John Merrill
America's moral core is rotting because of a "preoccupation with homosexual activities" and "the wife swap (TV) shows," according to Alabama 2020 U.S. Senate hopeful John Merrill.
That's the same John Merrill, currently Alabama's Republican secretary of state, who admitted in 2015 to an extramarital sexual encounter with a Tuscaloosa woman named Millie Brinyark. We wrote multiple posts about Merrill's indiscretion, including this one under the title "Alabama Sec. of State Merrill admits to extramarital sexual encounter, but denies receiving oral sex." (That headline, BTW, is legit, not from the Onion; more on that in an upcoming post.)
Did anyone in Alabama's right-leaning press, in their coverage of Merrill's comments about gays and wife-swap shows, mention his relationship with Millie Brinyark? Nope. Did any of them mention long-running reports about his affair with a woman who runs a real-estate development company in Huntsville? Nope, but we are working to nail down that story and hope to have it ready for publication in the near future.
In a deposition for a divorce case styled Brinyark v. Brinyark, Millie Brinyark provided graphic descriptions of her interactions with Merrill. Here are samples from a post where Legal Schnauzer broke the story on Jan. 29, 2015. First, Brinyark admits in the deposition that she and a teacher/coach named Mike Evans, were "groping each other" behind closed doors during school hours. Then the questions turn to another married man with whom Ms. Brinyark was chummy:
Q: Have you gotten yourself involved with any other married man?
A: Yes
Q: Who?
A: John Merrill.
What about specifics? The deposition provides plenty:
Q: Did you consider the fact that when another man touches what I will call your body, particularly your private parts, that's being unfaithful to your husband?
A: Yes.
Q: And Mike Evans did that, didn't he?
A: Yes.
Q: And John Merrill did that too, didn't he?A: Yes.
Q: And you allowed them to do that?
A: Yes.
Then, we have one of the greatest question-answers in the history of depositions:
Q: And when you were touching their body, and putting your hand in their crotch, and touching their penis, did they tell you they didn't like that?A: No.
I still break out laughing at that one. But the steamy stuff was just beginning. From our January 2015 post:
Men often are the aggressors in these situations, and that appears to be the case with Merrill. The deposition mentions that he is a politician, running for office:
A: John came to talk to me, and he came again and talked to me, and then I met with him that Sunday afternoon, and he had--he had been very sexual in his conversations and --
Q: Toward you?
A: Yes.
Q: In an inappropriate manner?
A: Yes.
Q: In what way?
A: Just that he talked about he had to have sex all the time and --
Q: He wanted to have it with you?
A: Uh-huh.
Merrill has to "have sex all the time"? Gee, how does the guy find time to serve as secretary of state? How could he possibly serve as U.S. senator? Here's more from our post that broke the Brinyark scandal:
How physical did things get?
Q: Did he touch, caress, and/or kiss your breasts?A: Yes.
Q: Did you do the same for him?
A: Yes.
Q: So you touched his unexposed penis?A: Yes.
Q. And did either one of y'all have oral sex with the other?
A: Yes.
Q: How many times?
A: Just once.
Q: Both for each other?
A: No.
Q: Him for you--did he commit or perform oral sex on you?
A: No.
Q: You performed oral sex on him?
A: Yes.
So, Merrill, while married, once happily accepted a BJ from someone not his wife? But he now portrays himself as an expert on moral rot in our society? Think I'm going to choke from all the H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y emanating from this story. It seems Merrill wants the rest of us to live in downtown Mayberry, while his life is like something out of Showtime After Dark.
Millie Brinyark and family
What exactly did Merrill say over the weekend about gays, wife swapping, and old-timey TV shows. This is from a report at The Hill:Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R), a 2020 Senate candidate, says that Americans are too “preoccupied with homosexual activities” and “the wife swap shows,” ruining everything from TV to the country’s moral direction.
Merrill, one of multiple Republicans looking to challenge Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) made the comments over the weekend at a town hall event in Dekalb County, according to the Yellowhammer News.
As he took questions from attendees, one asked about the culture shift and how the country’s principles have allegedly been eroded, prompting Merrill to point to what is being shown on TV, among other things.
“We’re too interested in seeing how this family’s finding a way to mess on this family or to see how people are trying to date on TV, or having wife-swapping on TV. That’s what we watch. When we push back against that, and we quit allowing it to be in our homes — that’s how those changes have occurred because we’ve allowed them to slowly but surely come into our lives,” he said.“How have we allowed it to happen? There are no more good TV shows on like ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘Bonanza,’ ‘The Virginian,’ ‘Andy Griffith,’ ‘I Love Lucy.’ We don’t have those shows anymore. We’re too interested in homosexual activities,” Merrill said.
“We’re too interested in seeing how this family’s finding a way to mess on this family or to see how people are trying to date on TV, or having wife-swapping on TV. That’s what we watch. When we push back against that, and we quit allowing it to be in our homes — that’s how those changes have occurred because we’ve allowed them to slowly but surely come into our lives,” he said.
Once Merrill found a few scapegoats for America's supposed decline, he couldn't top talking about it. He doubled down with his themes in an interview with al.com on Monday night:
In a phone interview Monday night, Merrill confirmed his remarks to AL.com.
“The foundational principles which we have grown up as a nation are no more,” the secretary of state and Senate candidate said. “There’s no more TV shows like ‘Gunsmoke’ or ‘Bonanza’ or ‘The Virginian’ or ‘I Love Lucy’ or ‘Andy Griffith.' [I] said people are too interested in homosexual activities. They’re too interested in the wife swap TV shows and the shows that are not morally uplifting. That’s the problem.”Asked to explain what he meant, Merrill said, “I meant what I said. People are too interested in anything that is not uplifting, edifying. They’re too busy being preoccupied with homosexual activities and the wife swap shows."
He declined to give examples of how Americans are too preoccupied with “homosexual activities.”
Merrill said there are no longer shows “that are based on biblical foundations. ...Shows that promote family and culture with a father, a mother and children based on biblical teachings and biblical principles on which our nation was founded."
Did anyone in the audience at Fort Payne ask Merrill how "biblical principles" informed his actions with Millie Brinyark? The answer appears to be no, suggesting Merrill must be counting on Alabama voters to be stupid, forgetful -- or both. Did Merrill fall on his sword and mention the Brinyark peccadillo himself? Nope, must have slipped his mind.
That's understandable, given the Alabama mainstream press largely has provided a cover-up on the story -- one that is pretty darned embarrassing for the journalism profession.
(To be continued)
