When far-right pundit and anti-gay activist Gordon Klingenschmitt won election to Colorado’s House of Representatives in 2014, he suggested that he might be toning down his extremist rhetoric, which had included charges that gays want to rape children and that President Obama is ruled by 50 demons. “I would say it is time for people of good will on both sides of the political debate to come together to have reasonable discussions about these issues,” he told the Colorado Springs Gazette after his election. “Maybe that includes me. Maybe I need to tone down my rhetoric…”
Whatever motivated that particular moment of introspection (Klingenshmitt said he had been receiving death threats), it didn’t last, as RWW’s continuing coverage of “Dr. Chaps” makes clear. During his first year as a legislator he was temporarily stripped of his seat on the Health, Insurance and Environment Committee after saying that a brutal attack on a pregnant woman was a sign that God had cursed America for allowing legal abortion.
Today Klingenschmitt is reviving a charge he made three years ago against anti-bullying legislation sponsored by U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota. Religious Right groups have long opposed efforts to prevent anti-gay bullying in schools. Language from Franken’s Student Non-Discrimination Act is included in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin, complains Klingenschmitt, who calls it the “No Child Left Unmolested” amendment. He says it “mandates a pro-homose xual [sic] federal curricula for all public schools” and “bullies your Christian kids and teachers” and threatens schools with lack of funding “if they refuse to teach kids that sin is normal.”
Franken’s “No Child Left Unmolested” amendment will teach your kids to violate your Christian values, and like the Brownshirts teach your kids to report YOU as a hater or bully, if you fail to endorse homose xuality as normal. Is there no end to their depravity?
In the same email, Klingenschmitt attacks the Obama administration’s directive on the rights of transgender students as “a direct threat tantamount to child abuse.”
Last April, Klingenshmitt announced that he is running for the state Senate; the primary election will be held on June 28.
Klingenschmitt’s annoying use of “homose xual” — with a space in the middle of the word — is presumably meant to let his missives sneak through “family friendly” filtering software promoted by Religious Right groups.
