American Family Association

Yesterday, we noted that Bryan Fischer has launched a full-scale war against Mitt Romney for having hired an openly gay man to serve as his campaign's foreign policy and national security spokesman.

On his radio program yesterday, Fischer revealed that he does not intend to limit his crusade to the Romney camp, but intends to drag the entire Republican Party into it by demanding that the RNC publicly declare where it stands on this issue:

That raises the question about where the Republican Party is at. We need to get some clarification. I called the RNC this morning, had my producer Jan Bryan call the offices of the Republican National Committee, we need some clarification on this. Where is the Republican Party on the issue of homosexual behavior. Do they consider homosexual behavior something that's healthy or harmful? What is their position on Governor Romney hiring somebody who is a homosexual activist to a prominent spokes position? We need to get some answers from the RNC. And, predictably, the Republican National Committee has not called me back.

Last week, it was announced that Mitt Romney‘s campaign had hired Richard Grenell to serve as its foreign policy and national security spokesman. Grenell happens to be openly gay, which has predictably raised the ire of Bryan Fischer, who has had a long-running grudge against Romney.

So, of course, Fischer has now written a new column calling the move a "deliberate poke in the eye to the pro-family community" and demanding that Romney answer some specific questions and take several specific steps to "contain the collateral damage from this spectacularly misbegotten decision":

For starters, he can answer one question for the American people: “Gov. Romney, is homosexual behavior healthy or harmful? Yes or no?”

If he answers “Yes,” how can he expect the pro-family community to support him? If he answers “No,” then why he is putting someone who engages in such behavior in such a prominent position in his campaign?

Here’s a follow-up question: “If your appointment wasn’t about homosexuality, why are so many gay groups celebrating your choice?”

If the Secret Service scandal teaches us one thing, it is this: a man’s private sexual conduct matters when we’re talking about public office.

Given the propensity for members of the homosexual community to engage in frequent and anonymous sexual encounters, the risk to national security of having a homosexual in a high-ranking position with access to secret information is obvious.

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Romney needs to make the following public commitments, and the sooner the better, if he is to have any hope of generating even modest enthusiasm in the base. And he needs to remember that he cannot win without the base. If he’s going to pander, he’d better start pandering in a big, fat hurry.

1. Publicly support the North Carolina marriage amendment. He needs to go to North Carolina and publicly declare his support for its marriage amendment, which will be on the ballot May 8. He must not hide behind the skirts of the 10th Amendment, as he has sought to do on RomneyCare. We must hear him say, loudly and clearly, “I support natural marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and I urge North Carolina voters to vote for man-woman marriage on May 8.”

2. Commit to a vigorous defense and implementation of DOMA. Then in his Liberty University address on May 12, he must publicly declare that he will aggressively defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. “I hold the institution of marriage in the highest regard, and will faithfully discharge my duty as your president to uphold and defend the laws of the United States. My administration will pursue the most vigorous defense of DOMA possible, and it will be faithfully implemented on my watch.”

3. Revoke federal spousal benefits for domestic partners of homosexuals.Then, also in his commencement address, he must publicly declare that he will revoke President Obama’s illegal decision to grant spousal benefits to gay partners of federal employees, which is flatly prohibited by DOMA. He needs to tell the good folk at Liberty, “I believe in natural marriage, and I believe in following the law. I will honor the institution of natural marriage in all my public policy decisions, and so on my first day in office, I will issue an order reserving federal spousal benefits exclusively for husbands and wives in natural marriages.” And he needs to make it clear that this includes Richard Grenell as well.

4. Support reinstatement of the ban on homosexual conduct in the military. He must declare a change of position on homosexuality in the military, and openly support the reinstatement of the ban on homosexual conduct in the armed forces. He must say, “As commander-in-chief, I publicly support reinstatement of the ban on homosexuality in our military. We must make unit cohesion, military recruitment, and military readiness our highest priorities. We cannot allow the introduction of sexual tension into the ranks to detract from our mission of protecting and defending the people of the United States. The armed forces should not be used as a laboratory for social engineering, and that will not happen on my watch.”

5. Support right of chaplains to teach biblical view of homosexuality. He must also declare that, as commander-in-chief, he will support the right of military chaplains to openly criticize the normalization of homosexual behavior. “As your commander-in-chief, I will respect freedom of religion, speech and conscience for all our military chaplains. They will have the freedom under my leadership to teach a biblical view of marriage and sexuality without any fear of punishment.”

6. Publicly pledge to veto ENDA. He must declare that he opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and will veto it if it reaches his desk. ENDA will provide special employment protections for those who engage in unnatural sexual behaviors and will subject every values-driven employer who makes unnatural sexual conduct an issue in personnel decisions to a potentially crippling lawsuit. “As president, I will protect the constitutional rights of every employer in America to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. I will see to it that my administration vigorously defends the right of every values-driven employer to hire employees who reflect his values and the values of his company.”

Earlier this week, President Obama was speaking in Ohio where he was making the point that it is important that every person being given a fair shot at success because he, like so many others, "wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth."  The press widely reported the remark as being a shot at Mitt Romney, though the White House insists that it wasn't.

Bryan Fischer played the Obama clip on his radio program yesterday and tied it to the Right Wing's favorite story this week about how, as a child living in Indonesia, Obama was "introduced to dog meat," leading Fischer to comment that Obama "had no room for a silver spoon in there [because] he was stuffing his face with dog that he hunted and killed and skinned and barbequed himself":

Yesterday, NPR's "Morning Edition" ran a story about the practice, especially among conservatives, to use Biblical passages as justification for their right-wing economic agenda. 

This is something we have been writing about for a while and our colleague Peter Montgomery was even quoted in the NPR piece, so it was pretty interesting to see Bryan Fischer suddenly join the movement today on his radio program when he declared that the "secret of capitalism" came right out of Mark 10:45, which says that "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

In fact, said Fischer, the entire concept of capitalism "is built on the teaching of Jesus himself" and this passage is even the source for the idea that the customer is always right:

Last year, Bryan Fischer openly declared that Mitt Romney's Mormon faith "ought to be an issue in 2012" and that Romney should be forced to publicly declare whether he embraces Mormon teachings that conflict with the Bible so that voters can decide "whether they want somebody with those convictions sitting in the Oval Office."

Since then, Fischer has repeatedly attacked Romney over his faith, calling him a "spiritually-compromised candidate" and declaring  that a Mormon president represents a threat to the "spiritual health" of the nation.

But Fischer has also realized that openly attacking Romney's faith in this manner might be problematic even at the American Family Association, so he has settled upon a trick whereby he continues to do so while pretending that is really the media which is attacking Romney's Mormon faith.

Fischer announced this trick a few months ago when wrote a piece claiming that if Romney became the Republican nominee, "the winger-left media" would not hesitate to highlight "the more unusual aspects of Mormon theology."  And he has been using this framing ever since as he launches repeated attacks upon Mormonism while thinking he is avoiding responsibility simply because he is pretending that it is the media that is really attacking Romney's faith.

Yesterday, while discussing Hilary Rosen's comment about Ann Romney, Fischer demonstrated exactly how he does it, using the flap as cover to engage in a long attack on Mormon theology while saying that the media needs to ask Mitt and Ann Romney about it because the media once asked Michele Bachmann about her theology:

So, based on nothing more than a random comment made about Ann Romney, Fischer is now demanding that the Romney's publicly address the specific tenets of their faith ... while blaming it all on the media.

As we have said before, if Fischer actually thinks that he is fooling anyone with this pathetic charade, he is even less self-aware than we ever could have imagined.

During yesterday's program when Bryan Fischer was warning that electing a "spiritually-compromised" Mormon like Mitt Romney would weaken and endanger America, he was restating his theory that liberals and the media are now going to start attacking Romney's faith, claiming that if the media thinks that the beliefs of Evangelicals are odd, then "what Mormons believe is in coo-coo land."

That somehow sent him off on a tangent about science, during which he declared that he didn't believe in global warming or evolution because he is "committed to science."  And since "evolution is completely irrational and scientifically bankrupt," the "most logical thing in the world" is to believe that God created the universe:

Sadly, Fischer never got around to explaining how the theory of evolution is even remotely related to the laws of thermodynamics or how the latter undermines the former, as he eventually got back and track and returned to his anti-Mormon diatribe.

White conservative commentators have looked into the Trayvon Martin case and many have seem to concluded that the real victim is not Martin, but white people who are now that targets of racism from black people, President Obama in particular.

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association last week on her radio show claimed that whites are the new victims of racism:

I said the other day, I just hate this phrase, ‘I have black friends.’ I know that it’s true; I know that black men are singled out and it is horrific, and I know that blacks have suffered tremendous racism. But I think now it’s getting to be where many whites are feeling more the victim now with the press going the way that it is and things going the way they are, so it’s stirring up lots of trouble.

Channeling Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who said President Obama “poured gasoline on the racialist fires” by using the Martin shooting to “gin up the black vote,” Roger Hedgecock in WorldNetDaily compares Obama to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and accuses him of inciting racism against whites:

Obama maintains black-voter support by signaling that white racism is holding him back, preventing him from accomplishing everything he promised. It’s the oldest excuse for black failure. And it is the gateway to the “payback time” mentality of too many young black males – a mentality that is claiming lives all across the U.S. today.

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In schools, in colleges, in courtrooms and in too many workplaces, white Americans are feeling the “payback time” attitude of too many black Americans.

Obama has tolerated and even encouraged black triumphalism, played to the black grievance culture and encouraged the “payback time” mentality.

American voters pinned their hopes for racial healing on Barack Obama. They got Louie Farrakhan instead.

Not to be outdone, Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman dubs Obama a “racist, black-Muslim sympathizer and Jew-and-white hater” who is “the biggest and most evil whore of all”:

No one would ever doubt that the likes of the so-called Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the media hacks of MSNBC would use this unfortunate incident to whip up racial divide and hatred for their own monetary benefit, but to see our president join in the chorus of exploitative white haters underscores just how low their whoredom has sunk. Obama's vocal and loud endorsement of Trayvon Martin as a boy he would like to have sired sent a message to the nation and the world — much like his offensive threatening statements about the sovereignty of the Supreme Court — that he does not respect the rule of law and that he, as the nation's fuehrer, can decide for the rest of us who is guilty and who is innocent. And, true to his black-Muslim leanings and associations, President Obama refused to, as is the correct approach, keep his mouth shut so as not to influence law-enforcement authorities or any eventual jury. Instead, he improperly used his office to judge for himself, and then broadcast, who caused the sad death of this young boy.

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So, once again, Obama has shown his true colors; he is a racist, black-Muslim sympathizer and Jew-and-white hater himself. For this, with all of the whoredom on display in the last weeks, he wins the prize for the biggest and most evil whore of all.

We live in a dangerous world, and our president is making it even more perilous. He is playing a key role in fomenting racial and religious hatred and undermining our democracy and our nation's security by endorsing terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and consistently allowing the Islamic republic of Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves, and we may soon join them — particularly given the Iranian mullahs' vows to use these weapons to wipe not only the state of Israel but all infidels, Jews and Christians alike, off the face of the earth — according to the Islamic will of Allah!

As we have noted several times before, Bryan Fischer is a lot of things ... but self-aware is not one of them.

And nothing better demonstrates this fact than this clip from his program yesterday where he revisited a false claim that a caller had made during a debate the two had on the program the day before, with Fischer concluding that "people on the Left" never check their facts and simply repeat false information ... which is something he would never do:

This is the same Bryan Fischer who, in recent months, has declared that Hitler was gay, the Tea Party ended slavery in America, HIV does not cause AIDS, JC Penney was causing for breast cancer and suicide, and Bill Clinton was responsible for the rise in oral cancer.

The extremist group ACT! for America has combined the far right’s loathing of public schools and animosity towards Muslims into a new report, warning that public school students are “indoctrinated in Islam” through their history textbooks which have turned classrooms into “recruiting grounds for Islam.” Yesterday, we noted that ACT! for America’s Executive Director Guy Rodgers and Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly urged parents to imitate notorious textbook censor Norma Gabler. Today the organization’s president Brigitte Gabriel appeared on the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios in the Morning where she claimed that their new “shocking” report reveals that textbook publishers and Muslims are using the same tactics as Adolf Hitler to indoctrinate students:

Gabriel: What we found was shocking and we found that history is being whitewashed, Islam is given preferential treatment in public schools, and political correctness has literally altered how history is being taught in our public schools to our children.

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How can the future generation of America protect America and make the right decisions that will protect and serve America and keep America a great nation if they are being fed mistruths about historical, factual information. Hitler made a very important statement, Hitler said, ‘give me the children, I will change society in ten years,’ and that is exactly what he did and look where we ended up and we’re seeing the same thing happening with our children right now. And by the way, all paid for by our tax dollars in public schools.

Later in the show, Rios, who earlier said that secular Jews have been “the worst enemies of the country,” asked Gabriel why “Jewish leftists in this country” such as Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman “are eager to embrace Islam.” Gabriel, of course, blamed universities for teaching “anti-America and anti-Israel” material with the help of Saudi oil money. She even claimed that President Obama’s supposed belief that “America is bad” and must apologize for its wrongdoings “is a direct result of what is being taught at our universities.”

Rios: I read a quote from Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, you know Jewish leftists in this country are eager to embrace Islam, even in Europe, they are denying, they are trying to bridge the gap, they’re saying ‘oh, no, no, no, our Islam brothers,’ even though there’s slaughter going on in Europe. We see the American left, we see commentators, and I have to tell you, firsthand knowledge here in Washington, we see even Republicans in leadership here bending over backwards to accommodate Islam. Why? From your perspective, as a person born and raised in the Middle East now living here and married to an American, why are Americans doing this?

Gabriel: Great question because this is exactly why we are talking about the importance of education. In my first book, Because They Hate, I dedicated chapters to how we’re losing our children on college campuses because for the last sixteen to twenty years, because of the oil wealth, the Saudis have been pumping millions into our universities, setting up Middle East Studies departments and Political Science departments and appointing Arab professors who are anti-America and anti-Israel, to teach our children that America is bad, Israel is evil and the Islamic world is oppressed because of the imperialism of the United States. So you have these children who have been graduating out of our universities for the last twenty years who have been fed a steady diet of mistruth, misrepresentations and hate and resentment against America who are today the policymakers, the decision makers, the one on Capitol Hill, the graduates of our Ivy League universities. Look, we don’t have a Commander-in-Chief, we have an ‘Apologizer-in-Chief’ who never misses an opportunity to apologize on behalf of America because in his mind he thinks America is bad, America has done a lot of wrong in the world that we have to apologize for, and that is a direct result of what is being taught at our universities.