A family law attorney in Florida who once tweeted that Muslims are “deranged” claims he’ll be able to keep his hateful views off the bench if elected as a judge this summer.
Donald McBath, a 61-year-old former US Army major who runs a practice in Pasco County, confirmed the authenticity of several derogatory and racist social media posts during an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, including one that equated homosexuality with mental illness.
“If the homosexual continues committing that sin of sodomy, his soul faces ETERNAL damnation,” McBath wrote on Facebook in late February. “Abstain, if you really have mental illness. It’s not love.”
A year earlier, in February 2017, McBath targeted Muslims, warning others on Twitter to “never trust a Muslim.” A month later, on March 25, 2017, he posted on Twitter: “Muslims are deranged!!!”
But McBath — a father of four and a grandfather, according to his campaign website — insists he’ll be able to keep those beliefs out of the courtroom if elected as a circuit judge in Pinellas-Pasco counties when voters there head to the polls in an Aug. 28 primary.
“I absolutely can still be fair no matter what kind of beliefs that I may have,” McBath told the newspaper. “We all have our own personal beliefs based on what’s happened in our lives, and as long as it doesn’t interfere with how we treat a person, that’s the goal.”
McBath declined to elaborate when asked to expand on his beliefs about Muslims, saying he didn’t want to “go into detail” since the remarks were made from a “personal standpoint.”
Instead, he suggested that voters focus on his legal and military experience, including tours of duty during the Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield, as well his ties to a litany of social and professional organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America and the Knights of Columbus.
“Those far outnumber anything that somebody could construe as negative,” McBath said of those qualifications.
Later, in a follow-up text message to a reporter, the self-proclaimed “anti-liberal” McBath wrote: “Let me make it more clear: Jesus condemned sodomy!!!”
Louis Virelli III, a professor of law at Stetson University College, said McBath’s past comments on social media should be carefully scrutinized by voters. It would be “terribly bad form” if McBath and his “negative feelings about an entire segment of the population” found its way into a Florida judgeship.
Virelli, who has written a book on US Supreme Court recusals, said that if McBath is elected, his views could “put a strain” on the system, as both Muslim and LGBTQ litigants could seek recusals from their cases based on his prior comments and an apparent inability to be fair or impartial.
“I can’t imagine a Muslim litigant or lawyer would not take seriously the prospect of a recusal motion if these are true and if they reflect the judge’s thinking, and there’s no reason to believe they don’t,” Virelli told the newspaper.
Other advocates in Florida, meanwhile, agreed with Virelli’s take.
“Don McBath has revealed himself to be incapable of treating the LGBT community with dignity and respect,” Equality Florida executive director Nadine Smith told the Tampa Bay Times. “He lacks the temperament required of a judge to deal impartially with the facts.”
