It’s difficult not to get the sense, sometimes, when going up against Religious Right activists, that their beef is less with the gay community, but much more about their own personal demons. Such may be the case with Linda Wall, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. If the name “Linda Wall” sounds familiar, it’s because she has shown up in pieces we’ve written in the past on the escaped child kidnapper Lisa Miller, a close friend of Linda’s. While we don’t know whether or not Wall was involved in Miller’s escape — the time she compared herself to Harriet Tubman in her “fight for the children” raised my eyebrows a bit — it’s safe to say that she’s extremely anti-gay and has little understanding of or respect for the law. So of course, we are not surprised to find out that back in the 1970′s, when she was a physical education teacher, she carried on a relationship with one of her junior high students:

A conservative independent seeking a House of Delegates seat from Appomattox says when she was a junior high teacher 40 years ago she had an affair with a female student but that she was a “different person” back then.

In an Associated Press interview on Wednesday, Linda Wall confirmed her sworn 2006 testimony in a lawsuit in which she admitted to “sexual relations with a minor” in the early 1970s when she taught physical education in Prince George County. The 61-year-old Wall said the affair was a long-ago, youthful mistake, not who she is now.

“I’ve never tried to hide that I was in homosexuality. If anybody Googles me, they would find that out there,” Wall said.

OH, Linda, back the hell up. This has nothing to do with you being “in homosexuality,” as it is a known fact that gays are no more likely to molest children than straight people are. So please do not think readers are so ignorant as to let you say, “oh well, I was gay then, but now I’m redeemed!”

The woman admits that she molested a female junior high student. At some point on her alleged path to healing and redemption, she was fed and adopted wholeheartedly the lie that her lesbianism was to blame for her molesting a female junior high student. I am quite sorry, but in the real world, that is not the excuse. Neither is this:

“Forty years ago I was a different person. I was a heavy pot smoker with … impaired judgment and made some bad choices,” she said. “You do that out of college sometimes. Some people do, some people don’t.”

“Oh, I was a stoner back then! Sometimes people get out of college and diddle little girls. Some people do, some people don’t.”

No.

Far from seeking elected office, Linda Wall needs to be seeking professional help, from REAL professionals, rather than the fundamentalist charlatan types who have convinced her that lesbianism and the demon weed are to blame for her molestation of a junior high student.

The politician who released the deposition where Linda admitted all of this, Paul Jost, had this to say:

“I did it because it shows Linda Wall is not fit to hold public office,” said Jost, who moved to Florida several years ago but retains business interests in Hampton Roads.

“To me, this isn’t about her sexuality. People have different feelings about that. To me, this is about a criminal act and that’s why I felt that it needed to be disclosed,” he said, denying that he acted to settle an old score.

Indeed. And I will say again what I said above, a little more strongly: it seems that, when dealing with staunchly anti-gay activists, it might be wise to assume from the outset that their public bigotry is somehow related to battles with their own private demons.

Do you know who is to blame for America’s mortgage crisis?  If you said “greedy, unregulated bankers colluding with Wall Street to create massive instruments of bullsh*t designed to make greedy, unregulated bankers and Wall Street very rich very quick, with no regard for the actual homeowners being hurt in the process,” you would be wrong, wrong, wrong, because Linda Harvey, the pathetic little ball of hate who runs “Mission America,” who insanely claims that the “gay agenda” is to blame for gay teen suicide, states that the cause of the mortgage crisis is, of course, gay people.  No,  rilly, she is saying this:

The foolish man builds his house on sand ( Matthew 7:26) or even, builds his house with sand. What is being embraced is the sin-based family.

Families constructed around sexual deviance stand in defiance of God’s eternally –revealed truth. No matter how “conservatively” and faithfully two men or two women operate as they consider themselves a marital union, the structure is still in defiance of God’s created order of male and female as the framework for marriage.

Citation needed, from an actual authority. No, not your bigoted reading of an old book you’re not smart enough to understand. Try harder, Linda.

As Jesus told us in Matthew 19, a man and a woman constitute what He considers marriage. Humans are not created in a possibly “wrong-sex” body, as the transgender lobby would have us believe

And as medical science has actually confirmed…

but were designed as male and female “from the beginning”—and Jesus should know, since as the eternally- existent Savior who was God on earth, He was present at creation.

Citation needed, again.

So from the get-go, the same sex union is structurally unsound.

You have proven nothing, Linda. Back to the drawing board with ye!

Functionally, the intentions can be the best, but the homosexual humanists who have created their own law will live and die by it, because God has made His standard clear.

That’s probably the first time Linda has ever put the words “homosexual” and “human” next to each other.

Many say that divorce is a much greater threat to the family than homosexuality, and it’s true, but it’s a different problem with a different solution. In divorce, the problem is function, not structure. With counseling, and a change of heart and behavior, one can fix a troubled heterosexual union.

Uh, not always?

But let’s take two men, trying unsuccessfully to “consummate” their relationship. It is impossible. Forgive the graphics here, but neither oral nor anal sex, nor mutual masturbation will ever unify them structurally.

You have obviously never had gay male sex, Linda.  Wishing reality wasn’t there doesn’t actually make it go away.  It just teeters you ever closer to the edge of DSM-IV territory.

In fact, actual anatomical damage can occur through anal sex.

Well, if you’re having sex wrong, you can cause anatomical damage with vaginal sex too!  Moral of story:  have sex properly!  And don’t ask Linda Harvey for advice, because heaven knows she has no idea.

The other big clue is the lifelessness. No new life can ever come from a homosexual relationship. Those few who do desire children (a minority) always have to involve at least a third and possibly a fourth party. The options are adoption, artificial insemination, or inclusion of children from a previous marriage: yes, a heterosexual, fruitful one, back before the discovery of “inborn” homosexuality.

Uh, Linda? Words have meanings. Use them. A happy gay relationship is not “lifeless,” any more than a happy straight relationship between two people who don’t want children is “lifeless.” Moreover, gay couples who DO have children and create happy homes are no worse off than straight couples who have children and create happy homes. Oh, and a marriage between a closeted gay person and a straight person is not “fruitful.” Indeed, that’s the only relationship you’ve described which could be accurately called “lifeless.” I suggest that before you write your next column, you invest in a dictionary, Linda.

The awesome privilege of creating, with God’s help, new life from the love of two humans, is only available to male and female.

You all bring your deity to bed with you? Now that’s a weird threesome.

Even Japanese Buddhists or Native American shamans–those who don’t believe in God—- understand this structure.

Shhhh, nobody tell Linda about Native American beliefs on “two-spirited” people. She doesn’t like reality, and it doesn’t like her.

Sometimes it is violated by polygamy—usually multiple women with one man.

Like in the Bible.

Again, we turn to on function. What about the leaky roof? What about the abusive husband, the alcoholic wife? This functional flaw can be fixed and often is, through adherence to biblical standards of conduct. In stable communities, it’s the other dads and husbands who keep abusive men accountable, or the other women who encourage the substance abuser to get her act together.

Uh, it’s really cute when fundamentalist Christians, whose divorce rates are actually worse than the general population, lecture the rest of us on how to fix “functional flaws” in abusive marriages. Adorable, really. When will these people ever grasp the fact that their way of life is being rejected by more and more people every year because it’s inferior?

You’re probably wondering when we’re going to get to the part about the mortgage crisis, but Linda is extremely verbose, boring and mostly unreadable. Let’s skip a bunch of crap and head straight to that part:

The mortgage crisis was the sin of temptation being offered by those who relaxed legitimate standards, offered to those without the personal standards to resist. This easy-pay physical structure was too good to be true, and appealed to an increasingly covetous segment of our culture. Sexual and material covetousness are usually sin siblings. It would be interesting to study the families who have defaulted on mortgages for the correlations between structural and/or functional weaknesses like infidelity, divorce, gambling or porn addictions, job instability, credit card default, domestic abuse, sexual deviance, and criminality. There is also a high likelihood that poor or no church attendance would show up as a factor as well.

Uh, actually, the bankers preyed on homebuyers, the elderly, minorities and all manner of other people. Moreoever, Linda, you have no evidence for your insipid suggestion that those who defaulted on their loans were probably really big sinners in other areas, or that they didn’t go to church. But this is textbook Linda Harvey: spew a bunch of hateful, unproven/disproven crap, let the leeches who actually respect her [all twelve of them] read it and find targets upon whom to manifest their rage, and call it a day’s work of serving “The Lord.”

But back to our main point, probably few such households are homosexually-headed, because few homosexuals want to settle down to any kind of permanence

Citation needed, you troll!

Many unmarried mothers of children born out of wedlock are on public assistance, which means they are unlikely to have had a mortgage. So when we look at the mortgage crisis, we could analyze it as a shift in the American family, but these families would not begin to reflect where the greatest structural weaknesses already exist.

Or Linda could just do a bit of reading and find out where and how the mortgage crisis sprang into being…but nah. Reading is hard. So is Googling. Keep on writing dumb crap, Linda. It’s the only thing you know how to do.

[h/t Brian @ Right Wing Watch]

Here:

It was January 1 when Linda Wall said she knew for sure her friend Miller and her seven-year-old daughter Isabella had gone into hiding.

“Unbeknowing [sic] to any of us… she was doing something behind the scene,” Wall said.

(…)

“I am supposed to be the number one suspect because I was so involved in this and I don’t know where she is,” Wall said.

(…)

The last time Wall says she had contact with Miller was in late September. Up to that point, she believes Miller was working behind the scenes on her escape. It’ a decision they support.

“I do support what she’s done,” Wall said. “When the law is wrong, what’s a person to do?”

Likening the situation to the underground railroad during slavery, “Was it Harriet Tubman who risked her life for the underground railroad for the black community? Maybe I am committed to this for the children I might be that one voice.”

Linda, I’m “unbeknowing” whether you’re ignorant of history or getting caught up in lies, but I should point out that the comparisons to Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad run the risk of being revelatory, since Harriet Tubman decidedly did know where the Underground Railroad was, since she personally helped a number of slaves escape. What other historical figures do you identify with, Linda? Miep Gies, perhaps?

All of these comparisons are silly, obviously, because all Lisa Miller is doing is trying to “protect” her child from her other loving mother, Janet Jenkins, who has a legal and moral right to be in Isabella’s life.

The fact that Wall’s and Miller’s interpretations of reality are straight out of a C.S. Lewis fever dream should have no bearing on what they’re allowed to do in actual reality.

(h/t Kyle)

The Only One Mommy Facebook group was created by Liberty Counsel attorney Rena Lindevaldsen and ex-gay activist Debbie Thurman to affirm the illegal activities of ex-gay activist Lisa Miller against daughter Isabella Miller-Jenkins and former partner Janet Jenkins.

Since 2004, with the help of Liberty Counsel, Miller has violated repeated court orders in Vermont and Virginia to respect Isabella’s visitation rights with Jenkins. And since Jan. 1, Miller has violated another court order requiring her to transfer custody to Jenkins. Instead, Miller abducted Isabella and went into hiding — presumably somewhere among fundamentalist churches that are allied with the Liberty Counsel.

The Facebook group’s activities in support of this kidnapping are now a legal liability — as is the Facebook group’s efforts to silence dissenters who care for the welfare of Isabella and Jenkins, not just Lisa and the Liberty Counsel.

So now Thurman has announced the hurried closure of this public group and the creation of a new, secret, invitation-only group. In a message to group members today, Thurman said:

Dear Folks,

I am letting you know about a major change. Only One Mommy is going defunct ASAP and will be replaced by a new group (still to be named) that will be created by Linda Wall. We want all members to know about the change so you can have the option of sending Linda a message (her FB profile is under Linda Marie Wall) to join the new group ASAP, if you wish to.

Linda Wall is the leader of Lighthouse Policy, a Virginia antigay fundamentalist project which rejects morality, freedom, civility, and religious freedom in favor of a Christian Right war against infidels, abortion, and homosexuality. Her project affirms the abduction and justifies it with Miller’s court-disproven defamations against Jenkins. Please contact Ms. Wall and politely challenge her efforts to aid and abet child abduction — and please consider reporting this activity on behalf of kidnapping to Facebook.