The Christian Right legal group Liberty Counsel has basically transformed from an anti-LGBTQ organization to a mouthpiece for faith-based misinformation about COVID, with founder Mat Staver using his platform to spread conspiracies that make Mike Lindell look halfway sane.
Over the past few months, he’s promoted the lie that there is poisonous “graphene oxide” in the vaccines, supported the idea that getting the shot violates “the Nuremberg Code,” and claimed the vaccines include a “tracking mechanism” as well as lead to more painful periods in women.
During a livestream earlier this week with Christian propagandist David Brody of the Real America’s Voice network, Staver went full-on batshit, invoking the words “rape,” “suicide,” and “sinning against God” during a lengthy rant against vaccine mandates in the military.
Staver said that Liberty Counsel is representing a female marine who was sexually assaulted in her youth, and he fumed that President Joe Biden is requiring that she be “essentially raped again by participating in one of these COVID shots.”
“What’s happening in the military is unconscionable,” Staver said. “We represent a chaplain, and this chaplain says he’s never seen his military colleagues abused like they’re being abused right now. They’re being intimidated, abused, they’re threatened with this dishonorable discharge — no matter how many tours of duty they serve, no matter what their rank, no matter their honors — dishonorable discharge.”
“Many chaplains have told us that the rate of suicide has increased 20 to 25 percent during COVID, [and] they expect to see that the rate of suicide will exceed that because of the pressure,” Staver continued. “You’re telling these men and women who have sacrificed everything — put everything on the line, they’ve done everything for their country, they sacrificed everything — now you’re telling them that they will be betrayed, they will not be remembered, and they will get the ultimate badge of dishonor: a dishonorable discharge. The pressure on that side versus the pressure of violating their conscience and sinning against God is unbearable, and there’s no question, they say, people will end up taking their lives under this pressure.”
Somehow, people in the military had no problem getting 17 other vaccines, but an additional one that’s repeatedly been proven to work is a requirement so onerous they have no choice but to either get dishonorably discharged or make God angry… even though millions of Christians have already been vaccinated without a problem.
Staver is saying all this because he’s a professional liar whose only objective is making Christians angry about things that would otherwise never affect their faith. Maybe he’s dumb enough to believe all this. But more likely, he just sees a culture war opening and doesn’t care how many people are killed by COVID. (It’s not like he’s really “pro-life” like that.)
In case you’re wondering, no, David Brody didn’t question any of this. He’s not a real journalist. His job is to nod along and provide a platform for conservative Christian liars to spread their fiction. He did that when speaking to Donald Trump when he worked for the Christian Broadcasting Network and he’s still at it today.
(via Right Wing Watch)
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