Values Voter Summit

Right Wing Leftovers

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 9/20/2010 5:51 pm
  • Rep. Mike Pence won the Values Voter Straw Poll.

  • The Religious Right is confident that its issues will be included in the forthcoming House GOP Contract with America.

  • Mike Huckabee says "contrary to published reports I believe that there is a way to cover people with pre-existing conditions" and says they "should be covered and can be covered by individual states creating pools that provide coverage for people in high-risk categories."

  • Bryan Fischer continues to pen column after column rooted entirely in his own ignorance, declaring with finality that "we have won the global warming debate."

  • Apparently, Christine O'Donnell's past statements are too much for even CWA to defend, leaving them to simply attack the media and conservative men. 

  • Quote of the day from Peter Sprigg opposing repeal of DADT on the grounds that it'll force the US taxpayers to support all those soldiers who get AIDS: "This creates a financial problem, since taxpayers will have to pay for the health care of HIV-infected service members for the rest of their lives through the military and veterans’ health programs."

  • The AFA's Don Wildom received the James C. Dobson Vision and Leadership Award at the Values Voter Summit - here is the intro video they produced:

Heritage Foundation on Money and Morals

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Monday, 9/20/2010 10:45 am

The Heritage Foundation, one of the co-sponsors of the Values Voter Summit, held a breakout conversation to push one of the conference’s central themes: the indivisibility of social and economic conservativism. The overall political goal was aptly summed up by the Heritage Foundation’s Jennifer Marshall, who spoke of the need to call attention to the “moral bankruptcy” of the war on poverty and the welfare state.

Heritage has been promoting for some time now “Indivisible,” a small book of essays with a gimmick: Heritage asked people known for being social conservatives to write on an economic theme, and vice versa. Anti-gay crusader Harry Jackson, for example, contributed a chapter on the evils of the minimum wage, which he says is a form of coercion of employers that “reminds me of slavery.”
 
One of the speakers on the Heritage panel was Stephen Moore, founder of the radically anti-tax Club for Growth and now the senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal’s notoriously right-wing editorial board. Moore said the growing national debt erodes the nation’s moral fabric, and he called for an end to the progressive income tax and the estate tax (described as a “death tax,” which he called “obscene.”) Moore also called global warming “the biggest myth of the last one hundred years,” suggesting that the bumper crop of reality- and science-denying congressional candidates may have friendly WSJ editorials to fall back on when challenged on their climate change denialism.
 
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, now at the Family Research Council, warned that federal spending in the U.S. is approaching levels of western Europe, and warned that anytime government has gotten big “it has accelerated the collapse of the most basic economic unit in our country and in western civilization – the family.”
 
The workshop came to an awkward end when an audience member who said he has complications from diabetes and tens of thousands of dollars in chronic medical expenses wondered what the panel would offer people like him once they abolish “Obamacare,” and the panelists had nothing much to offer beyond standard right-wing talking points about medical malpractice, medical savings accounts, and marketplace competition. He didn’t seem convinced that they understood or cared about his problem.

BS on DADT

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Saturday, 9/18/2010 3:15 pm

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, a former Marine, hosted an offensive Values Voter summit panel on the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which featured Sgt. Brian Fleming, a young veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan and retired Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis. Maginnis recycled bogus charges that if the ban on gays serving in the military is lifted, chaplains would be required to conduct gay weddings, and therefore Bible-believing churches would no longer send chaplains to the military.

Fleming claimed to speak for 99 percent of those in the military who he said would oppose repeal (not a reality-based claim). He said that it’s important for soldiers to develop a sense of unity, but suggested that wouldn’t be possible with openly gay soldiers because you couldn’t trust their motives when they said they wanted to be your friend.
 
Perkins contributed his own offensive and ridiculous commentary in trying to dismiss the experience of allied armed forces that allow gays to serve. Those armies, said Perkins, “participate in parades, they don’t fight wars to keep the world free.” Um, Britain? Israel? Aren’t these the same right-wing leaders who have been slamming Obama for what they say is his disrespectful attitude toward our allies? 

Embracing Ergun

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Saturday, 9/18/2010 2:51 pm

 

It was somewhat surprising to see Ergun Caner listed as a main-stage speaker at the Values Voter Summit.   After all, Caner was recently ousted from his post as the head of Liberty University’s theological seminary.  Caner was demoted, but not fired, after the media picked up on bloggers’ investigative work exposing lies and contradictions in the “Jihadi to Jesus” life story Caner had told since 9-11. That story made him an evangelical superstar and brought him to Liberty U.
 
At the Values Voter Summit, it was clear why the Religious Right is standing by Caner.   He’s an entertaining speaker who had overseen big growth at Liberty. He might have made a career as one of those stand-up comedians who tells lots of jokes about how husbands will never understand their wives.
 
After all the jokes, he gave the audience the same kind of charge so many speakers have: it’s your time to take a stand and get involved in the coming elections. He told participants that they will be appointed, anointed, and armed by God, so they won’t have to fear the media or people who will abuse and attack them. He sounded a bit self-pitying when he warned that people will mock you, stalk you on twitter, call you names, and question your motives.
 
But in spite of all he’s been through, he still can’t seem to tell his story without embellishing the tale. He told the audience that when he converted to Christianity as a teenager, he “lost my family, my father, my home, my culture.” That could easily be misleading: while Caner’s Muslim father apparently did disown him after his conversion, Caner had been living with his mother since his parents had divorced years before.
 
Maybe Caner should review his own remarks. “We would rather lose doing the right thing than win while compromising the truth.”

Bryan Fischer At the Values Voter Summit

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Saturday, 9/18/2010 12:34 pm

Speaking today at the Values Voter Summit, Bryan Fischer used his stage time to lay out various reasons why Christians need to be involved in politics - like the fact that Christians are needed in order to clean up the messiness, otherwise our government will be run by atheists and pagans:

So Fischer says that, in his experience, the internal dealings of the church are way worse than anything he ever saw in politics ... but the reason that Christians need to be involved in politics is so that they can "clean that mess up"?  So who is causing all the messes in the church then?  Atheists and pagans? 

Anyway, I just decided to go ahead and post Fischer's entire speech because, frankly, there is just way too much good stuff in here:

Values Voters' Angry Afternoon Tea

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Saturday, 9/18/2010 11:38 am

The afternoon of the first day of the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC, continued the morning’s themes: denunciations of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama axis of evil and celebrations of all things Tea Party – and the insistence that the religion and values agenda of the Religious Right is inseparable from the Tea Party’s limited government goals.

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum kicked off the session with a reprise of his current stump speech, a denunciation of secularism and an assertion that we can’t have economic freedom without virtuous people, and we can’t have virtuous people without lots of religion in our public life. Like other speakers, he called this November’s elections the most important of our lifetime.
 
Gary Bauer made it clear he was vying for “angriest man” honors, hectoring the audience with bitter complaints about liberals treating the Constitution like toilet paper and the president trying to “set one class against another in the rawest class warfare.” He insisted that “this country is in shock about what’s being done to our nation.” The country is “sick and tired of being lectured by liberal elites.” Bauer claimed, ridiculously, that “almost none” of America’s elites believe the 9-11 attacks were caused by radical Islam. When he attacked Obama and Bloomberg for defending the rights of Muslims to build a cultural center in New York, shouts of “traitor” were heard from the audience. (In contrast, there was only scattered tepid applause when Bauer described as “foolish” the Florida pastor who threatened to burn copies of the Koran.) Bauer ended with a graphic recounting of the violence that took place on the 9-11 flight brought down by the passengers, and demanded that people show the same kind of mettle in taking back America.
 
Delaware’s new GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell urged people to remember how despondent they felt in the early days of the Obama administration, when conservatives were told, she said, to curl up in a fetal position for eight years. “Well,” she exulted, “how things have changed.” O’Donnell also railed against the “ruling class elites” who look down on Tea Party activists and insisted, “there are more of us than there are of them.” She said Tea Partiers are shouting back at these would-be masters, “You’re not the boss of me!” She encouraged people to keep fighting. “We aren’t trying to take back our country, we ARE our country.”
 
The afternoon’s “surprise guest” was not Sarah Palin, as some had speculated, but Dale Peterson – the guy from Alabama whose choppy, quick-edited, gun-toting ad running for agriculture commissioner became a YouTube sensation. Peterson was seemingly meant to be the authentic voice of Tea Party America. He said Obama hates America and is doing all he can to bring down America. Peterson later told journalist Sarah Posner that he doesn’t believe President Obama was born in the U.S.
 
A Tea Party panel brought together three activists who told stories about their own transformations from being moms and conservatives who minded their own business to becoming activists.  Activists Katie Abram and Billie Tucker said their Tea Party work was guided by God waking them up early in the morning with instructions, the same way, one said, God does with Glenn Beck. Tucker describes a disagreement among organizers of their local tea party group. When one argued against adding moral issues to the mission, Tucker responded, saying “God did not wake me up for four months at four in the morning to say, ‘Billie, we’ve got a tax issue.’ He woke me up because he said my country doesn’t love me like it used to love me.”
 
Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express said her group’s mission was focused on fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets; she credited Rick Santelli’s rant about the mortgage meltdown with lighting the fire. Kremer, who worked for Joe Miller’s Senate campaign before heading to Delaware to campaign for Christine O’Donnell, urged activists to focus on the fall elections. “The time has come to put down the protest signs and pick up the campaign signs and engage,” she said. “If we’re going to truly effect change it’s going to be at the ballot box.”

VVS Double Whammy: Smearing Gay Soldiers and US Allies

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 9/17/2010 6:20 pm

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis warned Americans that the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell will make the military weaker, understaffed and morally corrupt. They went on to say that military forces which allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly no longer participate in wars, only parades. However, Great Britain and Australia, two countries that have contributed significant numbers of soldiers to the war in Iraq and are close allies of the US, both allow gays to serve openly. Israel's military also permits gay and lesbian troops in its ranks, as do NATO countries including Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain and France, all of which have forces in Afghanistan. Because at the Values Voter Summit, maligning the military forces of key American allies like Israel, Great Britain, and Australia is acceptable as long as it serves the greater goal of denigrating gays and lesbians.

Maginnis: That's why countries like the ten largest militaries in the world, that have the ten largest militaries in the world say 'no, this isn't the thing to do.' They spin this as if Great Britain and we ought to copy them and the Dutch. Well the fact is that 80 percent of the militaries in the world don't embrace this particular view. 

Perkins: Well, those that do, they're the ones that participate in parades, they don't fight wars to keep the nation and the world free. So there's a big difference.

VVS Video Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 9/17/2010 5:40 pm

Here are some other good videos from today's speakers at the Values Voters Summit:

Tea Party Leader Rejects Calls to Take On Social Issues

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 9/17/2010 5:19 pm

Amy Kremer, Chairman of the Tea Party Express, was attending the Values Voter Summit as a panelist for a discussion about "The Tea Party's Place in American Politics."  But prior to that, she sat down with Bryan Fischer to talk politics and while the majority of the interview was celebratory, with the two agreeing on how great it is to see Tea Party candidates like Christine O'Donnell making waves, the discussion got rather tense once Fischer started asking Kremer whether the Tea Party would take a stand on social issues.

Fischer was just on NPR yesterday having this same debate with another Tea Party leader pressed Kremer to assure him that the Tea Party movement would support their agenda - and though she seemed a bit uncomfortable having to even talk about it, to her credit Kremer told Fischer to his face that that was not going to happen, saying that if they start talking about issues like abortion and gay marriage, the movement will fall apart:

Rick Santorum: No Families in Poor Neighborhoods

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 9/17/2010 4:57 pm

In one of the most demeaning parts of a rather outlandish speech, former Pennsylvania Senator and possible presidential candidate Rick Santorum asserted at the Values Voter Summit that families do not exist in poor neighborhoods:

The size and scope of government is directly related to the virtue of her people. Go into the neighborhoods in America where there is a lack of virtue, what will you find? Two things. You will find no families, no mothers and fathers together in marriage. And you will find government everywhere. Police, social service agencies, why? Because without faith, family and virtue, government takes over.

Schlafly: We Spend More Money Supporting Unmarried People Than On National Defense

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 9/17/2010 4:36 pm

Bryan Fischer broadcast his "Focal Point" radio program live from the Values Voter Summit today and promised that Rick Santorum would be on as a guest during the second hour ... but Santorum never showed up and Fischer never provided an explanation of what happened?  Is it possible that Fischer is even too extreme for someone like Santorum to be agree to be seen with him?

Of course, that was not a problem for Phyllis Schlafly who sat down with this Fischer to discuss the tensions between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives over the focus of the conservative agenda, with Schlafly making the case that social issues are important for economic reasons ... like the fact that the "largest sum of money, even bigger than national defense, is spent on supporting people who are not married":

Strong Morning Tea for Values Voters

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Friday, 9/17/2010 2:09 pm

 

We, the morning people, started the day with a breakfast hosted by Liberty University and Liberty Counsel, which promised to help us oldsters understand the Millennial Generation (defined here as born since 1980). Schooling us were two Millennials, Rev. Johnnie Moore, a VP and campus pastor at Liberty, and Dr. Johsua Straub, from the American Association of Christian Counselors.
 
Millennials, it turns out, are distrusting and disillusioned and have a “mangled” foundation of truth, based on their parents’ divorces and the cultural sewer they have grown up in, yet they’re still optimistic and passionate about trying to make a difference in the world.
 
The good news, say Moore and Straub, is that Millennials believe in God, are anti-abortion, and have moved away from the Democratic Party since 2008. The bad news is that many of them have fled organized religion, have little taste for partisan politics, tend to cohabit with partners before marriage, and support gay couples’ freedom to marry. The key to engaging Millennials, they say, is not with a hard political message, but with a “relational” approach. Everyone in attendance was urged to find their own “Timothy” and devote time to being a mentor.
 
So clearly the audience for the Friday morning session was not the turned-off-by-politics Millennials described at breakfast. Friday’s session was a parade of harsh partisan attacks on Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama,and anyone who supports their America-destroying values. The session featured Religious Right and Tea Party folk heroes like Sens. James Inhofe and Jim DeMint and Rep. Michele Bachmann, as well as potential presidential contenders Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Rep. Mike Pence. Huckabee backers handed Huck PAC stickers and signs to people on the way in, hoping to boost his showing in the presidential straw poll.
 
The overriding theme of the morning – other than speakers trying to out-do each other in their hatred of “Washington” and the Democratic leadership – was the impossibility of separating the anti-government message of the Tea Party from the “traditional values” message of the Religious Right.   One speaker after another hammered home the message: the breakdown in family values creates dysfunctional people that have to rely on government services we can no longer afford. Sen. DeMint declared that you can’t be a true fiscal conservative if you don’t accept that our culture is founded in Judeo-Christian values.
 
Get used to hearing about American exceptionalism, because that’s the rhetorical glue that right-wing leaders are using to bind economic and social conservatives. America is unique because we don’t want government to take care of us, and we can only survive that way if Americans turn back to God, oppose abortion, and keep gay couples from getting married. An interminable Heritage Foundation video declared that “faith is necessary for liberty.”
 
And don’t even get started on gays in the military. Sen Inhofe used his time to urge people to contact their senators and oppose an upcoming defense authorization vote because it will include language repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and permitting abortion in military hospitals.
 
Also on display were typical cheap shots at “Washington elites,” like those who Michele Bachmann said believed that Values Voter participants should be feared because they’re people of faith, and boringly predictable jingoism like Mitt Romney’s concluding applause line that America is a force for good and we’re just not going to apologize for it. Now that’s bold. Just imagine what we’ll hear from Rick Santorum and Gary Bauer this afternoon. Not to mention Christine O’Donnell.
 
 

VVS: Rep. Bachmann Explains How Government Works

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 9/17/2010 11:48 am

Rep. Michele Bachmann speaks at the Values Voter Summit, where she says that "the government doesn't create money, we do" and explains how all our powers are derived from God, some of which we give to government while reserving the remainder of that power for themselves ... or something like that ... but that is what is going to toss the Democrats out in November:

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/16/2010 5:42 pm

Right Wing Leftovers

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/16/2010 5:26 pm
  • The American Family Association will be webcasting the Values Voter Summit live - you can watch it here.

  • Several Religious Right groups have "delivered 20,000 petitions from Americans to the Republican leadership in Congress demanding that it feature family values in its soon-to-be-released legislative agenda."

  • Some rare good news: people don't think that Glenn Beck should be in a position as a religious leader.

  • The insanity regarding Texas textbooks just never stops.

  • Mike Huckabee has endorsed Rand Paul.

  • Rob Schenck and Pat Mahoney secured all the copies of the Koran that Terry Jones intended to burn and transported them back to Washington, DC for safe-keeping.

  • The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation has changed its name to the "Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network."

  • Marco Rubio teams up with David Barton.

  • The new head of the Idaho Values Alliance doesn't want to talk about Bryan Fischer.

  • Finally, I have to say that all of the revelations about Christine O'Donnell that are coming out are not really all that surprising.  After all, what do you expect from someone who worked at Concerned Women for America, which was founded by a woman who believes that "Christian values should dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office."

PFAW Sends Letters to GOP Leaders Urging them to Denounce Fischer, Skip Values Voter Summit

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Thursday, 9/16/2010 4:41 pm

People For's President, Michael Keegan, sent the following letter today to Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, all of whom are scheduled to appear this weekend at the Values Voter Summit, alongside the virulantly anti-Muslim and anti-gay Bryan Fischer.

Dear ________:

I am writing to express my concern about your appearance this weekend at the upcoming Values Voter Summit. Among the participants this weekend will be Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association. We urge you to publically denounce Fischer’s record of hate speech and extremism, and reconsider appearing beside him this weekend.

People For’s RightWingWatch.org blog has tracked Fischer’s career over the past several years. His long and prolific record of hate speech and extremism includes the following recent statements. Just in the past year, Fischer has:

I am attaching the names of over 6,500 concerned citizens who have signed the following letter regarding your participation in the summit:

Values Voter Summit Participants:

Reasonable people can, and do, have reasonable differences of opinion. Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, is not a reasonable person.

By sharing a stage with Fischer at this year's Values Voter Summit, public figures acknowledge the credibility of his shameless anti-Muslim and anti-gay propaganda. Any candidate thinking seriously of running for president in 2012 should think twice about standing alongside a man who has called for the deportation of all Muslims in America; insulted Muslim servicemembers; claimed that brave Americans died in vain because Iraq was not converted to Christianity; and called gay people deviants, felons, pedophiles and terrorists. Bryan Fischer is no mainstream conservative. And neither is any person who shares a platform with him while refusing to denounce his hate-filled propaganda.

We urge you to denounce Fischer's extremism and separate yourself from his comments.

For more background on Fischer’s extreme rhetoric, please click here.

Fischer’s appearance with conservative leaders such as yourself lends his extreme hate speech credibility. We urge you to publicly denounce Fischer’s record and to think twice about sharing the stage with him.

Sincerely,

Michael B. Keegan
President, People For the American Way

Bryan Fischer: Two Minutes of Hate

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/16/2010 2:40 pm

As I noted yesterday, nobody can nobody can better make the case that the AFA's Bryan Fischer is an hate-filled bigot better than he can, which is why I put together this video featuring the "best" of Fischer's rants against gays, Muslims, and everyone who does not share his extremist views - enjoy:

So let us ask again: will anyone who will be sharing a stage with Fischer at the Values Voter Summit - Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Bob McDonnell, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Christine O'Donnell - denounce his bigotry?

O'Donnell To Speak At Values Voter Summit, Will She Denounce Fischer's Bigotry?

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/16/2010 9:49 am

Prepare the hero's welcome, because Christine O'Donnell is coming to the Values Voter Summit:

FRC Action PAC-endorsed candidate Christine O'Donnell is confirmed to speak Friday afternoon, September 17 at FRC Action's fifth annual Values Voter Summit. This will be the Delaware Republican Senate nominee's first address to a national gathering of conservative activists since defeating Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) on Tuesday.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA), Gov. Mike Huckabee, Gov. Mitt Romney, Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN), David Limbaugh, Dr. Bill Bennett, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Phyllis Schalfly are among the confirmed speakers attending the Summit from September 17-18 at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C.

Family Research Council Action PAC Chairman Tony Perkins made the following comments:

"We are pleased to announce that Christine O'Donnell will join us to speak at the Values Voter Summit. We applaud her for valiantly defending faith, family and freedom throughout this campaign.

"Christine O'Donnell has spoken out on behalf of the average person in her state who has been burdened by excessive tax and regulatory policies. She has tapped into the deep-seated mistrust that voters have toward big government. As in so many other states, the citizens are angered at the slow and steady loss of individual freedoms due to the massive overreach of government," concluded Perkins.

As such, we can now add O'Donnell to our list of conservative leaders - along with like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Bob McDonnell, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann - who are willing to share a stage with an anti-gay, anti-Muslim bigot like Byran Fischer and have no qualms about attending an event being co-sponsored by the American Family Association, the group that has given Fischer a national platform:

I've never called gay people terrorists although I've said that what they have done is like domestic terrorism. You've got these Mujaheddin on the battlefield setting out these syringes with the HIV virus in it as a way to carry out terrorism.

This is exactly what happens when two males have sex with one another. If one of them is HIV Positive, then it's just like injecting his partner with a needle with HIV.

That's domestic terrorism. I don't know what else you'd call it.

Fischer: Gay Sex Is "Domestic Terrorism. I Don't Know What Else You'd Call It."

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 9/15/2010 3:19 pm

We seems to have entered into a self-perpetuating loop here at Right Wing Watch regarding our coverage of Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association and his upcoming appearance alongside the likes of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Bob McDonnell, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann at the Values Voter Summit.

Yesterday PFAW released a statement calling out all of these leaders for agreeing to appear with Fischer at the event, which Fischer then discussed on his radio show, and which we, in turn, covered here.

Today, we are asking people to sign a petition calling on participants at the Values Voter Summit to denounce Fischer's extremism, which Fischer discussed on his program today and which we are now covering here.

Today, Fischer explicitly mentioned Right Wing Watch by name and thanked us for helping him to get his message out, saying that he stands by his previous statements one hundred percent:

Right Wing Watch paid careful attention to this program yesterday and carved up a lot of my comments into little mini-bits that are on their website. If you want to go to Right Wing Watch, you can view clips, the excerpts from my program yesterday. They've got complete transcripts of everything I've said and, as far as I'm concerned, it's terrific. They're doing me a favor because they gave me a platform to explain my position on homosexuality and to explain my position specifically on Muslims in the military, I'm happy with everything I said, I stand behind everything I said yesterday as well as what I have said before. And I thank the folks at Right Wing Watch for helping to get the word out.

Now, the reason that we post Fischer's words here is because we happen to feel that nobody can better make the case that Bryan Fischer is an anti-gay and anti-Muslim bigot better than he can. 

Just posting his statements is all we need to prove our point, like when he disputes our claim that he likened gays to domestic terrorists ... and then proceeds to explicitly liken gays to domestic terrorists:

I've never called gay people terrorists although I've said that what they have done is like domestic terrorism. You've got these Mujaheddin on the battlefield setting out these syringes with the HIV virus in it as a way to carry out terrorism.

This is exactly what happens when two males have sex with one another. If one of them is HIV Positive, then it's just like injecting his partner with a needle with HIV.

That's domestic terrorism. I don't know what else you'd call it.

Every time Fischer tries to defend himself, he just ends up proving our point.

And so we are going to keep asking why conservative leaders like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Bob McDonnell, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann are so willing to share a stage with him and attend an event being co-sponsored by the American Family Association, the group that has given Fischer a national platform?

We Rest Our Case: Bryan Fischer Tries to Defend His Bigoted Record

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 9/14/2010 3:27 pm

Today, People For the American Way issued a statement calling out all those conservative leaders who will attending the upcoming Values Voter Summit and sharing the stage with notorious bigot Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association and chronicled the myriad of outrageously offensive things Fischer has said about gays and Muslims and others.

Needless to say, Fischer is not particularly pleased with our statement and dedicated a portion of his radio program today to "defending" himself ... and in doing so, only helped to make our point even clearer.

Fischer took particular exception to our point that "any candidate thinking seriously of running for president in 2012 should think twice about standing alongside a man who has called for the deportation of all Muslims in America," by claiming that he did no such thing (but, of course, he did when he claimed that Muslim citizens were, simply by being virtue of being Muslim, guilty of treason against the US.)

Fischer's "defense" is that he simply wants to deny entry to all Muslims because we are doing them a favor since they could not possibly handle or tolerate our freedoms:

"Any candidate thinking seriously of running for president in 2012 should think twice about standing alongside a man who has called for the deportation of all Muslims in America."

That, as a matter of fact is not true. What I has said is that if Muslims are here and they have citizenship status, we shouldn't do anything to them. They have citizenship status, it might have been a mistake to give it to them, but they have it and we need to respect it because we uphold the rule of law.

What I was talking about is when you have Muslims who are applying for permanent residency, for permanent legal residency, or applying for citizenship, my recommendation is that instead of granting them citizenship, we help them return to their homeland, to their native country, we help repatriate them to their country of origin where they can have the freedom to be Muslims without having to chafe against our religious liberty and our freedom of speech and first-class citizenship status for wives and for women.

This has got to be awkward for them, it's got to be painful for them, it's got to be uncomfortable for them to see so many people enjoying the fruit of Christianity, its liberty and its freedom, its respect for the individual, its respect for the freedom of individuals to think and make decisions for themselves, its got to chew them up because it is so the polar opposite of what Islam is all about.

So I say we are doing them a favor by repatriating them to their homeland where an entire nation shares their values.

We also pointed out that Fischer demanded a ban on Muslims serving in the US military which he "defended" by saying that he was merely telling the truth about how all Muslims are required to kill Christians and Jews:

So if telling the truth about Muslim service-members is an insult, then truth is now the new insult, truth is now the new hate speech.

All I have said about Muslims in the military is that their god commands them to kill us and it does not make sense to me that we would allow people to enlist in the body that is designed to protect our security and enable us to sleep peacefully in our beds at night, we should not invite into our military - the very organization that is supposed to protect us - invite into our military those who have a solemn and sacred obligation to kill us and kill their fellow soldiers.

Finally, Fischer explains that he doesn't "hate" gays or Muslims - he just hates the horrible, empty, disease-filled lives they lead:

 I am pro-gay; I am anti-homosexuality. I am pro-Muslim; I am anti-Islam. 

I am for homosexuals because I want them to be delivered from the bondage and the death sentence of homosexual conduct. So I am against homosexual behavior, I am against homosexual expression, I am against homosexual conduct because I want to see the people that are trapped in that lifestyle, I want to see them set free.

And the same is true when it comes to Islam: I am for Muslims; I am against-Islam. And, as I mentioned before, the primary victims of Islam are Muslims. I mean, it's got to break your heart when you visualize the life that these people lead in Muslim-dominated countries.

There is darkness, there is tyranny, there is repression, there is hatred, there is a complete absence of freedom, a complete absence of liberty, women are second-class citizens, they're considered as property, as chattel who can be beaten by their husbands according to Allah, according to the Holy Quran, according to the Prophet.

I mean the poverty, and the disease, and the emptiness and the sterility of life in a Muslim-dominated land, it ought to break our hearts. And that is why I am against Islam because I see what it does to people, I see what it does to cultures, I see what it does to entire nations when it is allowed to take root and flourish.

So I am pro-Muslims, but anti-Islam. I am pro-homosexual, I am anti-homosexuality. 

Let me point out again that this is Fischer defense against charges of being an anti-gay and anti-Muslim bigot.

So let us ask again why conservative leaders like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Bob McDonnell, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann are so willing to share a stage with this man and attend an event being co-sponsored by the American Family Association, the group that has given Fischer a national platform?

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American Family Association
The American Family Association (AFA) has been a long-time promoter of "traditional moral values" in the media, particularly television. AFA built its reputation on organizing boycotts against sponsors of TV shows with "anti-Christian" messages and ideas, or against companies it claims support the so-called "homosexual agenda" or marriage equality. MORE >

Values Voter Summit Posts Archive

PFAW, Fischer React To Mitt Romney
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 2:11pm
People For the American Way repeatedly called on Mitt Romney this week to denounce Bryan Fischer, the radical American Family Association spokesman who immediately followed Romney at the Values Voter Summit and whose relentless bigotry has been thoroughly chronicled here at PFAW's Right Wing Watch. Romney did in fact use the opportunity to put at least a little distance between himself and Fischer: People For the American Way president Michael Keegan said in a statement: “Mitt Romney clearly realized that his presidential campaign couldn’t ignore the... MORE >
Fischer: Rights Endangered If President Believes In Evolution
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 1:54pm
The theory of evolution was a central topic in Bryan Fischer's speech to the Values Voter Summit, where he argued that the presidential candidates should reject evolution. "I submit to you that not a single one of our unalienable rights will be safe," Fischer said, "in the hands of a president who believes that we evolved from slime and that we are the descendents of apes and baboons." Fischer called the separation of church and state "mythical" and argued that a result of secular government and the theory of evolution result in mass murder... MORE >
Jeffress Says Satan Is Behind Roman Catholicism
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 1:15pm
Yesterday, Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit with a fiery endorsement, giving us an opportunity to reflect on Jeffress' history of anti-Mormon rhetoric. But the Mormon faith isn't the only one that faces Jeffress' ire. Last year on his show Pathway To Victory, Jeffress said that Satan is behind the Roman Catholic Church. At The Response prayer rally, we called out Perry for partnering with John Hagee, who has called the Roman Catholic Church the "The Great Whore" of Babylon from the Book of Revelation.... MORE >
Boykin: "It Is Time For The Church To Rise Up Like A Mighty Army"
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 12:33pm
At the Values Voter Summit, Jerry Boykin repeated his claim that the church must stand up to progressive groups like the ACLU, MoveOn, and Code Pink, telling the audience that unlike liberals they have God on their side. Boykin went on to hail Tony Perkins and John McCain for fighting to block the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, warning that the church must not make the same mistake of staying "silent" as it did during the Don't Ask Don't Tell debate. Watch: Boykin: You don't go into battle afraid of your enemy, you just simply don't, you have to go in... MORE >
Fischer: "Homosexual Agenda" Is America's "Greatest Immediate Threat"
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 11:15am
Earlier today at the Values Voter Summit Bill Bennett called on speakers not to "give voice to bigotry," Bryan Fischer however did not get the memo. As part of a much longer speech against the supposed "threat" of "the homosexual agenda," Fischer said that "we must choose as a nation between homosexuality and liberty, because we cannot have both." Watch: Fischer: I believe we need a president who understands that just as Islam represents the greatest long term threat to our liberty so the homosexual agenda represents the greatest immediate threat... MORE >
Romney Calls Out Bryan Fischer's Bigotry
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 10:48am
Earlier this week, when we found out that Mitt Romney would be speaking directly before anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-Mormon extremist Bryan Fischer at the Values Voter Summit, we called on Romney to "prove us wrong" and call out Bryan Fischer. And today he did, even if not by name. The implication was clear when Mitt Romney said that the speaker following him, Fischer, crosses the line and uses "poisonous language." Watch: Our values ennoble the citizen, and they strengthen the nation. We should remember that decency and civility are values too. One of the... MORE >
Jeffress: Jews, Mormons, Muslims And Gays Are Going To Hell
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Saturday 10/08/2011, 8:55am
Yesterday at the Values Voter Summit, Robert Jeffress endorsed and introduced Rick Perry with a speech where he subtly contrasted the "born again Christian" Perry with his chief opponent Mitt Romney, a Mormon. Later that day, Jeffress made clear in an interview with Bryan Fischer that he believes that Romney is a member of a cult, repeating his 2008 attacks against Romney and the Mormon faith.  Jeffress' anti-Mormon views should have been no surprise to the Perry camp, and in this interview last year with the Trinity Broadcasting Network, Jeffress... MORE >
Parker: God Will Judge Us For Abortion, Gay Marriage
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 10/07/2011, 10:24pm
Star Parker ended tonight's Values Voter Summit by mourning Roe v. Wade and marriage equality, declaring, "We are sick as a country, and we are going to have to recognize how deep this sickness is." She went on to compare legal abortion and gay marriage to slavery and the holocaust, warning that God in the same way "is going to answer the question of abortion and He is going to answer the question of marriage; He already defined marriage and God is true and man is the liar." Watch: Parker: He is going to answer these questions, and we've been yearning, and we've... MORE >