Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 5/26/2010 2:52 pm
When I posted the video the other day of Bryan Fischer calling for everyone to "be a Phinehas in our own world, and in our own generation," I knew that if he responded, it would be to claim that his statement was being distorted.
The left-wing blogosphere having a veritable tizzy fit over the monologue I did on Phinehas the other day. The video of that, which we have in our archives, has been picked up by some left-wing blogospheres [sic] and is now circulating out there with the headline that I am advocating the cold-blooded murder of people who are caught in flagrante engaging in sexual immorality.
Remember, that was the story about Phinehas, sexual immorality was out of control among the people and he took the step of actually pinning a couple who were in the middle of having sex to the ground with his spear. He was commended for this and turned away the wrath of God from the people.
Now the point that I had made was not the we need people to go out and do exactly what Phinehas did. My point is that we need people with that same kind of courage, the same kind of boldness, the same kind of decisiveness in whatever sphere they happen to be involved in. It's the quality of character, the courage, the decisiveness, and the boldness and the willingness to take action. That was the parallel, of course, that I was drawing, so it's humorous to see the left-wing blogosphere completely distort and misrepresent things that conservatives do, so they're having a little bit of fun with that out in the left-wing blogosphere.
This response is entirely predictable, since this is what Religious Right leaders always say when this sort of issue comes up. Sure, they say, Christians should be like Elijah or Phinehas or Jephthah, but not in the sense that they kill their enemines or children for God; simply that they should have that same sort of dedication and commitment to God.
And this is exactly what Fischer says: people should not unilaterally murder the sexually immoral like Phinehas; they should simply have Phinehas' sense of courage, conviction, and boldness.
But Phinehas displayed this courage, conviction, and boldness by murdering twopeople for violating God's laws regarding sexual morality, winning God's favor and saving Israel from his wrath. It was that very act which provided the evidence that Phinehas was dedicated to seeing God's will carried out here on Earth ... so much so that he was willing to personally kill two people with his spear to see it done.
And Fischer says that "God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day" and that "each one of us [should] be a Phinehas our own world" ... so what exactly does he think people should do in order to demonstrate their own Phinehas-like dedication to God, given that the one thing that set Phinehas apart from all the others was his willingness to murder for God?
Basically, Fischer is saying that Christians need to be bold and decisive and courageous enough that they are willing to kill for God ... but that they should never actually kill for God.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/25/2010 5:28 pm
Why exactly is Mat Staver moderating a debate at Liberty University among Republican candidates seeking the nomination to take on Rep. Tom Perriello when Liberty U is not even located in that Congressional District?
Americans United for Life is demanding that Elena Kagan's confirmation hearing be delayed.
The Susan B. Anthony List announced that it was going to be spending $215,000 on behalf of California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.
Gary Bauer wrote the following paragraph entirely without irony: "Governor Jindal is furious that more federal resources have not been brought to bear in the clean-up and containment effort. Sixty-five miles of Louisiana coastline have been damaged by oil, which has penetrated as far as 10 miles into the Louisiana marshlands. Jindal is demanding that the federal government stop delaying the construction of artificial sand berms to block the oil’s advance."
Finally, the quote of the day from the AFA's Bryan Fischer: "The problem with Rand Paul's critics is that they actually agree with him, but don't realize it. In their mindless pursuit of dreary, government imposed mediocrity and sameness, they have failed to see that they in fact are full-fledged racists, racists of a deeper dye than anything of which they accuse Mr. Paul."
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/25/2010 2:42 pm
It was about a year ago that I wrote a seemingly throwaway post about the fact that Bryan Fischer had been promoted from his position running the Idaho Values Alliance, the state affiliate of the American Family Association, to a position as director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy with the AFA itself and the host of a daily two-hour radio program for the organization.
Since then, Fischer has proven himself to be among the most radically right-wing figures within the contemporary Religious Right movement.
Just last week he declared on his radio program that "God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day," approvingly citing a story from the Book of Numbers about a man who killed two people with a spear for engaging in sexual immorality.
But yesterday he managed to outdo himself once again, declaring that Adolf Hitler was gay and that he surrounded himself with gay soldiers because only gays were willing to be savage and brutal enough to carry out his agenda:
So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual soldiers basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.
I feel that I should point out that Fischer is listed as a "confirmed speaker" at the next Family Research Council Values Voter Summit as are, as of today, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Mike Pence, and Mike Huckabee.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/25/2010 12:02 pm
Last week I wrote a post noting that I was thankful that I didn't have to write the standard "what it means" analysis post after every election, mainly because if freed me from having to flagrantly twist the election results to support my agenda.
Case in point - this release from the National Organization for Marriage, via Good As You, hailing the Republican victory in the special election in Hawaii:
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) President Brian Brown reacts to the victory of Charles Djou in Hawaii's special election with the following statement:
“Charles Djou's victory shows that when it comes to marriage there are no red or blue states, only Americans who believe in the common sense idea that marriage is the union of husband and wife. The National Organization for Marriage reached out to 100,000 likely primary voters in the last days of the campaign to inform Hawaii voters that Charles Djou would protect the people's right to vote for marriage. Djou is the first GOP Congressman to be elected from the district in 20 years, and he defeated two openly pro-gay marriage candidates. Djou is Hawaii's Scott Brown. He won because he refused to concede that a seat in Congress belongs to any politician or political party. It's the people's seat and the people of Hawaii have once again spoken for marriage."
That is how you try to frame it so that it bolsters your agenda. In contrast, this is how you explain it if you are being accurate:
Charles Djou, a Republican city councilmember from Honolulu, has won the special congressional election in Hawaii's 1st Congressional District vacated by Democrat Neil Abercrombie, who resigned to focus on his gubernatorial campaign.
Djou won when the top two Democrats — former Rep. Ed Case and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa — refused to make way for the other and insisted on staying in the race. The resulting split of the Democratic vote allowed Djou to win the seat with just under 40 percent of the vote. Hanabusa received 31 percent and Case 28 percent.
There were two Democrats in the race, both of whom refused to drop out. They ended up getting 59% of the vote, but split it, thereby allowing Djou to win with 40%.
Does NOM really believe that anyone is buying their laughably ridiculous self-serving spin on this?
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/25/2010 10:57 am
The central issue throughout the entire Rifqa Bary saga was Bary's contention that her Muslim parents were going to kill her for converting to Christianity and that, for her own safety, she had to flee to Florida and continues to refuse to have anything to do with her parents.
Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim teenager from Columbus who converted to Christianity and ran away to Florida, is being treated for uterine cancer.
Rifqa, now 17, has already undergone two operations and will have a third one Thursday, according to a close friend and her former Orlando lawyer.
"The only reason she wants this to be known is she wants people to pray for her," said John Stemberger, who represented Rifqa in her 2009 fight to stay in Florida.
She lost that battle and was returned in October to Columbus, where she lives with a foster family.
She has been in and out of the hospital but remains under the care of the foster family, said Stemberger, who said he spoke to her last week.
Jamal Jivanjee, an ordained pastor who directs an Orlando-based ministry, also confirmed that Rifqa has cancer.
In an email to her friends and supporters, he wrote, "Her situation is very serious, and she will need the help of many people in the weeks and months ahead. ... As soon as Rifqa heals from the major surgery that she will undergo this Thursday, it is expected that she will need to undergo several rounds of chemotherapy. ...
"Rifqa is in desperate need of an army of supporters to know about what is occurring regarding her situation, and to pray for her healing," Jivanjee wrote.
Reached by telephone, Rifqa's father, Mohamed Bary, would not discuss his daughter's health.
But I certainly can imagine how Bary's anti-Islam, right-wing defenders like Pamela Geller will seek to exploit this. Here is Geller's first post on the news and you can already see that she is laying the groundwork to accuse Bary's parents and their lawyers of working to undermine Bary's medical care and trying to take advantage of her condition ... and it is only a matter of time before Geller and her ilk start accusing Bary's parents of trying to use Bary's cancer to do what they have been prevented from doing:
While this is a tragedy, how Rifqa is being victimized by her lawyers and her parents is nothing less than an atrocity. Her lawyers kept her in the dark about her condition -- despite the seriousness of her cancer -- for well over a week while they conferred with her parents and their CAIR-appointed lawyers about her treatment. While most cases like this result in a hysterectomy, Rifqa is only having the advanced malignancy removed. From what I understand, the survival rate in cases like these is only five percent.
Was she allowed to get a second opinion? No.
While she was lying ill, her lawyers brought her parents to her hospital bed. She was awaiting treatment and when she saw them, whereupon she became very agitated and upset. Her parents had to be removed.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/25/2010 10:15 am
When a large group of anti-choice organizations and activists band together in order to protest the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, you assume it is because they are the sorts of people who tend to consider all contraception immoral and a form of abortion.
The following is released by the American Life League and the following groups:
WHO: American Life League , Human Life International, Pro-Life Wisconsin, Pharmacists for Life International, Archdiocese of Mobile Respect Life, Operation Rescue, Jill Stanek, Generation Life/Brandi Swindell, Life Education Ministry, Pro-Life Unity, Movement for a Better America, AMEN (Abortion Must End Now), Pro-Life Action of Oregon, Children of God for Life, Expectant Mother Care/Chris Slattery, Mother and Unborn Baby Care, Defenders of the Unborn, California Right to Life Education Fund, Delaware Pro-Life Coalition, Life Guard, Homeschoolers for Life, Focus Pregnancy Center, Central Texas Voices for Life and Dubuque County Right to Life
WHAT: Protest the Pill Day 2010: The Pill Kills the Environment
This year, birth control advocates are celebrating 50 years of decriminalized hormonal contraceptives. American Life League and our co-sponsors don't think half a century of contaminating our waterways is something to celebrate. Study after study has shown that hormonal estrogen in the water has severely damaged the ecosystem and our health.
Join American Life League and co-sponsors as they launch the largest nationwide protest against the birth control pill.
Who ever would have guessed that right-wing anti-choice activists were such committed environmentalists?
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 5/24/2010 4:04 pm
The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer is one of those Religious Right activsts who takes the Bible so literally that he actually advocates that all of our nation's laws should be based on and uphold Biblical values ... so much so that he recently called for a whale at Sea World to be put to death for killing its trainer in accordance with Scripture.
Which is why this clip from last Friday's radio program is rather concerning, considering that it consists of Fischer approvingly quoting Numbers 25 in which a man named Phinehas saves Israel by killing a man and a woman with a spear for engaging in "sexual immorality."
Fischer compares the "rampant sexual immorality" in the passage to modern day America and says that "what God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day," urging everyone to "be a Phinehas in our own world, and in our own generation":
I want to read a passage that my wife pointed out to me this morning from Numbers 25. This is a story about a man by the name of Phinehas, the nation had lapsed into rampant sexual immorality - I don't know if that sounds familiar to you, it certainly does to me - and Phinehas was motivated to do something about this and he did something very decisive: he found an Israelite in flagrante with a Philistine woman and he ran them both through with a spear, pinned them both to the ground inside their tent, ran his spear through both of them, right into the ground. And that shook up the nation, it got their attention and they transformed, they made a decision, they turned from that kind of behavior and renewed their commitment to follow God.
[Fischer then reads Number 25: 10-13: 10 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 11"Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away My wrath from the sons of Israel in that he was jealous with My jealousy among them, so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in My jealousy. 12"Therefore say, Behold, I give him My covenant of peace; 13and it shall be for him and his descendants after him, a covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the sons of Israel."]
So Phinehas is commended for his zeal, that he was willing to take action, that he was willing to act boldly, he was willing to act decisively out of his jealousy for his God and his jealous desire to see that his people, his nation, would be wholly devoted to God.
So what God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day ... you know, and it's striking here, that here's the actions of one man, here is one man by his action, by his commitment, by his energy, by his commitment, by his willingness to take decisive and assertive action when that's what was called for, he alone was able to turn back the wrath of God from his people, from his nation.
So may his His tribe increase, may each one of us be a Phinehas our own world and in our own generation.
