Bryan Fischer

Missouri Republican senate candidate and congressman Todd Akin is trying to run away from his claims that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancy, insisting that he “misspoke” while making “off-the-cuff remarks,” even though they were in an interview with a local reporter. Akin made a similar half-apology following his claim that “at the heart of liberalism really is the hatred for God,” with his spokesman arguing that his claim during a radio interview were “off-the-cuff.”

Akin is a beloved figure of the Religious Right, and his campaign advertises endorsements from Concerned Women for America activists and activists like Mike Huckabee, Phyllis Schlafly, Michele Bachmann and David Barton. Barton, who recorded campaign ads calling Akin a “true Christian leader,” has compared Akin to John Witherspoon and other founding fathers. American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, who hosted Akin on his radio show the day after the congressman’s primary victory, said people need to “lighten up” about his rape comments:

Previously, Akin said he wants to ban the morning after pill, worried marital rape laws will be used as “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband” and sought to narrow the definition of “rape” in legislation. Akin also prominently advertises his endorsement from Schlafly, who has said women cannot be raped by their husbands.

Sarah Posner in Religion Dispatches notes that Akin, who has a masters in divinity, received his degree at a denomination which teaches that rape seldom leads to pregnancy and should not be relevant to laws on abortion rights, and as Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones pointed out, anti-choice luminary John Willke asserts that hormones make pregnancies resulting from rape “extremely rare” and Physicians for Life believes “the rate of pregnancy is actually very rare” because the stress from the rape “alter[s] bodily functions, the menstrual cycle included.”

Those opinions are commonplace among anti-choice activists.

Human Life International says “it is very useful to be able to show just how rare rape- and incest-caused pregnancies really are” in order to expose women who falsely state they were raped in order to have abortions: “Women who are willing to kill their own preborn children for mere convenience obviously see lying as a relatively small crime.”

40 Days for Life, the group which holds hundreds of protests outside of abortion clinics throughout the country, in “ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments” also says that pregnancies resulting from rape are “extremely rare” and “can be prevented”:

“What about a woman who is pregnant due to rape or incest?”

a. Pregnancy due to rape is extremely rare, and with proper treatment can be prevented.

b. Rape is never the fault of the child; the guilty party, not an innocent party, should be punished.

c. The violence of abortion parallels the violence of rate.

d. Abortion does not bring healing to a rape victim.

It remains to be seen which conservative leaders will condemn—or defend—Akin as pressure mounts on the candidate to quit the race.

Update: Fischer is now even claiming that “Todd Akin is right,” citing an article by Willke.

American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer today was joined by pro-corporate, anti-environmental activist Cal Beisner on Focal Point to discuss Rep. Paul Ryan’s egregious record on environmental protection. The two celebrated his votes against the EPA and climate change legislation as signs that he has a “sane, objective and biblical or evangelical understanding of man’s relationship with the environment. “Paul Ryan seems to get it,” Fischer said, and Beisner applauded Ryan’s voting record “fits well with the biblical understanding” of the environment, which for them means that there should be few if any restrictions on environmental exploitation. Later, Beisner repeated his bogus charge that increased carbon dioxide levels and climate change will help the environment and the poor.

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Fischer: It seems like we’ve got another clear differential when it comes to a sane, objective and biblical or evangelical understanding of man’s relationship with the environment. Paul Ryan seems to get ii and the other team doesn’t. So that would be potentially very good news for those of us that care about seeing a biblical view of the environment in public policy.

Beisner: Yes it would. Ryan’s understanding I think fits well with the biblical understanding that God made man in His image to be creative and productive as He is, to fill and to rule the earth. Not to abuse the earth, not to rape the land so to speak as many environmentalists talk, but rather to increase its fruitfulness, its beauty and its safety to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors. I think that really underlies the comments that Ryan has made on these issues through the years and it comes I think from his solidly Christian worldview background.

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Beisner: Most Americans do not see any real purpose in tight restrictions on CO2 admissions. Many Americans actually remembered what they learned way back in seventh and eighth grade biology class, mainly that carbon dioxide is plant food. So the more of that there is in the air the more the crops grow and the cheaper the food is around the world, this actually helps especially the poor.

On his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer proclaimed that Lisa Miller had a responsibility to God to defy court orders granting visitation and custody rights to her former partner, Janet Jenkins, and kidnap her daughter and flee the country.

Fischer returned to the case today where he baselessly but repeatedly asserted that Jenkins sexually abused the girl:

[When] the girl came home, she suffered nightmares, she was wetting the bed, she was harming herself, she gave every indication of being sexually molested while she'd been in the company of this lesbian. She told her mom that she had bathed naked with this lesbian person to whom she's not even related, hadn't seen her in like four years and she's taking baths without any clothes on with this lady at five and a half.

So she's coming home clearly very disturbed, agitated emotionally by these visits and the mom said I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to put my child back into that environment. And the Vermont judge says that if you don't submit your child to an abusive environment, it was emotionally abusive, it was sexually abusive and the judge was saying, look if you don't put your child in that environment, I'm going to take your child away from you altogether and I'm going to award sole custody to the lesbian.

That was the plan; in fact the judge ruled you gotta turn her over January 1, 2010, you got to hand her over to this lesbian household where there's a proven record of child abuse. 

Every once is a while, we will get criticized for supposedly paying too much attention to the AFA's Bryan Fischer, with people accusing us of giving him the attention that he craves and suggesting that we'd be better off just ignoring him.

Believe us, we'd love nothing more than to be able to ignore Fischer's daily litany of idiotically bigoted ravings ... but we can't do that as long as leading Republican candidates keep appearing on his program, as Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin did just today where they rejoiced in the fact that "freedom seems to be on the march again": 

Friday was just another typical day on "Focal Point," as Bryan Fischer kicked off the program by declaring the the participation of a female Saudi Arabian judo competitor at the Olympics was really nothing more than an effort to "promote Sharia law," proclaiming that "sharia law [has been] enshrined at the Olympic games":

That was followed up by Fischer weighing in on the implementation of the Obama administration's contraception mandate where he labeled Obama a fascist dictator who is just like Mussolini and Hitler:

For months now, the good folks over at the American Family Association have been peddling conspiracy theories alleging that the Department of Homeland Security is stockpiling ammunition and turning into President Obama's private Brownshirt army with the intention of waging civil war on Americans.

The topic again popped up on Bryan Fischer's radio program yesterday when a caller told Fischer that when martial law is implemented, the AFA would be more than welcome to seek protection in Texas, which prompted Fischer to warn that DHS had riot gear and nearly a half-billion rounds of ammunition on hand that "they're going to use ... on Americans" and declare that if Obama is re-elected, "you're going to hear some serious talk about secession in any number of places around America": 

Joining televangelist Pat Robertson who earlier today said that same-sex marriage will be the “death knell” of the Democratic Party, Mike Huckabee and other leading conservatives have denounced the party’s decision to include marriage equality in its platform. Huckabee told Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association that the move is the “best thing that’s ever happened to the Republican Party” and “may end up sinking the ship.” He said that while people tolerate people who “choose to live in lifestyles that they don’t necessarily agree with or approve of,” they are “no longer going to support” President Obama or the Democrats for having “openly declared war on biblical marriage.” “It’s to me a very tragic day,” Huckabee maintained, “when we’re so interested in getting votes form a certain community and the contributions that they’re willing to forego their own principles and just throw them overboard.”

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William Owens of the right-wing Coalition of African-American Pastors and a liaison for the National Organization for Marriage at the National Press Conference today claimed that Obama has gone down “a disgraceful road” and compared homosexuality to pedophilia:

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” said Owens, in an interview Tuesday after the launch event at the National Press Club. “I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road.”

…

“If you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys, you will note that all of them will say that they were molested as a child…” Owens said. “For the president to condone this type of thing is irresponsible.”

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At the Tuesday press conference, Owens questioned Obama’s commitment to black Americans, stating that the president is just “half-black, half-white” and has long “ignored the black press.”

He is “ignoring the people that put him in the White House,” Owens said.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council urged Romney not to “shy away from making a clear distinction with President Obama and the Democrats on this issue.”

Thirty-two out of thirty-two states where voters have weighed in on the issue have upheld marriage as the union of one man and one woman. If President Obama were to lose those 32 states, he would face an electoral debacle. In addition, while opposition to same-sex 'marriage' may have become politically incorrect in the Democratic Party at the national level, there are many Democratic members of Congress, and office-holders further down the ticket, who live in states and districts where it will be a serious disadvantage to be identified with 'the gay marriage party.'

Gov. Romney, who has signed a pledge to support a marriage protection amendment to the U.S. Constitution, should not shy away from making a clear distinction with President Obama and the Democrats on this issue.

As always, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer didn’t hold back in his column, warning that through its decision to “embrace moral perversion” it has “sealed its own doom and relegated itself to the ash heap of history” as its founder Thomas Jefferson “must be rolling over in his personal parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.”

Rarely can you identify a moment in time at which a major political party sealed its own doom and relegated itself to the ash heap of history. Today is that day for the Democratic Party. The party of Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote a law calling for the castration of those who committed the infamous crime against nature, has now enshrined sodomy-based marriage in its party platform.

Jefferson must be rolling over in his personal parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, which celebrates the unalienable, God-given right to liberty, not licentiousness.

We know from data collected by the Centers for Disease Control that homosexual conduct is as dangerous to human health as intravenous drug abuse. Of all the men ever diagnosed with HIV/AIDS since the “epidemic” began, 90% contracted it either through having sex with other men (60%), injection drug use (22%) or both (8%). Thus the Democratic Party has made a noble virtue out of behavior that is immoral, unnatural, and unhealthy, and will destroy the lives of those who engage in it.

For the Democratic Party to enshrine the infamous crime against nature in its party platform is the final nail in the coffin of a party that in its history has defended slavery and racism (the KKK was a Democratic institution) and filibustered Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. This move signals its permanent slide into political oblivion.

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Every Democratic candidate for the House and the Senate needs to be pinned down by both the media and Republican opponents. The GOP needs to hang gay marriage like an anvil around the neck of every Democratic candidate for higher office. Any Democrat who tries to swim with that tied around his neck will find his candidacy seeking to the bottom of the sea. Republicans, force them to declare themselves, and either embrace moral perversion or reject their own party.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is warning that “the bullies at ‘Big Gay,’” the term he is now using to describe gay rights advocates, are “trying to go Ahmadinejad on Chick-fil-A, they want them wiped off the face of the map.” While comparing gay rights supporters to the Iranian president who wants to see Israel “wiped off the map,” Fischer said that gays don’t face discrimination but are actually oppressive, intolerant bullies.

Championing Mike Huckabee’s effort to encourage people to eat at Chick-fil-A restaurants as a way to reward the company for their long-standing anti-gay politics, he called on potential customers “to buy out every chicken sandwich that Chick-Fil-A makes on August 1, let’s have them run out of chickens, let’s send them out behind the restaurant with an ax to cut the heads off of more chickens to feed people because they are selling so many chicken sandwiches.”

Watch:

And they’re trying to present themselves as these innocent little victims, helpless and hapless, being picked on across the fruited plain. And they’re not. They are bullies. They are intolerant, they are vicious, they are mean, and they are after people of faith. There’s no ‘live and let live’ with the bullies at Big Gay. They don’t know anything about tolerance. Tolerance is not in their vocabulary. They have no tolerance for those who support the institution of the natural family. None, zip, zero. They have no room in their so-called ‘diversity world’ for people who believe in natural marriage. They claim to be all about diversity, but there is no room in their world for anybody that believes in traditional moral values. They’re absolutely intolerant and they have no room, they’re anti-diversity. So I’m talking about this with regard specifically to Chick-fil-A. And I am pointing out specifically that the bullies at Big Gay are coming after Chick-fil-A. They’re trying to take them out, they’re trying to obliterate them, they’re trying to go Ahmadinejad on Chick-fil-A, they want them wiped off the face of the map.

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Let’s make it our goal to buy out every chicken sandwich that Chick-fil-A makes on August 1. Let’s have them run out of chickens, let’s send them out behind the restaurant with an ax to cut the heads off of more chickens to feed people because they’re selling so many chicken sandwiches.

On Friday, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer attempted to link the end of public school organized prayer to the Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre, arguing that state-sponsored religious education would have prevented the shooting (even though James Holmes belonged to a San Diego church for 10 years). Similarly, AFA News Director Fred Jackson connected the media and progressive, gay-affirming churches to the massacre. Today on Focal Point, Fischer specifically blamed liberals and opposition to posting the Ten Commandments in public schools for the shooting, lamenting, “we’ve tried it the liberals’ way for sixty years now and what do we got? We have massacres in Aurora.”

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