral College votes would be assigned according to congressional districts.

The result would be that a Republican presidential candidate who does not win the overall popular vote in the state could still end up receiving a majority of that state's electoral votes simply by virtue of winning the popular vote in more individual districts.

Today, Blackwell appeared on "WallBuilders Live" to promote this scheme, where it was met with enthusiastic support from Rick Green and David Barton. As Blackwell explained, if every state had implemented this plan for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would have won despite the fact that he lost the overall popular vote by nearly 5 million votes.

That, of course, is ridiculous ... and the fact that people think it is outrageous is, according to Blackwell, a sign that it is a good idea:

Blackwell: There's an old farmer's tale that if you throw a brick at a pack of pigs, the one that squeals is the one you hit.  Well, when we put this out there, the Left started squealing, the New York Times started squealing, so we must be on to something.

Green: You must be on to something. No doubt about that.  I haven't had a chance to look, I don't if anyone has done a map, I'd be real curious to know if every state did this, how would the last few elections [have gone]? Have you had a chance to look?

Blackwell: I already know. If every state did it, Romney would have won the election.  And so that's another reason that the Left just instinctively dislikes it.

...

Barton: This actually is a way to give the people a greater voice rather than just having the majority slap it to the minority every time you turn around. And I really like what he's proposed here with reverting back out of the winner-take-all philosophy of the states, going back to congressional district take all, which is a good way to do it.

Only to David Barton could a scheme designed to ensure that a Republican candidate who loses the national popular vote would still win the election be a good idea because it supposedly give "the people a greater voice."

On yesterday's program, David Barton asserted that one way to win the fight against gay rights is to start talking about how "reprehensible" homosexuality is going into graphic details on the theory that it will gross people out and educate them about what is really going on.

On today's broadcast, dedicated to discussing the possibility that the Boy Scouts might lift the ban on gay scouts and/or scout leaders, Barton and co-host Rick Green again asserted that as part of this battle, anti-gay activists need to inform people about how "reprehensible and disgusting" homosexuality really is:

Green: Just yesterday on the program with Father Frank, you were describing at the end of the program just like what Representative [Bill] Dannemeyer had read on the House floor in describing just how graphically disgusting these activities are in the homosexuality community.  And I think a lot of folks who are kind of siding with them on this Scout fight again, do not realize what they're approving to go camping with their ten and eleven year old boys.

Barton: Yeah, people have an image of what they think sexuality is and, you know, that can come from movies or come from other sites as well, but when you get the specifics of what homosexuality activity is, even decent people find that absolutely reprehensible and disgusting.  And that's why when Representative Dannemeyer said "hey you Democrats are trying to promote this, let me read what you're promoting, even Democrats got grossed out and tried to censor the Congressional Record and get that stuff taken out because it was so disgusting.

That is probably a good point to make Rick. While we think of this as being tolerant and whatever, no, you do need some details to realize what we're facing here and it's not what you think it might be. Get some details on it.

On Thursday's episode of "WallBuilders Live," David Barton attempted to explain why marriage equality is a violation of the Constitution because it is a violation of the Declaration of Independence which is a violation of natural law which is a violation of God's law.

As Barton sees it, the 7th Amendment's language regarding "in suits at common law" means that the Constitution incorporates all of natural law into our legal system, and since common law is based on God's law, our entire system of government is really based on God's law.  And thus gay marriage can never be constitutional because it is a violation of God's law.

If that wasn't confusing enough, Barton went on to claim that the government must take a position on the issue of marriage because by not taking a position on it, it is creating an environment in which it must spend tax dollars on dealing with the negative things that happen as a result of not taking a position ... just like how supposedly "25% of all property theft occurs from people who are on drugs who steal money for their habit" somehow demonstrates the dangers of not outlawing drug use:

From a constitutional standpoint, you cannot exclude morals. A number of conservative libertarians in recent months have been saying "hey, marriage is not a constitutional issue" ... yet it is because Article 7 of the Constitutional through the attestation clause incorporates the Declaration [of Independence] into the Constitution.

The Declaration erects the moral standard by talking about the laws of nature and of nature's god.  Marriage has always been defined not only as a law of nature - now, it's not necessarily in nature, but they called it a natural law that you should be married to one man, one woman because that is what divine law says; the laws of the god who created nature, the law of nature's god even in the very beginning said one man, one woman, this is good. Jesus reiterated that in Matthew 19 and other places.

So the moral standard, the moral law dictates that marriage is between and man and a woman.  That was then incorporated into the Constitution in the Seventh Amendment in what was called the common law. The common law is part of the legal process. And if you look at the common law all the way through time, marriage has been part of the common that.  That is why you do not allow bigamy or polygamy or other forms of "igamy" that attack marriage.  Marriage is a man and a woman as part of the common law that's part of the Constitution.

Now what's happened in recent years, people have tried to say "hey, morals have nothing to do with government" ... yes they do ... and to believe that you can have government without morals, that's not part of the Constitution, that's not part of the Seventh Amendment, that's not part of the Declaration of Independence, it is a twisted view of constitutionality that says morals are to have no place in this. 

The problem is once you don't legislate it, it becomes a government issue because if you say we're not going to legislate drugs, guess who's going to have to take care of all the drug problems that arise? It will be government.  We know that right now, 25% of all property theft occurs from people who are on drugs who steal money for their habit.  If you legalize that, then there goes property.

If you look at the justice system, the increase in needs to jails and jail beds and et cetera, government is going to take care of this.  So if government says this is not an issue, it will be an issue.  It will effect our money, it'll effect our spending so anytime a government takes a position that it won't take a position, it has taken a position that it is going to take a position because it is going to spend money on it, if all that convoluted nonsense makes sense.

A few weeks ago, we posted some audio clips from a "WallBuilders Live" radio program in which David Barton explained the concept of just war theory during which he justified the brutal treatment of Native Americans by white settlers and the American government on the grounds that they needed to be destroyed in order to be taught a lesson and eventually made civilized.

Shortly thereafter, WallBuilders posted a message on its Facebook page claiming that Barton was not "justifying" this sort of treatment but merely "explaining" what had happened:

David was not justifying, but merely explaining the historical context of what happened, in the same way that he explained the British march to the sea. He made a parallel between the two as to tactics and strategy that were used during war at that time. David was explaining the historical events regarding King Philip's War, not the atrocities that were in general committed against the Indian tribes and nations, which we in no way condone. There is a big difference between justifying and merely explaining or reporting.

Like so much of Barton's work, this explanation holds up only so long as one blindly accepts Barton's nonsensical interpretation and doesn't bother to verify what he says, which is pretty easy since we produced a transcript of it at the time.

As anyone can see, Barton was not merely "explaining" what happened but was actively defending it on the grounds that "you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists." As Barton said at the time, the Indians had "declared war on all the white guys" and so "we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over" until they got the message:

You have to deal, a lot of it, with how the enemy responds. It's got to be based on what the enemy responds [to,] you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists; and see that's why we could not get the Indians to the table to negotiate with us on treaties until after we had thoroughly whipped so many tribes ... What happened was the Indian leaders said "they're trying to change our culture" and so they declared war on all the white guys and went after the white guys and that was King Philip's War.  It was really trying to be civilized on one side and end torture and the Indians were threatened by the ending of torture and so we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until they said "oh, got the point, you're doing to us what we're doing to them, okay, we'll sign a treaty."

...

Take, for example, what happened in the western plains wars in the late 1800s when we were taking on the plains Indians.  I'm not talking about treaties, I'm not talking about behavior of Americans toward Indians or vice versa, there were violations on both sides of nearly every treaty.  I'm talking about what happened in ending those wars after Custer and everything that went on.

People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains.  Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn't go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that's where they got their meat, that's where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees.

If you don't have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo.  That's what brought those wars to an end, that's what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.

The focus of the radio program was a discussion of just war theory and Barton's purpose in bringing up this issue was to explain that these tactics were justified specifically because they do not appear to be justifiable.

Barton was not merely "explaining" what had happened, but was justifying it on the grounds that when your enemies refuse to abide by the "rules of civilization, you still have to secure the life and the property and the protection of your citizens" in whatever way you can.

Today on "WallBuilders Live," David Barton was discussing just war theory which, in his unique interpretation, essentially boiled down to the view that whatever you need to do to end a conflict and protect the lives of your citizens and soldiers is justified.

To demonstrate his point, Barton said that Native Americans declared war on "all the white guys" because missionaries tried to convince them to stop torturing their enemies but they resisted these efforts to civilize them and "so we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until" they got the message.

Barton followed that up by defending the practice of wiping out the buffalo on the western plains because it decimated the livelihoods of Native Americans and thereby brought an end to their resistance to the US government:

A lot of it is based on what you have to do to secure justice and to secure the protection of life and liberties for your citizens and you do what you have to do at times, but you play on the rules sometimes that the other guys have set up. And if they're not going to negotiate with things like the Geneva treaty or other rules of civilization, you still have to secure the life and the property and the protection of your citizens.

...

You have to deal, a lot of it, with how the enemy responds. It's got to be based on what the enemy responds [to,] you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists; and see that's why we could not get the Indians to the table to negotiate with us on treaties until after we had thoroughly whipped so many tribes ... What happened was the Indian leaders said "they're trying to change our culture" and so they declared war on all the white guys and went after the white guys and that was King Philip's War.  It was really trying to be civilized on one side and end torture and the Indians were threatened by the ending of torture and so we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until they said "oh, got the point, you're doing to us what we're doing to them, okay, we'll sign a treaty."

...

Take, for example, what happened in the western plains wars in the late 1800s when we were taking on the plains Indians.  I'm not talking about treaties, I'm not talking about behavior of Americans toward Indians or vice versa, there were violations on both sides of nearly every treaty.  I'm talking about what happened in ending those wars after Custer and everything that went on.

People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains.  Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn't go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that's where they got their meat, that's where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees. 

If you don't have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo.  That's what brought those wars to an end, that's what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.

It has become pretty obvious by this point that David Barton simply does not care that various claims he makes as part of his standard presentation are demonstrably false; he will simply continue to repeat them as fact because they are useful in promoting his right-wing political agenda.

As we have noted five times already, Barton repeatedly insists that the Constitution is filled with multiple "direct quotations" out of the Bible, insisting that anyone who doesn't see them is simply "biblically illiterate;" an assertion he made again while speaking at Fellowship Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan over the weekend:

And if you know the Bible and you know and read the Constitution, you will see Bible verses and Bible phrases all over the Constitution.  It quotes Bible phrases everywhere.  People today say 'oh, it's a godless Constitution, it's a secular document.' If somebody tells me it's a secular document, I know that they're biblically illiterate. They don't recognize a Bible verse when they see one because the Constitution is loaded up with direct quotations out of the Bible.

Of course, the only person who is illiterate here is Barton himself, as he is apparently unable to comprehend what the phrase "direct quoation" since none of the evidence he provides represent, in any way, "direct quotations."

But Barton wasn't done spreading falsehoods in this presentation, as he also repeated the claim that the Supreme Court ended mandatory Bible reading in public schools because it was causing brain damage to students:

[In 1963] the Supreme Court said no more Bible in schools. Now why would they do that?  We have 320 years, literally, of the Bible in school; the Supreme Court itself said this is without any historical precedent.  There is no historical precedent in our history for not having the Bible in schools, but it's time to take it out.  Why would they take it out?

Well, the Court explained why they would take it out.  As a matter of fact, they called on the testimony of a psychologist - they didn't have any historical precedent, they didn't have any legal precedent, but Dr. Solomon Grayzel told them what was going to happen if kids read the Bible in schools and they said 'that's what we thought.' And so here's the quote the Supreme Court pointed out in its decision on why we took the Bible out of schools; they said 'if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and had been, psychologically harmful to the child.'

We've now discovered the Bible causes brain damage; we can't let you kids suffer brain damage, we've got to stop the brain damage.  That's the reason given by the Supreme Court on why the Bible went out of schools; it was psychological harm to children.

As we pointed out before, if you actually read the ruling in the case, you will find that the Supreme Court did not cite this as the reason for ending mandatory Bible reading in schools, rather the Court was merely describing the road the case had taken through the court system, noting that Dr. Grayzel's testimony had been heard during the initial trial.

Beyond that, Barton intentionally misrepresents the point of Grayzel's testimony itself, which was to note that forced Bible reading from a Christian perspective in public schools was potentially damaging to Jewish students:

Expert testimony was introduced by both appellants and appellees at the first trial, which testimony was summarized by the trial court as follows:

Dr. Solomon Grayzel testified that there were marked differences between the Jewish Holy Scriptures and the Christian Holy Bible, the most obvious of which was the absence of the New Testament in the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Dr. Grayzel testified that portions of the New Testament were offensive to Jewish tradition, and that, from the standpoint of Jewish faith, the concept of Jesus Christ as the Son of God was "practically blasphemous." He cited instances in the New Testament which, assertedly, were not only sectarian in nature but tended to bring the Jews into ridicule or scorn. Dr. Grayzel gave as his expert opinion that such material from the New Testament could be explained to Jewish children in such a way as to do no harm to them. But if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and, in his specific experience with children, Dr. Grayzel observed, had been, psychologically harmful to the child, and had caused a divisive force within the social media of the school.

In both of these cases, it has been demonstrated time and again that the claims Barton is making are irrefutably false, but he simply does not care and continues to repeat them as truth as he delivers his pseudo-historical presentations to conservative audiences all across the country.

The Family Research Council's Jerry Boykin was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today for a discussion of the Pentagon's recent decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat.  Not surprisingly, Boykin opposes the idea, wondering why the Obama Administration would approve this change even as Congress was working to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, claiming "there is such an inconsistency here":

The Congress, the Senate at least, passed the Violence Against Women Act which was designed to protect our women. Now it had some flaws in it, so we don't support it ... but it's violence against women, protect our women.

Now with this decision by Leon Panetta and the President, what we're doing is we're saying 'now you ladies, fix your bayonets, we're going to send you right into hand-to-hand combat with these men that are physically more capable than you in most cases and they're going to try to kill you.'  There is such an inconsistency here.