Bryan Fischer

On more than one occasion over the last several years, Mike McManus of Marriage Savers, often with his wife Harriet, has appeared on various Religious Right radio program that we monitor and spoken at their events.  Mostly his message has focused on the topic of strengthening the institution of marriage, but it came as no surprise to learn when he appeared on Bryan Fischer's radio program on Friday that he shares the Right's bigoted anti-gay views.

When Fischer asked him why gay couples are supposedly uninterested in actually getting married, McManus responded that they are really just interested in "trying to destroy the institution of marriage, which they can't really participate in" before declaring that gays are afflicted with a "perversion" due to having been molested as children:

One of the most interesting things about watching Bryan Fischer's program on a daily basis is learning to understand the bizarre manner in which he views the world.  And it is not his vehement hostility to Muslims, or gays, or liberals that demonstrate his warped view of reality but simpler things like how he interprets seemingly benign comments and events.

On yesterday's program, Fischer provided a good example of the sort of lens through which he views the world when he ripped President Obama for supposedly insulting the people of Iowa by sharing a story in which Michele Obama said she could understand why people would want to own guns.

While speaking in Denver earlier this week, Obama was making a point about why it is so hard to make any progress on gun control legislation, saying that people on "both sides of the debate sometimes don't listen to each other.  The people who take absolute positions on these issues, on both sides, sometimes aren't willing to concede even an inch of ground." 

The key to overcoming this was to build trust, Obama said, and try to understand the positions of people with different points of view. In demonstrating this, he told a story about something Michelle said to him:

And so one of the questions we talked about was, how do you build trust?  How do you rebuild some trust?  And I told the story about two conversations I had.  The first conversation was when Michelle came back from doing some campaigning out in rural Iowa.  And we were sitting at dinner, and she had been to like a big county, a lot of driving out there, a lot of farmland.  And she said, if I was living out in a farm in Iowa, I'd probably want a gun, too.  If somebody just drives up into your driveway and you're not home -- you don't know who these people are and you don't know how long it's going to take for the sheriffs to respond.  I can see why you'd want some guns for protection.

But for Fischer, this story does nothing but demonstrate Obama's "sneering contempt for everybody in middle America; it is condescending, it is patronizing, it's insulting" because Obama is basically saying that "Iowa is some kind of third world country" and a murderous hell hole:

Ever since returning from his short Easter break, Bryan Fischer has been on a kick of arguing that all you really need to know about anything can be found in the Bible and if the Bible says that something is true or immoral or whatever, that is all you need to know about it.

During the opening segments on his show this week, Fischer has twice made this very case, asserting that he is a Christian because the resurrection of of Jesus Christ is "an objective historical fact ... with abundant eyewitness testimony and no rational alternative explanation."  And it is an objective fact because the Bible says that it is ... and we know that the Bible is one hundred percent true because "every time we can cross-check the Bible's record of history against external sources, it matches matches up every time."

As such, Fischer explained, "when the Bible makes claims about history, geography, the origin of all things, when it makes claims about morality and truth, you can trust everything that [it says]":

On yesterday's program, shortly after saying that Ben Carson had been the victim of the Left's "demonic hatred," Bryan Fischer urged listeners to always stand on the word of God and refuse to apologize, compromise, or ever back down because they are involved in "spiritual warfare" and must stand firm against as they wrestle "with these dark, satanic powers."

Those who oppose Fischer's bigoted and theocratic worldview, he insisted, are being used by demonic forces and "what's animating these people, the energy they're drawing on, the energy that is being fed to them is coming from the powers of darkness":

On yesterday's program, Bryan Fischer spent a good deal of time ripping Bill O'Reilly for saying that the supporters of marriage equality have the more compelling argument while opponents haven't been able to do anything but "thump the Bible."

Needless to say, Fischer took exception to that statement on the grounds that the only thing gay marriage opponents need to do is thump the Bible because it is the Word of God and contains God's eternal truth.  That prompted a caller named David to tell Fischer that just because the Bible might disapprove of things like adultery or pornography, that doesn't mean the government ought to pass laws against them.

Fischer, of course, disagreed and argued that Biblical standards ought to be the basis for our laws, which is why he insisted that both adultery and viewing pornography ought to be illegal:

• LiveAction bizarrely claims that Steven Crowder's Ashley Judd rape joke at CPAC "never happened." 
• Matt Barber blasts Pastor Rob Bell's "apostasy" for supporting marriage equality.
• Bryan Fischer says "same-sex 'marriage' fails to satisfy even the companionship purpose for this most sacred of relationships."
• Keep in mind that no matter how crazy Glenn Beck gets, Sen. Rand Paul will continue to regularly appear on his program.
• And so will Gov. Rick Perry.

Bryan Fischer is not at all impressed by the Republican National Committee's "autopsy" of what has gone wrong with the GOP leading to back-to-back election losses, and is especially miffed about findings that the party's hostility to gay rights is turning off younger voters.

As Fischer sees it, it is "idiotic" for the GOP to consider changing its message in an effort to win over ignorant and naive young people who don't understand the dangers posed by homosexuality. 

"They don't need to be pandered to," Fischer proclaimed, "they need to be educated. We don't pander to the least mature, least intelligent, least informed, least experienced, least educated members of our movement; we educate them."

• The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer responds to Rob Portman’s announcement by likening gay people to bank robbers. 

• CBN correspondent David Brody warns “evangelicals all across the country may start walking away from the GOP” if Republicans aren’t “willing to take a stand for traditional marriage.” 

• Liberty Counsel’s Steve Crampton claims that gay marriage will “lead to the disintegration of the family” and that “when the history of this administration is written, it will be recorded that its deception and aggressive advocacy on this issue were among the most destructive actions of any administration in the history of our nation.” 

• Scott Lively urges lawmakers not “to arm militant ‘gay’ social engineers with legal weapons to hunt down and destroy the lives of people of faith.” 

• Jim Garlow predicts that marriage equality will have “horrific” consequences including the abolition of the First Amendment.

• Alan Sears of the Alliance Defending Freedom, while quoting Martin Luther King Jr., calls for prayers against same-sex marriage. 

• Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s eldest son plans to join the Family Research Council. 

• Actual Alan Keyes column: “In Defense of ‘Conspiracy Thinking.’”

• Lastly, this exists:

• Is anyone surprised that Bryan Fischer was once confronted by his colleagues in the ministry and sent off to "some high-priced shrink-tank to get two weeks of intensive psychotherapy"? It obviously did not do much good.
• Liberty Counsel has merged with Florida Faith & Works Coalition and will launch a new outreach program aimed at politically mobilizing pastors and churches.
• Richard Land says that Christians may soon be forced to engage in civil disobedience.
• This short commentary by Gordon Klingenschmitt on the use of drones might literally be one of the dumbest things we have ever seen.
• Sen. Lindsey Graham might be getting a re-election challenge from a gay conservative blogger and activist.
• Finally, more evidence that Erik Rush is quite a piece of work.