re: #43 Joe Bacon

I still remember what an asshole Old Fart Schmitz was in the California State Senate!

From: en.wikipedia.org

In 1981, Schmitz—who was staunchly pro-life—chaired a committee hearing on abortion. Feminist attorney Gloria Allred testified at the hearing in support of the pro-choice position, and afterward sarcastically presented Schmitz with a black leather chastity belt. Schmitz’s committee then issued a press release under the headline, “Senator Schmitz and His Committee Survive Attack of the Bulldykes”, describing the hearing room as filled with “hard, Jewish and (arguably) female faces.” Allred sued Schmitz for libel, claiming $10 million in damages, but settled for $20,000 and an apology. In his apology, Schmitz stated, “I have never considered her (Allred) to be … a slick, butch lawyeress.” Allred later appeared at a press conference called by Senator Schmitz regarding Mid-East issues, handed Schmitz a box of frogs and shouted, “A plague on the House of Schmitz!”[14]

The incident cost him his committee chairmanship and the John Birch Society stripped him of his membership for “extremism.” Despite this, Schmitz announced plans to run for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in 1982.

I get the impression that John Schmitz was a very sexually repressed man just like so many wingnuts like him before and after him.