NRA Official At CPAC: Healthcare Reform Part Of Obama Plot To “Destroy The Family” And “Silence The Church”

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Written by Timothy Johnson

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Speaking at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, conservative columnist Ken Blackwell, who also holds leadership positions at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Family Research Council (FRC), used health care reform to compare the Obama administration to a “totalitarian” or “authoritarian” regime and conspiratorially claimed that Obamacare was designed to “destroy the family” and “silence the church.”

Blackwell, Ohio's former Secretary of State, sits on the NRA's public affairs committee and has served on the organization's board of directors. He is also the Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at FRC, an organization designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group.

When asked about the “unintended consequences” of Obamacare during a panel discussion titled “Healthcare After Obamacare: A Practical Guide for Living When No One Has Insurance and America Runs Out of Doctors,” Blackwell spoke of a “deliberate strategy by the Obama administration to fundamentally take over that section of our economy” before comparing the current administration to an oppressive regime:

From CPAC 2014:

BLACKWELL: It is really hard for me to talk about unintended consequences around Obamacare because I actually think the consequences that we are experiencing are part of a deliberate strategy by the Obama administration to fundamentally take over that section of our economy.

[APPLAUSE]

BLACKWELL: Probably from their stand point, they've assumed -- they have assumed that the American people are asleep at the switch and what CPAC and organizations that are affiliated with this forum know that American people are wide awake and we are brighter than the administration gives us credit for. Look, if you go back over the whole span of human history and you look at authoritarian regimes, totalitarian regimes, or big welfare states had to do a couple of things, they've had to destroy the family and they've had to silence the church.

Blackwell has long used his column at the Patriot Post to push outlandish conspiracy theories and make hateful claims about LGBT people. A few lowlights:

  • In a 2009 column, Blackwell compared same-sex marriage to incest. He also bizarrely suggested that transgender and bisexual individuals would use same-sex marriage laws to demand participation in polygamous marriages: “Remember, we've all been schooled in that LGBT formulation. That means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered. The advocates of counterfeiting marriage cannot leave out their B and T. So, what will that mean? How can they deny 'marriage equality' to a bisexual person who wants to marry two significant others? Or what about a person who has attempted through surgery and drugs to change his sex? Should such a person, if married, be denied the right to marry another person? If love and commitment make a marriage, why cannot brothers and sisters marry? Or fathers and daughters? What the District [of Columbia] Council has done is to open the door to polygamy, to incest.”
  • Also in 2009 Blackwell warned that alarmism over climate change could lead to forced abortions in the United States similar to those caused by China's one child policy and suggested that the U.S. could bury rather than incinerate “the bodies of unborn children who have been aborted under Mr. Obama's health care takeover” as “a small contribution to lowering temperatures.”
  • In a 2010 column, Blackwell called Attorney General Eric Holder a “dhimmicrat,” which he defined as “a person who, while not Muslim himself, nonetheless clears the path for shariah law to be adopted and incorporated into otherwise free nations.”
  • Blackwell wrote in 2010 that ending the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy could cause a “health crisis into the ranks of our volunteer military” because of the “Gay Men's Health Crisis.” He also bizarrely posited that the Obama administration would order the military “to recruit gays by quota” and wondered “if sufficient new recruits cannot be attracted to the Obama military, will this administration bring back the draft?”
  • Warning of “a nightmare scenario for pro-life Americans,” Blackwell claimed in 2010 that embryonic stem cell research legislation proposed in Congress would mean that “Americans would be taxed to create embryonic human beings. Taxpayers would then have to fund experiments upon those embryonic human beings, including cloning humans. Finally, the taxpayers would have to pay for the killing of these cloned humans and other embryonic human lives.”

Blackwell is also known for a disastrous 2006 Senate run where he claimed that his Democratic opponent Ted Strickland was a supporter of the North American Man/Boy Love Association.