On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of Larry Pittman, a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, a pastor and a Birther conspiracy theorist who was first appointed to office in 2011, and has barely survived a few re-election scares because his great ideas for making our country better seem to fit the pattern of working towards a theocracy, naming Christianity our state religion, and eliminating all income taxes and using only sales tax to generate revenue for the government.
Pittman also was a trendsetter in demonizing Planned Parenthood years prior to the Center for Medical Progress doing so, saying they were a “murder for hire” organization and 75% of their revenue was generated in making money off of abortions, and insists that in 1992, he and his friends found baby parts in a Planned Parenthood dumpster that were, we quote, “the consistency of hamburger”. He’s so pro-life, in fact, that he has called for a return to public hangings, and in the order of who went to the gallows, he listed “abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers”, remarkably forgetting that abortion is legal, and omitting murderers from his list.
His other big wacky moment from our first profile was when he reacted to meager gun control suggestions by producing pro-gun legislation after the Sandy Hook massacre, and when asked to defend such an action from the press, warned against the government coming for or the United Nations coming for all our guns, and he also thinks Common Core Standards are “a Marxist attack to destroy us fom within”, in but two of his paranoid rants worthy of an episode of Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
This should perhaps come as little surprise, but you may have heard about how the North Carolina GOP produced the anti-gay HB 2 Law that allowed for the legal discrimination of LGBTQ citizens in the state… well, it should come as little shock that Larry Pittman was a co-sponsor of the bill. Who would have guessed that a Fundamentalist theocratic lunatic also hates gay people, right?
So, how bugs*** crazy can Larry Pittman get? Well, back in April of 2017, he got on Facebook to talk about his insane effort to try to pass legislation to ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling (good luck with that) and decided to wax poetic about the founder of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln. And, the Great Emancipator, it seems, in the eyes of Larry Pittman, is just like Hitler:
“And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort (of) tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”
Through 2018, Pittman remained bonkers. After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Pittman posted on Facebook that the entire shooting was staged, and part of a conspiracy created by “Communist Democrats” to “push for gun control so they can take over the country”. The outrage over his comment made Pittman pause from sponsoring a bill he had planned to try and arm teachers… until March of 2019, when Pittman filed legislation to allow teachers to carry guns in the classroom. Towards the end of that month, he voted against a bill to ban corporal punishment in schools, commenting that he is grateful for every “whipping my daddy gave me”.
In September of 2019, Pittman filed HB 65, also known as the “Marriage Reaffirmation Amendment Act”, which would supposedly ban marriage equality in North Carolina and order state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. (Pretty safe to say that’s some unconstitutional “state’s rights” lunacy). But, after a constituent wrote a letter to Pittman telling him that pandering to intolerant old people who think the Bible should be the law of the land, Pittman responded calmly and politely explaining his position. NAH, we’re just kidding, Pittman wrote back to his own constituent and told them that he wouldn’t “change with the times” and told them that “if you have a complaint about that, tell it to Satan when you see him.”
Larry Pittman twice made headlines in June of 2020, first by calling for the police to just gun down BlackLivesMatter protesters, calling the protesters, “vermin”, and falsely creating an anti-Semitic narrative that they were funded by George Soros:
”This is war. Our people have a right to expect our leaders to be on our side, not surrender to the lawless, godless mob. ‘These vermin don’t care about George Floyd or any other individual, except maybe their financial sponsor, George Soros. They are bent on destroying our country and our way of life, and they will use any tragedy, any slogan, any excuse to convince clueless people that their radical injustice is justice.Whatever stolen goods or money you recover from them will go to help the business owners whose places of business have been invaded … If they resist and attack you, shoot them.”
Just like Jesus would have said, right?
Only days later, he was on to spreading Covidiot propaganda, sharing an online conspiracy theory from Michael Speciale (who we are relieved is no longer in office). Pittman pushed the narrative that wearing masks during the pandemic was more of a health risk than going without them. And, in October of 2021, Pittman was still at it, sending out e-mails throughout the state legislature claiming that the Covid-19 VACCINE was killing people, but that it in the media, it is “being downplayed”, that masks can’t stop the virus from getting through, that air escapes around the mask, that the RNA in the vaccines causes recipients’ bodies to “create the ‘virus” and that it is not a vaccine after all. When the local media attempted to contact Pittman for comment after debunking his claims, he responded “I don’t do interviews”. Clearly, a very responsible approach that public health experts must love.
We reiterate, Pittman is insane. He survived a primary challenge in 2020 with 60% of the vote, and narrowly won re-election with 51% of the vote in the general against his Democratic challenger, Gail Young (hanging on by less than 1400 votes). He thus will continue raving about conspiracy theories for at least another two years and being one of the worst legislators in the United States.