Republican Gomorrah

by Max Blumenthal

  Tanner was too immersed in the drama of the trial to bother with mitigating circumstances. “That’s his favorite time,” Tanner’s wife said of his cross-examinations. “That’s like recreation for him.” When he grilled Wuornos on the witness stand, Tanner focused on the inconsistencies between her police confession and her testimony in court. After twenty-five times invoking her right not to incriminate herself, Wuornos finally lost her composure, lashing out at Tanner in a series of furious outbursts. The prosecutor had undermined any credibility Wuornos might have had—at least in the eyes of the jury. In his closing statement, Tanner labeled Wuornos a “predatory prostitute” whose “lust and control had taken a lethal turn,” and he claimed that she “had been exercising control for years over men.” Wuornos was found guilty and sentenced to death.

  Tanner insisted on witnessing Wuornos’s execution. Even for a prosecutor in a capital case, this was an unusual request. But Tanner claimed he had a personal interest in seeing her victims avenged. “She liked to be in control,” he said. “In fact, these killings, as much as anything, were acts of ultimate control, and we’ve seen that in serial killer patterns in the past. She killed these men to bring about the ultimate in control over their lives, which was to terminate it.” Now seated in the witness gallery, Tanner was back in charge.

  Strapped to a gurney, her senses dulled with sedatives, and lethal poisons beginning to course through her veins, Wuornos was pacified at last.

  “I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the Rock and I’ll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mother ship and all,” Wuornos babbled incoherently. “I’ll be back,” she added before her eyeballs rolled back into her head.

  The discrepancy between Tanner’s conduct during Bundy’s trial, when he sought to delay his friend’s execution as long as possible, and his behavior during his prosecution of Wuornos, when he pressed for the execution of the “predatory prostitute” and fought to bar evidence of mitigating circumstances from her trial, raised a serious question: Why did Tanner display an apparent double standard?

  Phyllis Chesler, a well-known feminist and journalistic observer of Wuornos’s trial who attempted unsuccessfully to advise her bungling lawyer, framed her story with a radical-feminist narrative. In her essay “A Woman’s Right to Self-Defense,” Chesler suggested that in contrast to Bundy, who was treated relatively fairly, even favorably, by the judicial system despite the perverse crimes he committed against women, Wuornos was hastily sentenced to death because she depicted her murders as acts of self-defense against male attackers. Wuornos’s harsh treatment by the criminal justice system, Chesler argued, reflected the patriarchy’s resentment of women who dare to defy their assigned gender roles.

  “Judges, jurors, Senate Judiciary Committee members, and ‘We, the People’ still value men’s lives more highly than women’s and feel compassion for male—but not for female—sinners,” Chesler wrote. “When a woman is accused of committing a crime (and even when the woman is the crime victim), her story is rarely believed by men or by other women, even less so if she is accusing a man of being the aggressor.”

  Chesler’s portrayal of Wuornos as a feminist martyr was seriously flawed, however, not only because the author virtually ignored Wuornos’s admission that six of her seven victims had never attempted to rape her, but also because she overlooked a simpler, and far more salient, explanation for the discrepancy between the justice system’s treatment of Wuornos and its treatment of Bundy. Even though Tanner and his conservative movement allies displayed a misogynistic attitude, they ultimately favored Bundy because he was a born-again Christian, and scorned Wuornos because she was not.

  Whereas Bundy immersed himself in the Meese Commission report and took communion with Tanner, Wuornos passed her time on death row listening to a CD of fem-pop icon Natalie Merchant’s “Carnival.” Bundy, the one-time sadist, had become transformed under Tanner’s wing into the anti-porn poster boy, the masochist. Wuornos, meanwhile, was an unrepentant, mentally unstable criminal who had vowed, “I killed those men . . . And I’d do it again, too.” She had no value to anyone except her huckster lawyer, Steven Glazer, a wannabe rock musician who lined his pockets with interview fees from Geraldo Rivera. By contrast, Bundy earned a seat at the movement’s table and, by their lights, in paradise.

  The discrepancy between Bundy’s and Wuornos’s treatment by the Christian right fits a disturbing pattern. Throughout their careers, Dobson, Tanner, and their cohorts have consistently advocated on behalf of criminals solely on the basis of their evangelical faith, while demanding draconian punishment for others guilty of the same crimes. In 1998, for example, Pat Robertson unsuccessfully pressed then Texas Governor George W. Bush to commute the execution of convicted ax murderer Karla Faye Tucker on the grounds that she had been born again in prison. Only two years earlier, however, Robertson railed against President Clinton’s nomination of Rosemary Barkett to the federal judiciary. Barkett, Robertson argued, was disqualified by her reluctance to apply the death penalty in similar cases. “The Bible is very clear about this,” Robertson declared, “that when blood is shed, blood cleanses the land.” Tanner, meanwhile, used the prestige he had earned from his prosecution of Wuornos to exonerate an evangelical minister arrested for lewd behavior.

  Tanner’s friend, Robert Moorehead, was a ferociously anti-gay pastor who led the largest mega-church in Washington State. In 1996, Moorehead was arrested for masturbating openly in a Daytona Beach, Florida, men’s room. Just four months after rushing to the pastor’s side to defend him in court, Tanner was appointed chief prosecutor for four counties in Central Florida—including the one in which Moorehead was arrested. As one of his first acts in office, Tanner personally dismissed the charge against Moorehead, claiming, without citing any evidence, that the police had arrested the wrong man. Although Daytona police adamantly rejected Tanner’s contention, the pastor was released, returning to Seattle a free man.

  When news of Moorehead’s arrest filtered through the pews of his Overland Church, however, seventeen male parishioners came forward with allegations that the pastor had sexually molested them. One man claimed that Moorehead shoved his hands down the crotch of his tuxedo pants and fondled his genitals only moments before he presided over the man’s wedding. Moorehead’s accusers were immediately bombarded with menacing letters and anonymous death threats. Denouncing his accusers from his pulpit, Moorehead assured his flock of his raging heterosexuality. “If I was ever going to inappropriately touch somebody, it would never be a man. It would be a woman.” As he spoke, his wife stood by his side.

  After a hasty investigation, Overland’s elders cleared Moorehead of all charges. According to the elders, none other than the Devil had concocted the accusations against their leader to punish the financially flush church for its success. “Satan likes none of this!” one elder proclaimed in a newsletter to parishioners. “He has always opposed a soul-winning church, and we’re no exception.”

  But the cover-up Tanner orchestrated was exposed when the Daytona News-Journal sued to unseal Moorehead’s court records. According to those records, Moorehead had signed a plea agreement that allowed him to maintain his innocence, while warning that he would be convicted if arrested again for lewd behavior. The gravity of this revelation at last forced Moorehead to resign his post as Overland’s pastor, though he was allowed to remain a member of the congregation. Tanner, for his part, was unaffected by the scandal.

  Having forgiven Bundy and profited handsomely from his dramatic confession, Dobson sought other serial killers to redeem. When David Berkowitz, known popularly as the “Son of Sam” killer, published a long series of memoirs describing his come-to-Jesus experience in prison, Dobson seized upon the serial killer as another Bundy. During a two-part Focus on the Family broadcast in 2004, Dobson encouraged the killer he now dubbed the “Son of Hope” to describe his miraculous conversion. Like Bundy, Berkowitz assured Dobson and his audience of millions that
evil demons had programmed him to kill. Only by embracing the spirit of Christ, Berkowitz said, was he able to harness the darkness in his soul. With this plaintive confession, Berkowitz was welcomed into the movement with open arms.

  “I was there when we interviewed Berkowitz,” Focus associate producer Scott Welch told the Rocky Mountain News. “To me, he’s like a brother . . . He’s a gentle, humble, kind and loving person who is not out for personal gain at all.”

  Immediately after recording Dobson’s interview with Berkowitz, Focus on the Family packaged the encounter into cassette tapes, marketing them to members for a “suggested donation” of $7. But Dobson’s profiteering enraged law enforcement officials working to curb the booming memorabilia business that Berkowitz had been running from his prison cell in New York. “I’m just incredulous that a church group would try to make a buck on a serial killer,” New York Department of Corrections spokesman James Flateau remarked. But even in the face of harsh criticism from police, Dobson refused to relent. Tapes of his Berkowitz interview are still available on Focus’s website for a “suggested donation” of $9, $2 more than when they first went on the market. The publicity has been good for the product.

  Members of the movement believe they are subject to a different set of laws than outsiders. No matter how horrendous their sins have been, sinners can be forgiven time and time again simply by absolving themselves through being born again and by absorbing the sadomasochistic culture of the Christian right. Thus the fallen ones pay fealty to Family men like Dobson and shower these leaders with veneration as they reveal themselves as murderers.

  Having redeemed some of the worst killers in American history, and having enhanced his public profile in the process, Dobson, the child psychiatrist, moved on to new patients. He found them in Washington, in the leadership of the Republican Congress that had swept into power in 1994.

  CHAPTER 10

  CHEAP GRACE

  When the Republicans swept into the House of Representatives in 1994 on a wave of resentment against President Bill Clinton, James Dobson swiftly maneuvered to assert his influence. Many of the party’s rising stars were more than fervent conservatives; they were Focus on the Family devotees whose lives had been changed by his teachings. Republican representatives from Tom DeLay to Frank Wolf to Jim Talent credited Dobson with helping them overcome personal crises. They saw him as the spiritual godfather of the new Republican Congress.

  Talent, then a lawyer in the St. Louis suburbs and adjunct professor at the Washington University Law School, according to his account of his born-again experience, heard Dobson like the voice of God over his car radio, pulled over on the roadside, and committed his life to Christ. “It is the single most important thing that has ever or will ever happen to me,” he said of his Dobson-inspired conversion from Judaism to evangelical Christianity. Dobson also enjoyed a close relationship with rookie congressman Steve Largent, a Hall of Fame former National Football League wide receiver, who had accompanied him on hunting trips and had volunteered as a speaker for Focus on the Family for three years before his election to Congress.

  But Dobson’s team remained on the back bench when Congress opened its session in 1995. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Majority Leader Dick Armey were in command. Gingrich, a former history professor at West Georgia College, was a fervent conservative, but he catered to Christian-right demands only when it served his personal ambition. Dick Armey, a gruff former economics professor at North Texas State, was also extremely conservative, but his interests lay in privatization schemes and deregulation, not in moral crusades. Dobson viewed the two Republican leaders as obstacles, if not as enemies, and quietly committed himself to their ouster, plotting with his followers in the House.

  The ten-point “Contract for America” that Gingrich and Armey drafted upon entering Congress was a right-wing wish list, from term limits and denying welfare to teen mothers to drastically expanding the criteria for imposing the death penalty. But its authors pointedly omitted mention of Christian-right hobgoblins such as abortion and homosexuality. From his Colorado Springs mountain kingdom, Dobson looked on the scene of Republican triumph in the Congress, after forty years in the wilderness, with displeasure. “He’d made encouraging promises,” Dobson grumbled in 1995, “but it became obvious to me Newt Gingrich wasn’t going to follow through.”

  During the 1996 presidential campaign, Dobson began to strong-arm the Republican leadership. Leading up to the campaign, Colin Powell, chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a self-described moderate Republican, polled highest among potential Republican candidates. When some conservatives advanced the notion of Powell as the GOP’s most viable presidential nominee, Dobson moved to intimidate and silence the general’s boosters, fearing destruction of the party’s anti-abortion faction. Among Powell’s fans was the Francis Schaeffer acolyte Jack Kemp, who called him “Republican on almost every issue.” Neoconservative former education secretary William Bennett repeatedly praised Powell on the pages of the National Review, and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol argued in an editorial that Powell was the only figure who could defeat the increasingly popular Bill Clinton. Already annoyed by the swell of movement support for the pro-choice Powell, Dobson was furious when Christian Coalition president Ralph Reed refused to condemn Powell’s possible candidacy during his appearance on This Week with David Brinkley.

  Immediately, Dobson faxed a five-page letter to Reed accusing him of unholy motives. “Is power the motivator of the great crusade?” Dobson asked the fresh-faced operator. “If so, it will sour and turn to bile in your mouth . . . This posture may elevate your influence in Washington, but it is unfaithful to the principles we are duty-bound as Christians to defend.” Bauer copied the letter and blasted it out to other Powell-friendly conservatives, including Bennett, whom Dobson baselessly accused of being “pro-abortion.” Shaken by Dobson’s jeremiad, Reed hastily composed a letter suggesting that attacks from the Christian right would only provoke Powell into running. The situation “required a delicate balancing act,” Reed insisted.

  After halting Powell, Dobson moved to stifle the ambitions of Senator Bob Dole, a Republican moderate from Kansas who won the party’s nomination. Summoned to a meeting with Dobson and his Washington lobbyist, Gary Bauer, Dole was forced to sit through a litany of Christian-right demands. Dobson and Bauer insisted that their constituents had delivered the Congress to the party in 1994 and would deliver Dole the presidency if he would give them a direct hand in crafting his domestic agenda. The meeting lasted three hours before Dole, who had been the Senate majority leader, his party vice presidential candidate, and chairman of the Republican National Committee, stormed out of the meeting. Unaccustomed to being lectured and threatened, Dole had had enough. Dobson, for his part, was indignant. He promptly transferred his support from Dole to his longtime friend Howard Phillips, a far-right stalwart running under the banner of the theocratic U.S. Taxpayers Party.

  Even among obscure minority party candidates for president, Phillips was among the most extreme in recent history. Reflecting on his ideological formation in 2005, he told journalist Michelle Goldberg that R. J. “Rushdoony had a tremendous impact on [my] thinking.” Phillip’s newly formed U.S. Taxpayers Party endorsed Rushdoony’s call for executing homosexuals and doctors who performed abortions, urged stripping AIDS patients of basic civil rights, and supported the panacea of returning the United States to the gold standard.

  With its radical platform, Phillips’s party became a natural vehicle for domestic terrorists, militiamen, and assorted others from the dregs of society. In 1995, only months before Dobson endorsed Phillips for president, the leader of a domestic terrorist group called Missionaries to the Preborn, Matthew Trewhella, addressed the U.S. Taxpayers Party’s national convention: “This Christmas I want you to do the most loving thing and I want you to buy each of your children an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition.”

  Dobson’s endorsement of Phillips had
no noticeable impact on the outcome of the 1996 election. Phillips won 184,820 votes, or 0.2 percent of the total cast. Dole lost by nine percentage points to Clinton. Dobson’s influence was felt only by its absence within the Republican base.

  When Clinton returned to the White House for a second term, Dobson redoubled his efforts against the Republican leadership, particularly in undermining Newt Gingrich, whom conservatives within the House Republican Conference and outside it had come to regard as chronically unreliable because of deals he had made with Clinton, despite his shutting down the federal government twice. Dobson and DeLay agreed that Gingrich lacked not only the lust for confrontation that they sought in a party leader but also the moral qualities to be “a friend of The Family.” Referring to the Speaker, DeLay later wrote, “Men with such secrets are not likely to sound a high moral tone at a moment of national crisis.” Throughout his career in public life, Gingrich brushed off concerns about his moral fitness as mere distractions, reflecting to journalist Gail Sheehy, “I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.”

  Newt Gingrich was born Newt McPherson to teenaged parents. Gingrich’s mother divorced his father and married a Marine officer, who adopted him and throughout his childhood savagely beat him and his mother. (Gingrich’s half-sister, Candace, became a lesbian activist. At the moment Newt became Speaker, she became the Human Rights Campaign’s National Coming Out Project Spokesperson.) As a young man, Gingrich, fascinated with zoos and dinosaurs, longed for an illustrious career in academia. He wound up teaching history and environmental studies at West Georgia College.