State assmeblies again. Larry G. Pittman is a preacher and member of the North Carolina General Assembly, representing the 82nd district. He is most famous for calling Abraham Lincoln a “tyrant” like Adolf Hitler (Lincoln was “personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional”), and for being in general sympathetic to secessionist causes, such as co-sponsoring a bill that would allow the removal of the ban on North Carolina seceding from the Union ever again.
What fuels Pittman’s anger with the union? Ah, yes: gay marriage, of course. In March 2017 Pittman also co-sponsored, with Carl Ford, bill HB760 to once again make gay marriages invalid and illegal in North Carolina (he was also a co-sponsor of NC’s infamous bathroom bill), citing the Bible and claiming that any supreme court decision that goes against “the decree of Almighty God” “exceeds the authority of the Court;” that claim, of course, makes you a “theocrat” by definition. Pittman emphasized that North Carolina should uphold traditional marriage “in spite of the opinion of a federal court that had no business interfering.” Though the effort was, of course, an embarrassment to everyone involved (not the least NC district 84 voters), the nullification movement seems to be more popular than those of us to tend to think of other people as default basically reasonable would think.
In 2012, Pittman argued for reintroducing public hangings, starting with “abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers”. He also expressed anger at the ostensibly easy life of death row inmates, arguing that appeals should be limited to one shot, and that making the executions public would cause more appropriate suffering. As a good Christian, he is apparently very annoyed that he is denied the emotional satisfaction of observing other humans being killed in painful ways.
Pittman is also a climate change denialist. In 2012, he issued a statement on the issue alleging that “[o]ur climate runs on a cycle. It goes up and it goes down and the Lord designed it that way. And the main thing that causes global warming is the Earth’s relationship to a big ball of gas that’s burning out there that we call the Sun [which, as everyone knew even by then, is demonstrably false]. And it is the height of hubris for human beings to think that we can have any effect on that.”
Diagnosis: Bloodthirsty, sadistic and paranoid. Not a good combination for people in positions of power.