GOP Candidate Thinks It Shouldn't Be a Crime to Rape Your Wife

Oh, GOP. It’s just unfathomable to me how anyone—let alone an entire BUNCH OF DUDES—could be so bad at not being the worst. It’s impressive, really. The latest: Virginia state senator Dick Black has begun a run for congress to replace retiring GOP moderate Frank Wolf. In response, Mother Jones has put together a sort of “greatest hits” profile of all the mindblowingly shitty stuff Black has said over the years.

Call me new-fashioned, but I’m just not sure that a dude who thinks spousal rape shouldn’t be illegal if “she’s in a nightie” deserves to get a promotion. And, you know, MAKE LAWS.

Also on Black’s resume:

Black has referred to emergency contraception, which does not cause abortions, as “baby pesticide.” Black also fought to block a statue of Abraham Lincoln at a former Confederate site in Richmond. He wasn’t sure, he explained at the time, that statues of Lincoln belonged in Virginia. He has argued that abortion is a worse evil than slavery. And once, to demonstrate why libraries should block pornography on their computers, Black invited a TV reporter to film him using a library terminal to watch violent rape porn.

…For two years in a row, Black introduced legislation requiring women younger than 18 to provide a notarized note from a parent before having an abortion. To justify the bill, he said abortion was a greater evil than segregation or slavery. In 2005, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, he promoted a bill that would have required abortion providers to tell women that a fetus being aborted 20 weeks after conception may be able to feel pain, a medically unsupported claim. Black sent senators plastic figures of fetuses with a letter asking, “Would you kill this child?” as a Senate committee prepared to vote on the bill.

BABY PESTICIDE, YOU GUYS. Say what you want, dude does know how to turn a phrase.