Bryan Fischer

We've listened to, and posted, a lot of Alan Colmes' interviews with right-wing figures here in the past, but I don't think we've ever come across one as frustrating and contentious as last night's interview with the AFA's Bryan Fischer. 

I can say for sure that I have never heard Colmes use the word "weasel" so many times in one interview, but it was entirely warranted as he had brought Fischer on to discuss his position that "those 'who practice homosexuality' should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery." 

But Fischer refused to do so, stating, as he did in his follow-up post yesterday, that he never explicitly said that gays should be imprisoned, insisting rather that his point was that gays should be treated exactly the same as intravenous drug abusers. 

When Colmes attempted to get Fischer to explain just what he thinks should happen to drug abusers (and, by extension, gays) Fischer refused to say, simply repeating that whatever the policy is, it ought to be the same for gays.

It went on for twenty minutes as Colmes tried to get Fischer to defend and explain his point, while Fischer played games with semantics and pretended that he was doing so: 

Basically, Fischer's position is that if the law says that drug users get jail time and/or rehabilitation, then that is what should happen to gays as well.  And that view seems to rest entirely upon FDA policy banning gay men and intravenous drug users from donating blood.

I have no idea why Fischer thinks that this FDA policy regarding blood donation means that drug use and gay sex are exactly the same thing and ought to be treated the same in all regards. 

His logic seems to be that:

Intravenous drug use can spread HIV;

Gay male sex can spread HIV;

Intravenous drug use is illegal;

Therefore gay male sex should be illegal.

Of course, intravenous drug use is illegal not because it can spread HIV, but because all drug use is illegal.  Drug use has been illegal for decades in this country, long before the emergence of HIV. 

It is not the spread of HIV that makes drug use illegal, it is the drug use itself that is illegal. 

The fact that the FDA bans both intravenous drug users and gay men from donating blood is fundamentally irrelevant to the legality of either drug use or gay sex. 

For that matter, you know who else is banned from donating blood:

People who have received transplants of animal tissue or organs are excluded from giving blood because of the still largely unknown risks of transmitting unknown or emerging pathogens harbored by the animal donors. People who have recently traveled to or lived abroad in certain countries may be excluded because they are at risk for transmitting agents such as malaria or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).

So, using Fischer's logic, organ donors and people who have lived abroad ought to be subject to the same punishments/treatments as drug users, since they too are banned by the FDA from donating blood for the very same reasons.

I don't really know why I am even posting this, other than to marvel at what passes for punditry at the American Family Association as Bryan Fischer, AFA's Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy, explains in hilariously overwrought terms how President Obama's first year in office has been such a dismal failure that he might not even get a chance to finish out his term: 

There is virtually unanimous agreement that President Obama is toast ... If the Democrats do not insist that Obama resign from office - politically unlikely to be sure - they are liable to be dessicated, withered and powerless by 2012. His coattails are just long enough to drag them all under unless they detach themselves immediately if not sooner.

...

The president is now dead weight, an albatross around the neck of every Democrat member of the House and the Senate. They simply cannot afford to be linked to him anymore. He is blindly pursuing policies that the great majority of Americans flatly reject, and yet he soldiers on, oblivious, perhaps through sheer hubris, to the fact that voters aren't buying the swill he is trying to sell as champagne ... Few in political history, apart from appalling scandal, have fallen so far so fast. He is the Tiger Woods of the political world ... Congressional Democrats now can safely ignore their own president, and in fact must do so to preserve any chance of survival ... He has grossly misread the American public, perhaps again because in his insular and self-adulating world he believes he is the smartest person in the room and is sure that his brilliance will inevitably be recognized by the great unwashed. Ain't gonna happen. The American people are a lot smarter than he thinks, maybe even smarter than he is, and surely wiser when it comes to politics. They will never trust him again about anything.

The president is catastrophically weak and naive when it comes to our war against Islamofascism. He is indifferent, desultory, casual, and lacking in seriousness regarding the threat. The American people know this ... Surely the Democrats in the party will see the same thing, and know that if they back Obama in 2012 they will be backing a loser. Believe me, there will be an underground movement among Democrats to plead with Hillary (or somebody) to save what shreds will remain of their party from The One in the next presidential election.

President Obama has no chance at a second term. And eroding chances of completing his first one.

If this doesn't qualify for one of Andew Sullivan's "Hewitt Awards," I don't know what does.

Apparently not content with the trans-bashing statement his organization released last week regarding Amanda Simpson, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association thought it necessary to write his own blog post attacking her as well:

According to both the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), transgenderism is mental health "disorder." Their word, not mine. A male transgendered individual is so confused and twisted around in his own thinking that he believes he is trapped inside a woman's body.

The world's leading mental health professionals agree that this is a form of mental illness. It is a psychiatric condition which requires therapeutic treatment. It is listed as such in the APA's official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and on the WHO's official International Classification of Diseases.

That's why it is a travesty that the president appointed the former Mitchell Simpson (who now goes by "Amanda") to a prominent position in his administration. What the deviance cabal wants more than anything is society's approval for their sexually aberrant lifestyles.

In fact, that and that alone is what drives the entire homosexual agenda: they want society to affirm their non-normative behavior, and want anyone who disagrees with them to be punished for daring to hold the values that have under-girded civilization for 8,000 years.

Gay activists are making a big deal out of Simpson's New Year's Eve appointment, clearly indicating that this is a milestone moment for them. Mr. Simpson himself said he hopes that "I will soon be one of hundreds."

Simpson, at the expense of some $70,000, has undergone no less than six surgical mutilations in an effort to reject science, biology, his own DNA and his own mental health in a vain effort to pretend he is a woman. He has had his Adam's apple removed, had breasts implanted, his forehead ground down, and his genitals revised.

Simpson was conceived as a male, was knit together as a male by the Creator in the womb of his mother, was born as a male, grew up as a male, married as a male, fathered a son as a male, and remains a male in every single cell of his body. No amount of surgical mutilation is ever going to change that.

He can only view his own sexuality through a transgendered prism by rejecting scientific reality and the stubborn biological truth about his own DNA. He is living in a state of alarming denial.

We rightly condemn the genital mutilation of young girls in Islamic countries. It is simply bizarre to celebrate genital mutilation among American adults, even if that mutilation is self-inflicted.

By appointing Simpson, the president has put the weight of the federal government behind the normalization of sexual confusion, sexual mutilation, and mental health disorders. Simpson, according to the APA and the World Health Organization, is mentally ill and should be in therapy rather than in a position of important public responsibility.

The president is contributing to the terrible practice of defining deviancy down in our culture. This appointment is bad for America and should be rescinded immediately.

Since the Religious Right seems intent on claiming that the APA considers transgenderism to be a "disorder," it would be nice if they were willing to ackloweldge that the APA's recommendations for treating this "disorder" involve gender transition and that the APA calls for "legal and social recognition of transgender individuals consistent with their gender identity and expression" so that they may live "free from discrimination, harassment, violence, and abuse":

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT APA encourages legal and social recognition of transgender individuals consistent with their gender identity and expression, including access to identity documents consistent with their gender identity and expression which do not involuntarily disclose their status as transgender for transgender people who permanently socially transition to another gender role;

...

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT APA supports efforts to provide safe and secure educational environments, at all levels of education, as well as foster care environments and juvenile justice programs, that promote an understanding and acceptance of self and in which all youths, including youth of all gender identities and expressions, may be free from discrimination, harassment, violence, and abuse;

...

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT APA supports the provision of adequate and necessary mental and medical health care treatment for transgender and gender variant individuals;

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT APA recognizes the efficacy, benefit and medical necessity of gender transition treatments for appropriately evaluated individuals and calls upon public and private insurers to cover these medically necessary treatments

Last week we mentioned the situation in North Carolina where conservatives are threatening to sue in an effort to keep an atheist out of office, citing the state Constitution:

When Mr. [Cecil] Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternate oath that does not require officials to swear on a Bible or refer to “Almighty God.”

That has riled conservative advocates, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina’s Constitution that disqualifies officeholders “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and was not revised when North Carolina amended its Constitution in 1971.

One opponent, H. K. Edgerton, is threatening to file suit against the city to challenge Mr. Bothwell’s swearing in. “My father was a Baptist minister,” Mr. Edgerton said. “I’m a Christian man. I have problems with people who don’t believe in God.” Mr. Edgerton is a local civil rights leader and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black Southerners.

David Morgan, the head of a conservative weekly newspaper, The Asheville Tribune, said city officials had shirked their duty to uphold the state’s laws by swearing in Mr. Bothwell.

The Supreme Court already ruled unanimously against such religious test provisions back in 1961 in a case out of Maryland:

We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs ... This Maryland religious test for public office unconstitutionally invades the appellant's freedom of belief and religion and therefore cannot be enforced against him.

But Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, while not mentioning the Bothwell case specifically, doesn't seem to a) care or b) be aware of the Court's ruling and says that such restrictions are perfectly constitutional:

Our secular fundamentalist friends are fond of citing Article VI of our Constitution as proof that this foundational document is non-religious in nature. It reads, ""but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

It's worthy of note that this applies only to federal offices, for the prior clause makes it clear that the Founders were distinguishing between the federal government - "the United States" - and the legislatures of the individual states, which are referred to as "the several State Legislatures." Both are included in the previous phrase, "all executive Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution." (emphasis mine)

This makes it clear that while officers at both the state and federal level were required to support the Constitution, the restriction on the application of a "religious Test" was reserved for officials in the federal government. States were left to apply explicitly religious tests if they chose, and most did.

Almost all states required holders of public office to declare a belief in God, and many went beyond that to require a belief in the inspiration of both the Old and New Testaments, which in effect limited public service to self-professing Christians. This was just fine with the Founders, who wanted the states to have complete liberty in such matters.

But they were also clear that no religious test was to be applied as a condition of public service at the federal level. What the Founders meant by this, however, was this and this alone: an individual did not need to belong to a particular Christian denomination to be eligible for federal office. That's it.

Of course, we already knew that Fisher had some rather unique views regarding the First Amendment and the separation of church and state and doesn't think that Muslims should be allowed to serve in the military.