Cathie Adams Is Back!

Texas Eagle Forum today announced that its current president, Pat Carlson, is stepping down because she is seeking election to the Texas House of Representatives. (We reported about Carlson’s House run here.)

Her replacement is Cathie Adams, who had served as TEF’s president until she became chair of the Texas Republican Party in fall 2009. But Adams wasn’t too popular among Republican activists — she lost her post as state party chair in 2010.

Adams is one of the most extreme voices on the far right in Texas today. How extreme? Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

– Adams sees religious diversity as a threat to this country. From an October 1999 TEF letter:

“(W)e must place our faith in the ONE true God, then humble ourselves, pray and seek Him and repent for our sins. Then God will forgive us and heal our land. Do you think that a jealous God will tolerate ‘religious pluralism’ and allow us to come to Him any way we please? Absolutely not!”

– Adams believes that the United Nations is paving the way for the “anti-Christ.”

From a 2000 TEF letter:

“The Bible tells us that in the end times there will be a world government headed by a world leader, called the anti-Christ, who will profess a world religion, but did you ever think you would live in the day when these things would come into being? That is exactly what the United Nations is doing behind the backs of most Americans.”

From a January 1999 TEF newsletter:

“In the future, the anti-Christ will use the pleas for human rights, economic equity and a promise to ‘end all wars’ to found global government. . . . God is not the author of global government, the anti-Christ is, and the UN conspicuously manifests his warmongering spirit.”

– Adams has compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, suggesting that a speech to American students was “eerily like Hitler’s youth movement.”

– In an e-mail to far-right activists in 2008, Adams viciously attacked the faith of then-candidate Obama (page 40):

“While many question Barak [sic] Hussein Obama’s ‘religion’…, the more important question is whether he has a ‘relationship’ with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of ‘saving faith.'”

– Adams is an anti-science zealot.

Criticizing evolution in an October 2003 email to TEF activists during the Texas State Board of Education’s debate over proposed new science textbooks:

“Did you evolve from an ape or were you created by God? This is NOT a rhetorical question. Your child or grandchild WILL be taught according to what you choose now.”

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TX Eagle Forum Head Runs for State House

Pat Carlson, president of the radical-right group Texas Eagle Forum, has filed to run for the District 91 seat in the Texas House of Representatives. The Fort Worth Republican used TEF’s e-newsletter Monday to announce her run for the open seat. (Republican incumbent Kevin Hancock is seeking a state Senate seat.) Carlson told TEF activists:

“I am seeking this position to be a ‘citizen legislator’ going to Austin to hold back the overreach of government.”

“Overreach”? Well, considering her own fringe political views, Carlson should know the meaning of that word.

She claims, for example, that mainstream organizations like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Federation are actually “radical environmental groups” that have “have brainwashed a generation of young people into believing the planet is in environmental distress.” (Yeah, never mind massive oil spills that pollute our water and beaches, smog that chokes cities and their residents, chemical and nuclear calamities, increasingly erratic climate patterns, and… well, you get the point. Carlson thinks concerns over those very real challenges are simply products of “brainwashing.”)

She also peddles anti-Muslim hysteria, ranting that mosques are centers of subversion in America and that “Sharia law is becoming part of the American landscape as Christianity is being systematically removed.”

After the 2010 elections, she was part of an unsuccessful right-wing effort to replace Republican state Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio as speaker of the Texas House. Carlson — a strident opponent of sex education — circulated the claim that Straus wants Planned Parenthood to “control” sex education in Texas public schools, which PolitiFact rated as a “pants on fire” lie.

Other right-wing attacks on Straus, who is Jewish, included calls for the election of a “Christian conservative” speaker. We’ll give Carlson some credit for not going quite that far. But just last month, Carlson suggested that a Republican member of the State Board of Education couldn’t be a “true conservative” because he’s gay.

So let’s see: rabidly anti-environment, anti-Muslim, anti-sex eduction and anti-gay. And that’s just for starters.

Carlson faces four other Republicans in the Republican primary for the District 91 House seat: Barbara Nash of Arlington and Ken Sapp, Charles Scoma and Lady Theresa Thombs, all of North Richland Hills. No Democrat filed for election to the seat.

Bigotry and Ignorance from TX Eagle Forum

Texas Eagle Forum’s December “News and Notes” e-newsletter offers more of the bigotry and pro-ignorance rhetoric we’ve come to expect from that far-right group.

Part of TEF President Pat Carlson’s email notes a Dallas Morning News report about a whisper campaign that led State Board of Education member George Clayton, R-Richardson, to acknowledge recently that he is gay. The newsletter continues:

Because of redistricting, all 15 SBOE seats will be up for election in 2012. We need to recruit and elect/re-elect true conservatives to these important positions so Texas will not go the way of Massachusetts or California in mandating K-12 pro-homosexual education in the classroom.

Gay people can’t be “true conservatives”? Perhaps Carlson’s version of a “true conservative” is one who promotes fear and hate toward people who are different. And what exactly does she mean by a “pro-homosexual education in the classroom”? To our knowledge, Clayton has never even mentioned the issue of sexual orientation in his time on the state board (not, at least, until his personal life was the subject of a whisper campaign by political opponents). Most likely, Carlson simply wants to make sure that state board members don’t object to efforts by far-right pressure groups to demonize gay people in textbooks and other instructional materials, as they tried during the adoption of health textbooks in 2004.

And speaking of health, Carlson’s e-newsletter also noted the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund’s new report showing that more public school districts in the state are moving toward an abstinence-plus approach on sex education. Carlson’s group insists on abstinence-only sex ed policies that keep young people ignorant about even basic, medically accurate information on contraception and disease prevention. From the TEF e-newsletter:

The ONLY PROVEN method to prevent teenage pregnancy is abstinence. Abstinence-plus education gives kids mixed messages—“don’t have sex, but if you do, use a condom.” Condoms and other forms of contraception do not “protect” a teen’s heart and mind from emotional distress and pain, nor prevent pregnancy or STDs 100% of the time; only abstinence does.

What Carlson doesn’t want her readers to know is that Texas has one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation yet has received more federal abstinence-only funding than any other state. Even now most school districts in the state teach abstinence-only or nothing at all when it comes to sex education. In a state where, on average, a teen gets pregnant ever 10 minutes and teen childbearing costs taxpayers about $1.2 billion annually, abstinence-only ignorance clearly hasn’t been a good education strategy.

Fanning the Flames of Bigotry in Texas

The Texas Eagle Forum’s verbal attacks on American Muslims are growing ever more paranoid and shrill. A new e-mail from the group’s president, Pat Carlson, brings another example.

Wednesday’s e-mail featured an article from The Torch, the group’s online newsletter, in which Carlson promotes absurd fears that Muslims are working to take over the United States by imposing Sharia law. Indeed, Carlson’s article — “Identifying Radical Islam” — reads like a long screed based on the most paranoid rantings of anti-Muslim bigots in America today. For example:

“Political correctness has blinded many to the growing threat of Islam in the United States. September 11, 2001, should have been the wake-up call. Instead, Sharia law is becoming part of the American landscape as Christianity is being systematically removed.”

The Right Lies Again in the TX Speaker Battle

TFN Insider has already reported about the religious campaign the far right has been waging against Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. Now PolitiFact offers a clear example of how the religious right is also spreading distortions and falsehoods in the effort to replace Straus with another speaker far more likely to obey their commands on radical social policies.

PolitiFact notes today that Texas Eagle Forum has claimed that Straus “was co-author of a bill that would have allowed Planned Parenthood to control public school sex education.” But after looking at the public record, PolitiFact rates that claim as a “Pants on Fire” lie.

Who Are the Real Radicals?

The departure of Cathie Adams to become Texas Republican Party chair hasn’t left Texas Eagle Forum without its fringe characters. TEF’s new president, Pat Carlson, is carrying on in Adams’ tradition of spouting extremist nonsense.

Case in point: a Carlson-bylined article in last month’s edition of the TEF’s Torch publication warns that efforts to protect the environment — and particularly efforts to stop or slow global climate change — will lead to “one world” government. And she drops in this absurd paragraph near the end of the piece: