July 2011

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is unsurprisingly down on a California law that makes sure public school students learn about the accomplishments of historical LGBT figures. Fischer, who has previously said that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office,” argued in yesterday’s Focal Point radio program that LGBT people can’t be considered role models “by definition.”

Watch:

You know I say every day that we are fighting a winnable war, and here is more proof. A controversial law in California was enacted last week that’s going to require that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender role models be taught, starting in kindergarten, in California schools. Ladies and gentleman, by definition, somebody who engages in sexually aberrant behavior is not and cannot be a role model, period, end of story.

Michael Savage and World Net Daily have already begun floating the conspiracy theory that this weekend’s massacre and bombing in Norway was a “cover-up.” The talk show host said on his radio show today that Muslims were responsible for the attacks in Norway, and in an interview with WND doubled down on his claims, saying that he now believes that the attacks were “likely a fabrication of the Labour Party,” whose youth retreat was specifically targeted by the right-wing terrorist. Savage went on to essentially echo the rhetoric of the accused terrorist, Andres Behring Breivik, blaming “Eurosocialism,” progressivism, multiculturalism and immigration for the attacks and hoping that they lead to a backlash against Muslims:

The Islamic news angle, Savage said, has faded from the press since Breivik was fingered, even though the lone Norwegian committing both crimes seems to Savage a suspect possibility"The official story makes no sense," Savage told WND. "This looks like a classic conspiracy."

"This has all the appearances of a cover-up," Savage told WND. "They created their Reichstag fire. They found their Timothy McVeigh. They created their Jack Ruby. How could one man have blown up the downtown and then raced to the island to kill the teens?

"This is likely a fabrication of the Labour Party, who needs to hold onto power to enforce their multi-culturalist, Muslim-favoring, anti-nationalist views," he continued, "especially in light of the earlier 'credit' for this atrocity claimed by the radical Muslim group whose leader they were threatening to deport.

"The official story defies logic in the following sense as well," he continued, "if this lone right-winger hated Muslims, as the New York Times is reporting, then why did he slaughter his own people and not Muslims?"

…

Savage said "Norway's 9/11" could have been stopped, "but it grew far too long, nourished by the bile of Eurosocialism."

"I hoped that incidents like this," he said, "will lead Europeans to come to the defense of their own civilizations and clamp down on the hate and intolerance that takes perverse advantage of European tolerance and openness."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has tried to distance himself from the many extreme activists he is working with to put on The Response prayer rally, like the pastor who labeled Oprah Winfrey the harbinger of the Antichrist and the self-proclaimed ‘Apostle’ who called the Statue of Liberty a “demonic idol.” But Perry is open about his ties to advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism, an ideology which demands that fundamentalist Christians take total control over all aspects of society. Dominionism advocate Jim Garlow is directing “National Church Mobilization” for The Response and other Dominionist endorsers of The Response include Cindy Jacobs and David Barton. Even the American Family Association, which is the official host of the prayer rally, now promotes Seven Mountains Dominionism.

Today, Perry appeared on Barton’s radio show WallBuildersLive and announced that he has received support from televangelist James Robison,who is leading the effort to rally the Religious Right around a Perry campaign for the presidency (though of course the rally is “apolitical”). Perry also mentioned that he is working with Loren Cunningham and his “prayer warriors” to mobilize support for The Response.

Who is Loren Cunningham? Cunningham was one of three founders of the radical “Seven Mountains Dominionist” ideology, which he says he received directly from God:

It was August, 1975.My family and I were up in a little cabin in Colorado. And the Lord had given me that day a list of things I had never thought about before. He said "This is the way to reach America and nations for God.And {He said}, "You have to see them like classrooms or like places that were already there, and go into them with those who are already working in those areas." And I call them "mind-molders” or "spheres”. I got the word "spheres” from II Corinthians 10 where Paul speaks in the New American Standard about the "spheres” he had been called into. And with these spheres there were seven of them, and I’ll get to those in a moment. But it was a little later that day, the ranger came up, and he said, "There is a phone call for you back at the ranger’s station.” So I went back down, about 7 miles, and took the call. It was a mutual friend who said, "Bill Bright and Vonnette are in Colorado at the same time as you are. Would you and Darlene come over and meet with them? They would love to meet with you.” So we flew over to Boulder on a private plane of a friend of ours.And as we came in and greeted each other, {we were friends for quite a while}, and I was reaching for my yellow paper that I had written on the day before.And he said, "Loren, I want to show you what God has shown me!” And it was virtually the same list that God had given me the day before. Three weeks later, my wife Darlene had seen Dr. Francis Shaffer on TV and he had the same list! And so I realized that this was for the body of Christ.

I gave it for the first time in Hamburg, Germany at the big cathedral there to a group of hundreds of young people that had gathered at that time. And I said, "These are the areas that you can go into as missionaries.Here they are: First, it’s the institution set up by God first, the family. After the family was church, or the people of God. The third was the area of school, or education. The fourth was media, public communication, in all forms, printed and electronic. The fifth was what I call "celebration”, the arts, entertainment, and sports, where you celebrate within a culture. The sixth would be the whole area of the economy, which starts with innovations in science and technology, productivity, sales, and service. The whole area we often call it business but we leave out sometimes the scientific part, which actually raises the wealth of the world. Anything new, like making sand into chips for a microchip, that increases wealth in the world. And then of course prediction sales and service helps to spread the wealth. And so the last was the area of government. Now government, the Bible shows in Isaiah 33 verse 22 that there are three branches of government, so it’s all of the three branches: judicial, legislative, and executive. And then there are subgroups under all of those seven groups. And there are literally thousands upon thousands of sub-groups. But those seven can be considered like Caleb: "Give me this mountain,” and they can be a "mountain” to achieve for God.

Dominionist Johnny Enlow explains the necessity to take control over the “government mountain” in particular because “Lucifer sits at the top of this mountain”:

The Mountain of Government is perhaps the most important of the mountains because it can establish laws and decrees that affect and control every other mountain. Therefore, we find Lucifer himself entrenched on this mountain as the usurping "prince” over the nations. Whereas God’s government is established through service and humility, Satan’s government is established through manipulation and pride. Lucifer sits at the top of this mountain, where he specifically functions as the Antichrist. His role over the nations is to stir and raise up whatever would defeat the purposes of God on earth. When he is firmly entrenched in a nation, that nation will manifest the following "antichrist” distinctives.

As Perry prepares his presidential bid, his close ties to extreme brands of fundamentalism continue to emerge.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY recently announced the third in his series of hearings on the “radicalization of the Muslim-American community”—the GOP’s premier venue for demonstrating the kinds of attacks highlighted in PFAW’s latest Right Wing Watch: In Focus report “The Right Wing Playbook on Anti-Muslim Extremism.” As part of his hearings, King plans to call Thomas Joscelyn of the staunchly neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a witness. Joscelyn, from his platform as a writer for the neoconservative Weekly Standard, has questioned the patriotism of organizations and individuals who spoke out against the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, calling the ACLU “Al Qaeda’s useful idiots” and claiming that lawyers who represented accused terrorists “openly opposed the American government.”

In a 2009 column, Joscelyn called the American Civil Liberties Union “Al Qaeda’s Civil Liberties Union” and “al Qaeda’s useful idiots” because the group produced the video “Justice Denied: Voices From Guantanamo,” which featured five Muslims who were imprisoned and abused in Guantanamo Bay and never faced charges. “The ACLU has worked diligently to undermine America's stance in what was formerly known as the ‘war on terror,’” he wrote, “and has even been willing to disseminate propaganda on behalf of our jihadist enemies.” He went on to criticize the ACLU and the Obama administration for opposing the use of military commissions and supporting the right of due process under the law for accused terrorists: “The ACLU cannot tell the difference between us and our enemies--as its own propaganda shows. Therefore, it does not bode well for America's counterterrorism efforts that the Obama administration is in agreement with al Qaeda's useful idiots.”

Joscelyn also jumped on the right-wing smear campaign against Justice Department lawyers who once represented accused terrorists, writing: “Now, we don’t know what assignments these lawyers have taken on inside government. But we do know that they openly opposed the American government for years, on behalf of al Qaeda terrorists, and their objections frequently went beyond rational, principled criticisms of detainee policy.”

Joscelyn also charged the Center for Constitutional Rights with “crude anti-Americanism” because the group condemned bias against Muslim Americans. He also questioned whether accused terrorists should receive any legal representation at all:

CCR’s statement calls to mind the debate some months ago about the role of lawyers in the war on terror. Some have argued that by representing “unpopular” clients they are merely adhering to a noble legal tradition in the same manner as John Adams, who defended British soldiers years prior to the Revolutionary War. Granted, some lawyers probably are compelled by their own notions of legal principle. But not all of them are.

John Adams sought to create a free society in which all faiths can be practiced and none are enforced by the state. He succeeded.

This nation’s second president probably would not appreciate CCR’s smear of the nation he helped found. And CCR is not just standing up for the “right” of a terrorist to receive a fair trial. The organization doubts whether John Adam’s America can be fair to Muslims at all.