On this date in both 2015, 2016, and 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled John Becker, a member of the Ohio House of Representatives who prior to taking office, spent two decades working as an anti-abortion crusader who was originally spurred into that role after he was “horrified” by the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Becker has already sponsored legislation that would ban insurance companies from covering “abortion”, but his definition of that term was so poorly worded that it would have blocked funding from IUDs. When confronted with that fact, Becker’s excuse was to say, “Well, I’m not a doctor.” as well as fetal heartbeat bills. He has also voted to defund all Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio, and has written newspaper editorial to argue that since schools are “gun free zones”, that there should also be “condom free zones”. On LGBT rights… he is also an abysmal human being, comparing gay marriage to beastiality and polygamy, calling for the impeachment of judges who rule in favor of the widowed spouses of gays to honor the benefits they would be given by departed spouses on death certificates, and has called for Massachusetts to be kicked out of the United States for having been the first state to legalize gay marriage (incidentally, he also once stated that Alaska should be expelled from the union over oil drilling rights). Becker also wrote in his own political magazine, The Becker Report in August of 2015, that the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling was “a national flipping of the middle finger at God”. Becker has sponsored multiple Voter ID bills, and claimed that he broke down in tears when he heard guns that confiscated by law enforcement are sometimes melted down and destroyed. Becker has also argued that it’s the protesters of police violence in cases like that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, or Tamir Rice in Cleveland… it’s the protesters who are the real racists. In 2016, Becker made headlines with his support of transphobic bathroom legislation, and while he flailed about, paranoid about the transgendered using the bathroom of their choice, he also decided to lambast Target stores for respecting their bathroom choices.
Becker was not given a primary challenger in his conservative Ohio district and easily won re-election with 73% of the vote in 2016, however, he will not be so lucky in 2018, where he has not only a primary challenger, but will have to face off against Democrat Patricia Lawrence in the general election. We realize 2018 should be a Blue Wave election, but Lawrence really does have her work cut out for her to unseat a zealot like Becker.