Raynard Jackson is a wingnut political consultant with some influence, having been involved in every Republican presidential campaign from H to W, in addition to plenty of Congress and Senate races. He’s done multiple TV appearances, enjoys – apparently –some popularity as a talkshow host, and has penned a number of columns for the Texas Taliban newsletter Charisma often concerning … yeah, it’s gay marriage again.
Jackson doesn’t like gay people. He has argued that the Boy Scouts have “sold their souls to the devil” for having “decided to make 97 percent of its troop members uncomfortable in order to satisfy the perverted needs of 3 percent.” They ended up there after “radical homosexuals” targeted them as part of their scheme to turn kids into “pawns in an adult game perpetrated by immoral homosexual activists,” and insisted that “there will be hell to pay as a result of that bonehead decision.” Nebulous threats are a common argument strategy for people like Jackson when they encounter developments, policies or claims they don’t like.
Later he called on social services to take MSNBC host Krystal Ball’s daughter away from her for “indoctrinat[ing] her daughter about homosexual marriage.” Apparently, telling kids that homosexual marriage is OK makes you “without question an unfit parent;” even though it “may not be child abuse legally, but morally it is definitely abuse, and I am amazed that even liberals of goodwill have not criticized [Ball] for such abuse.” Then he kicked it up a notch, and claimed that progressives want to “take another person’s child and brainwash them into believing that homosexual marriage is OK” and “brainwash innocent children to perpetuate their radical liberalism.” Is it “OK for Ball’s 5-year-old to begin experimenting with kissing boys and girls or touching her classmates in intimate places?” asked Jackson rhetorically. I don’t think that’s part of telling kids that gay marriage is OK, but leads one to wonder how Jackson would talk about (heterosexual) marriage with his own kids. After calling for the government to take Ball’s daughter away, Jackson concluded that: “This is why we need to keep the government out of our lives to the greatest extent possible.”
In 2014 he warned that homosexuality and immigration are hurting African American men, and that only white female right-wing commentators like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham can save the black community by fighting President Obama. No, really. He said that. There is high rates of unemployment, high incarceration rates, and homosexuality occurring among black men, and “[t]his is why black men need more white women like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham.” The argument is apparently enthymematic, but we still have to puzzle out the tacit assumption; it should be interesting.
Diagnosis: Asshole and idiot. There are plenty of those to go around, but as opposed to most Jackson seems to enjoy a modicum of influence.