(CNN) President Donald Trump's pick to be secretary of the Army, former army doctor Mark Green, is a self-identified "creationist" who delivered a lecture arguing against the theory of evolution.
_____
Green's views and past statements are facing scrutiny ahead of his confirmation hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. If confirmed, Green wouldn't be the only prominent doctor and member of the Trump administration to reject evolution. HUD Secretary Ben Carson has also made similar arguments and once
said the theory of evolution was encouraged by Satan.
_____
Green, a Tennessee state senator, has faced opposition from Democrats and LGBT groups over his past anti-LGBT comments. In one comment, from September, Green said, "If you poll the psychiatrists, they're going to tell you that transgender is a disease."
[On evolution.] Or is this unbelievable engineering, and is the scientific mind going to look at it and make the conclusion, observation, and conclusion that it was created and not that it evolved. Again, remember time is not the hero of the plot. Time is the villain, because over time things break down, they don't assemble themselves together."
So Satan endorses evolution. Not a problem. Mark Green has Bible in hand and he's ready to “crush evil” starting with refugees and extending out to transgender people:
And as far as the religious argument goes, and this applies to the issue of Syrian refugees as well. There’s a big fuss about whether or not that we should sue the federal government over having to take refugees from Syria into the State of Tennessee, I believe we should sue the federal government in that case because Romans 13 is pretty doggone clear, this is the passage where it tells people to submit to the authorities – meaning, basically if you’re in the government, you should do what the government tells you to do. You know, don’t speed, all that kind of stuff. Obey the laws is basically what the passage says.
But what it goes on to say is that because the government exists for two purposes.The government exists to honor those people who live honorably, who do good things – to reward people who behave well and to crush evil. So that means as a state senator, my responsibility very clearly in Romans 13 is to create an environment where people who do right are rewarded and the people who do wrong are crushed. Evil is crushed.
So I’m going to protect women in their bathrooms, and I’m going to protect our state against potential infiltration from the Syrian ISIS people in the refugee program. And whoever wants to stand up and take me on that, I’m ready to fight.
“The Trump Administration must have been desperate to fill this post because Mark Green’s anti-LGBTQ remarks should disqualify anyone seeking to be in charge of the United States Army, which includes many out and proud soldiers,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “Our nation is strongest when we are together ― and calling transgender people ‘evil’ does just the opposite.”
In September, Green told a tea party gathering that he believes being transgender is a disease. (The medical community disagrees.)
Denying science, gay rights and refugees when the 21st Century Army is high tech and diversified as never before is unabashedly ironic. Not surprisingly, Green is not a popular candidate for Secretary of the Army.
It remains to be seen if rejecting science will disqualify a nominee to lead today’s high-tech Army. So far, Senate Committee on Armed Services Chair John McCain has refrained from scheduling confirmation hearings, letting Green’s nomination dangle.
Meanwhile, opposition to Dr. Green’s nomination has been growing. While the fate of his nomination rests with the United States Senate, 31 House Democrats came out against Green’s nomination last week. Today, Congressman Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, issued a statement calling on President Trump to withdraw Mark Green’s nomination for, “disgusting statements.”
“I strongly urge President Trump to withdraw Mark Green as his nominee for Army Secretary,” pressed Democratic Whip Hoyer. “Appointing someone with a clear record of homophobia and transphobia, who has made disgusting statements demeaning toward groups of Americans, would send the absolute wrong signal about the values for which our military service members are risking their lives.”
As head of the Army, Green would oversee a force that’s fully integrated, since the Pentagon ended its ban on transgender people serving openly in June. If confirmed, he would set a significantly different tone than the previous Army secretary, Eric Fanning, who was the first openly gay person to serve in the position.
The head of the What We Know project at Columbia bottom lines it:
“Green’s political ambitions reveal a full-scale messianic complex that manifests itself as a dangerous willingness to exploit the military to advance an unvarnished view of straight, white Christian supremacy” wrote Nathaniel Frank, the director of the What We Know Project at Columbia Law School. “Green seems poised to substitute his own theology for fact-based, professional judgment of how to run a diverse military in twenty-first century America.”
Just one more in a never ending cavalcade of white supremacist evangelical extremists seeking to send our country back to medieval times: Jeff Sessions, Mike Pence, Ben Carson (yes, he is a white supremacist, believe it or not), Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry, Neil Gorsuch and now Mark Green. These people seek by denying science and by advocating a return to discriminatory policies decades out of date to pave the way for a religious (read "dominionist") enculturation of America and more importantly, an oligarchic takeover. One step at a time, one appointment at a time, one law at a time. These people are serious as a heart attack and deadly as a brain tumor. Let’s excise Mark Green before he metastasizes any further in the body politic, God forbid.