INTELLIGENCE BRIEFS
cited study claiming that samesex couples make bad parents;
Brian Brown, head of the antiLGBT National Organization for
Marriage; Austin Ruse, president of the Center for Family and
Human Rights (C-FAM), an antiLGBT hate group, who in 2014
said that “hard left, human-hating
people that run modern universities … should all be taken out and
shot”; Peter Sprigg of the Family
Research Council, an influential hate group that specializes in
Pamela Atkinson, an
adviser to Utah Gov.
Gary Herbert, defends
the governor’s
support of the World
Congress of Families,
which has been
deemed a hate group.
12 splc intelligence report
[ ‘S OV ER EIG N CIT IZ EN S’ ]
Radical Plans
to Overthrow
Governments, Play
Doctor, Outlined
West Virginia authorities in September arrested a Mineral Wells
man on accusations of plotting to
overthrow the state government
and establish a prototype coup
that extremists in other states
could follow.
In a series of conference calls,
some of which showed up online,
Thomas David Deegan, 39, allegedly outlined his plan to forcibly
remove state government leaders
from office and replace them with
“sovereign citizens,” extremists
who believe that most laws don’t
apply to them. He also allegedly
planned to try those leaders in a
sovereign-run court and execute
any found guilty of treason.
Deegan allegedly told his listeners to grab their guns and
head to Charleston, W.Va., and to
plan on shooting any police who
showed up during the enactment
of his plot. “We are at war,” he
reportedly said.
Instead of war, Deegan — who
apparently believed there was a
vast Vatican conspiracy to parcel
out U.S. territories and “re-enslave”
citizens — earned himself a bed
in West Virginia’s North Central
Regional Jail and a charge of threatening to commit a terrorist act. He
has declined counsel, as many sovereigns do, and will apparently be
representing himself.
Rick Van Thiel, of Las Vegas,
had smaller dreams. All the former porn star, male prostitute and
sex toy inventor wanted was to be
a doctor.
For a while, it seemed he had
achieved that goal: At a “clinic”
based out of a rundown trailer
that one former patient compared to a scene from a horror
film, “Dr. Rick” is accused of having performed dozens of abortions, circumcisions, castrations,
root canals and cancer treatments,
guided in his technique by videos he’d watched on YouTube. As
payment, he preferred bitcoin, a
digital currency beloved of libertarians, black-market operators
and others.
“I contract privately with
people [and] do not contract
with government employees of
any kind,” he said in advertising his medical services. “Prior
to becoming a professional [sic]
CORBIS/AP IMAGES/RICK BOWMER
peddling lies about the supposed
risks LGBT people pose to society; and Rafael Cruz, a gay-bashing public figure best known as
father of ultra-right-wing Texas
senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz.
A clutch of influential rightwing organizations, including
several anti-LGBT groups such as
the Alliance Defending Freedom,
the Family Research Council and
the National Organization for
Marriage, partnered with WCF
to stage the meeting.
WCF bills itself as pro-family, but proffers a narrow definition of “natural family” as “the
voluntary union of a man and a
woman in a lifelong covenant of
marriage” — excluding and marginalizing single parents, grandparents, nonbiological guardians,
and, especially, same-sex couples. Its leadership is particularly
exercised about the legalization
of same-sex marriage, which it
sees as a Trojan Horse for plans
to criminalize Christianity.
While increasingly unpopular in America, that notion
has gained particular traction
in parts of Africa, where laws
criminalizing homosexual ity have recently made a comeback. Indeed, Peter Montgomery
of Right Wing Watch characterized WCF as a “love-fest
between African activists and
their American allies.” Theresa
Okafor, recipient of WCF’s 2015
“Woman of the Year” award, is a
Nigerian native who, in addition
to promoting harsh anti-LGBT
laws in the region, has suggested
that pro-equality activists are in
league with the jihadist terrorists
of Boko Haram.
Rhetoric at the four-day
event hewed, for the most part,
to WCF’s tradition of keeping
its tone civil and its message
extreme. A notable departure
came the last day of the gathering,
when Everett Piper, president of
Oklahoma Wesleyan University,
declared that the “wise and
learned in our courts, and in our
classrooms, and, unfortunately,
even in our churches, actually
work to remove a man’s soul and
expect him to stay out of hell.”