Flip Benham, national director of Operation Save America, preaches to about 1,000 anti-abortion protesters Monday, July 16, 2001, during a rally in a Wichita, Kan., park. The group has selected a Wichita abortion clinic operated by Dr. George Tiller for a weeklong Summer of Mercy renewal protest. — AP

The lunatic fringe is co-opting the religious freedom argument of delusional Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis.

Mrs. Davis believes she will go to hell if she issues SSM licenses to teh gheys. And she will go to hell even if she gives permission to her deputy clerks to issue the licenses because her name will still be on those icky ghey marriage license because apparently ghey cooties are eternal.

sigh.

But now there are so many other religious wingnuts riding her anti-gay booties coattails. including today’s newest entry: Flip Benham from Operation Rescue (aka, Bring Those Clothes Hangers Back for All Those Sluts!)

Christ’s messenger “Rev.” Flip Benham has been protecting the god-fearing flock o’ sheep for quite a while.

Way back in 2001, he was stalking abortion providers:

A North Carolina pastor was found guilty of violating a state law that prohibits residential picketing for stalking a doctor who performs abortions. He was sentenced to 24 months probation and plans to appeal, reports WSOC-TV in Charlotte.

Reverend Phillip “Flip” Benham, 62, director of the anti-abortion group Operation Save America, had posted wild west-style “Wanted” posters which gave doctors’ names and home addresses. Benham said the First Amendment gave him the right to do this.

“It doesn’t say ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ but the implications are clearly there,” said one doctor, who, fearing for his life, asked to remain anonymous in an interview with CBS News Correspondent Michelle Miller last month.

snip

Prosecutors said the posters amounted to advocating violence against the doctors, like putting a target on the doctor’s back.

For his part, WSOC-TV reports that Benham denied it was a call for murder, saying, “Nobody has gone and killed because [he or she] saw a poster. That is most absurd and logical fallacy that there possibly could be.”

However, Miller reports that in the 1990s similar fliers were distributed in other cities and were followed by a series of murders. Pensacola, Fla., Doctor David Gunn and Dr. George Patterson of Alabama were shot and killed in 1993. Dr. John Britton was murdered a year later in Florida. All were targets on Wanted posters.

Dr. George Tiller survived an assassination attempt in Wichita in 1993. He was killed in his church last year.

Well, now Flip Benham has his sights set on Federal Judge David L. Bunning:

Federal Court Judge to be Held in Contempt September 7, 2015
Contact: Rev. Flip Benham,[no phone numbers allowed]; Dr. Pat McEwen,[no phone numbers allowed]

ASHLAND, Ky., Sept. 7, 2015 /Christian Newswire/ — Christians from across the nation will converge on the neighborhood of Federal Court Judge David Bunning, today. Judge Bunning has illegally and with malice charged Mrs. Kim Davis, with contempt of his court order forcing her to legitimize illegal marriage certificates to individuals of the same sex in Rowan County.

We are calling for the sheriff of Rowan County to immediately arrest Judge David Bunning upon his entering the courthouse on Thursday, Sept. 10 for illegally incarcerating Davis and impeding her from performing her duties as county clerk. Judge Bunning is in contempt of the Court of Almighty God and the constitutions of both Kentucky and the United States.

“We are calling for the sheriff of Rowan County to immediately arrest Judge David Bunning upon his entering the courthouse on Thursday, Sept. 10.”

So much stupidity in just that one statement alone.

#1: There is no federal courthouse in Rowan County.

#2: The federal courthouse in question is in Carter County; the Rowan County Sheriff has no jurisdiction there (and I suspect, he has no interest in pursuing this lame-brained idea).

#3: Judge Bunning lives at least 100 miles away. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky is HUGE. It is one of 94 US district courts and operates out of courthouses in Lexington, Ashland, Covington, Frankfort, London and Pikeville, Kentucky.

And I won’t even try to parse out how Kim Davis refusing SSM marriage has anything to do with abortion.

But, then, I’m not fluent in wingnut.