The froth foaming out of the mouth of Andrea Lafferty, spewing hate about her opposition to an anti-hate bill in Congress, had not even hit the D.C. sidewalk when events forced her to switch topics to President Barack Obama's unannounced replacement for retiring U.S. Supreme Court justice David Souter. Having absolutely no knowledge about the subject did not keep the pie hole from opening on the face of the Washington-based executive director of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition begun by Lafferty's nutty father, the Rev. Lou Sheldon.
“The
U.S. Supreme Court is on the verge of taking a huge lurch to the far
left with the exit of Justice Souter from the Court,” she writes on her Getting It Right! blog. “Souter is
certainly no loss for Constitutionalists, but he will most likely be
replaced with someone far worse. During the election, President Obama
stated that he wanted to appoint judges who had 'empathy' and who
understood what it was to be poor, black or gay. He clearly stated that
he wanted judges who would not confine themselves to the Constitution
or to the original intent of the Founding Fathers.”
Could there be more than concern for the Constitution fueling Lafferty's alarm? She also admitted to CQPolitics that a Supreme Court fight will work as a fund-raising tool for her organization. “It does kick it into high gear,” she said. “Everybody knows that
this is what it's all about.”
That was no doubt what it was all about when she and Rev. Loony Tunes days earlier issued a joint statement condemning the House hate crimes bill
that would add sexual orientation to a list of federally protected
classes, writing, “The 'moral' of this law, if it has one, is that child
molesters and those who only 'date' dead people need to be protected,
but it is open season on pastors and churchgoers.” Lafferty followed that by standing outside the Capitol and warning of dire consequences for clergy. “They know the purpose of this bill is to silence pastors, to
silence youth pastors, to silence people of faith,” she said amid a rogue's gallery of conservative Christian leaders and Republican lawmakers.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.