Buster Wilson

• Buster Wilson is in a contest with colleagues to see who can gain the most Twitter followers by the end of the month.  We'd be happy to help ... but he's blocking us.
• Is Karen Handel preparing for a Senate run from Georgia?
• Bryan Fischer seems to be convinced that it is somehow effective for him to just keep repeating his call for a ban on Muslim immigration and mosques.
• Glenn Beck is partnering with a Hollywood filmmaker on an art curriculum that he hopes to get into public schools.
• Finally, the Justice Department is appealing a judge's decision striking down limits on Plan B, which only makes Matt Barber's incoherent conspiracy theory even more laughable.

Fox News “culture war” correspondent Todd Starnes chatted with Buster Wilson of the American Family Association yesterday about an email that a lieutenant colonel in Kentucky reportedly sent to a handful of subordinates encouraging them to stand up to anti-gay organizations. This obviously irked the AFA since they are on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups.

Starnes asserted that if a military family subscribes to an AFA publication, the Pentagon “would be obligated at that point to monitor that family for suspicious activity.”

Wilson asked Starnes if individuals in the White House or the Pentagon who are “anti-pro-family groups, anti-Christian groups” were behind the emails.

“It appears that this administration is trying to secularize the United States military,” Starnes warned. Wilson added that the Obama administration is “dissing Christianity, traditional conservatism and what’s really American.”

Later, Starnes agreed with Wilson’s claim that the “liberally-controlled government” will use the power of the state to suppress hate groups.

Wilson: At what point does the liberally-controlled government start to say, you know what this hate group needs to be quieted, they need to be quiet, we need to shut them up, they are doing what they do because of what they say and what they say is dangerous. It’s the old shouting fire in the theatre thing, they need to be quiet.

Starnes: Once you start saying something long enough people start believing it and I suspect we’re on that trajectory. At this stage in the game I think Jerry Boykin from FRC says that it is time for Americans to stand up and it is time to start fighting back by contacting your lawmakers, contacting your representatives in Washington, not just on the phone but in person saying ‘this has to stop.’

Earlier in the program, Wilson used Melissa Harris-Perry’s commentary on the collective responsibility of raising children to warn that America is in decline. He said that he now understands why “they think that they have the right to teach them about homosexual sex and it’s okay to have feelings for someone of the same-sex in kindergarten.”

Wilson: I never thought I’d see the day when we would be talking about openly from once respected news brands like NBC saying that you don’t own your own children. I just got to tell you sometimes it breaks my heart and sometimes my wife and I will just be talking about this and we’ll just tear up, we’re like, what is going on in this country? You honestly are going to try to sell me the idea that my kids don’t belong to me, they belong to you and everybody else? No wonder they think that they have the right to teach them about homosexual sex and it’s okay to have feelings for someone of the same-sex in kindergarten, no wonder they think that because it’s their kids and that’s what they believe.

• After 42 years, Liberty University gets its first female commencement speaker: Fox News correspondent (and LU alum) Shannon Bream.
• In a shocking development, Religious Right activists and candidates don't think the GOP should moderate its stance on social issues.
• Matt Barber says gay marriage is "like taking a rotten apple, spray-painting it orange, and then calling it an orange. 'Same-sex marriage' is no more real marriage then a rotten apple is an orange. It’s mock marriage."
• Scott Lively is apparently very hurt by a recent article about him in Boston Magazine.
• Finally, Buster Wilson defends the AFA's practice of boycotting companies: "Will God be ok with us willfully making a purchase, or purchases from a business that we KNOW will use that same money we are stewards over to help create an 'in your face' action against God?"

• Even though studies keep proving that morning-after pills don’t cause abortion, Religious Right groups will continue to baselessly argue otherwise. 

• Family Research Council invites you to the National Organization for Marriage’s anti-gay Marriage March.

• Yet another tough break for professional vote-suppressor Hans von Spakovsky. 

• Anyone want to buy Human Events?

• AFA’s Buster Wilson is mad at us because we quoted him verbatim. 

• Rick Warren is very, very, very sad that Tim Tebow pulled out of his appearance at Robert Jeffress’ megachurch. 

• Press release of the day: “WWE invites Glenn Beck to Get Raw.”

The American Family Association’s Buster Wilson is latching on to a new conspiracy theory that the government will eventually try to classify Christians as mentally ill in order to “get us out of the picture.” He said that the left uses terms like “right-wing fanatics” and “radicals” so that one day the government and the CDC can level “attacks against Christians based on some form of mental illness diagnosis” since they “hate” Christians.

Someday I believe that they are going to be attacks against Christians based on some form of mental illness diagnosis. I think it is not without reason that the left refers to people like us as those loony, right-wing fanatics or right-wing radicals, far-right-wing nut jobs. I think it is by design that they use those kinds of terminologies against us because one day I think there is going to be something in the hand of doctors, something in the hands of the CDC, something in the hands of the government that will be able to classify us a certain way and get us out of the picture. Again, who does the government hate? Who are they against? Who are they worried the most about? Those are the ones they are going to attack, you keep your eyes open to that.

Wilson’s bold stance against heated political rhetoric may come as a surprise since he frequently describes progressives as the “progressive-homo-left-Christian-Bible-conservative-traditional value-hating crowd,” a “hate filled, heterophobic, christiphobic, and conservaphobic group” and “Bible hating, Christian hating, conservative knocking, vile, foul mouthed name calling, socialist hetero/Christo-haters.”

Today, the Boy Scouts of America board said that it will postpone a final decision on the future of the ban on gay members until May. Two days before the announcement, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios said that gay men are child predators by nature and consequently should be banned from Scouting.

While responding to an email she received from a listener named David who opposes the current prohibition on gay Boy Scouts, Rios argued that gay men “like youth, most of them like young men” and go into professions like teaching and coaching so “they can be around boys.”

Like other supporters of the ban, Rios cited Jerry Sandusky, who is married to a woman and wouldn’t have been affected by the ban on gay members.

“These are our children and their safety and well-being trumps any desire of any gay man to be a Scout leader or a gay boy to be a Scout,” Rios said. “If you want to be that and you can’t I’m sorry but we can’t all be what we want to be, we can’t put others at risk just because we want something.”

If you know anything about this you know that gay men love youth. They may not all like prepubescent boys but they like youth, most of them like young men, that’s why they go into professions and work with boys, that’s why they become teacher and coaches and shall we say Jerry Sandusky priests? They go places where they can be around boys, that seems to be a favorite thing and if you think that’s not true you know it is true. Not all gay men are pedophiles but all male pedophiles who like boys are gay. It seems to be a problem in the gay community, not a problem shared by all of them but everyone that has a problem with this seems to be gay, so you figure that out.

I would have to say that zero percent of straight men are interested in boys, zero percent. So if anyone is going to straighten this out it just might be a straight man, not a gay man, that defies logic just a bit. By the way David, these are our children, these are our children and their safety and well-being trumps any desire of any gay man to be a Scout leader or a gay boy to be a Scout. If you want to be that and you can’t I’m sorry but we can’t all be what we want to be, we can’t put others at risk just because we want something. At least we used to understand that, now it’s like whatever you want to do you can do it and the rest of us be…you know what it shouldn’t be that way David, these are our kids and we’re trying to protect them.

Meanwhile, Buster Wilson of the AFA went on another anti-gay diatribe, insisting that parents “are not going to allow their boys to go on camping trips with a gay Scout leader.”

They’re going to change the policy of no gays in the Boy Scouts to changing it to let every Boy Scout entity decide for themselves. Well the President weighed in on that before the ballgame last night…he said, quoting now: ‘My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life.’ Unbelievable. Now he’s talking about the Boy Scouts and he’s talking about gays and lesbians should have every opportunity in the Boy Scouts that everybody else does. Doesn’t matter, Mr. President, does it, that that will destroy the Boy Scouts?

And for all the mocking that comes from all the folks on the left it will destroy the Boy Scouts. It will wind up, as I said last week, just being a few, a small percentage of people who believe you should be tolerant and accept anything and everything. That small percentage and then the gay community, that’s all that will be in the Boy Scouts if they change their rule. Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist churches are the largest number of organizations that host Boy Scout troops, they have said that the churches will withdraw from Boy Scouts in mass droves. So many other people have said they will pull their boys out. They are not going to allow their boys to go on camping trips with a gay Scout leader, out in the woods with a gay Scout leader for three or four days.

The American Family Association’s Buster Wilson is a B-list version of Bryan Fischer, but he does a good impersonation in his latest rant against the Boy Scouts of America for considering a change in their ban on gay members. Wilson claims that gay men sometimes have “as many as a hundred or more partners” and will put Boy Scouts in “compromising” situations. He even argues that a ban on gay scouts is a good thing because excluding them will prevent them from being bullied and contemplating suicide:

There is no mistaking the fact that homosexuals are known, by their own admission, to have multiple sexual partners, sometimes as many as a hundred or more partners. Shocking, I know! But you see we make a dreadful mistake when we think of the homosexual relationship in the same vein as we would think of the average heterosexual relationship. They are not the same and they do not function the same.

I know that all homosexuals are not pedophiles. But, are you willing to take a chance with the life of your son that a homosexual that has been placed in the position of a Scout Leader, will not, will never put your son in a compromising situation? Really? If you do, you’ve redefined “faith” in a whole new way for me. The Scout oath requires a Scout to commit to “God and Country” to be “morally straight.” I don’t see how a Scout could ever make an oath before God to be morally straight when he has submitted himself to be led, trained, educated and modeled after one whom God has already described as immoral.

The gay community is very concerned about gay children being bullied and wrestling with suicide. I am dreadfully worried about those issues as well. No one, including me wants a child to be bullied and certainly we would never want a child to wrestle with much less choose suicide. But what could happen when you place a gay kid in a group of straight kids in a closed environment such as Scouting: is there not an increased worry of bullying and rejection that might cause a child to think of suicide?

Wilson makes it quite clear that he believes gay Scout leaders will molest children:

Imagine with me a troop of young boys, ranging in ages from 12-16. These young boys are going to be out in the woods, away from their parents. Not just away from their parents but away from any contact with their parents. Back in my day, there were no cell phones. And today, most camps sites are out cell range.

They would be out in the woods for 2-4 days, nights, depending on what time of the year it was. They will sleep in pairs or threes, in sleeping bags, in tents or out in the open. They will shower and wash in the creeks or lakes that outline their camp site. It would be nothing for boys to wonder about with their shirts off, or sometimes just in their underwear or swim suit because they had just been to the latrine or to the swimming hole. These will all be under the direction of the Scout leader who led them there.

Now, you could say that I am setting up a scenario that is just my own. That there are no reports of the kind of activities that my evil mind is conjuring up, that our homosexual friends want nothing more than to lead these young men to maturity and personal growth and I’m evil for believing that such horrible thoughts could actually become reality. But then, I would refer you again, to my friend Bryan Fischer’s latest article where he reminds us all of the Jerry Sandusky story.

Seeing that Sandusky is married to a woman, he would not have been barred by the BSA’s current ban on gays.

He goes on to argue that children will be “challenged” and “compromised” by gay Scouts as they will not “be safe in that environment.” After smearing gays as child molesters, Wilson naturally accuses gay people of trying to “denigrate” and “smear” others.

There will be multiple occasions for them to be out in the woods alone—without you mommy and dad, without any way to get a hold of you mom and dad—and you’re going to send them out there in the woods with a man who is an avowed homosexual? You really have safe that they are not going to be challenged or compromised? Then I say you have a faith that redefines the whole issue of faith as far as I’m concerned. How you would ever believe that your child would be safe in that environment. And why the Boy Scouts are doing this? I can tell you why they’re doing it. They’re doing it for the same reason that every other organization or area of American life would succumb to the demands of the homosexual lobby: they’re doing it because of political correctness and they’re doing it because of the Alinsky-style opposition that is in place, if you oppose homosexuality they will mock you, they will denigrate you. They will belittle you, they will smear you and talk about you being intolerant and unloving and un-Christ-like. If you are a Christian organization they will call you a hate group.

Wilson even warns that if the U.S. continues to “succumb to the pressure of political correctness from the forces on the side of the homosexual agenda,” then God may “rain down destruction” on America as he did to Sodom:

There’s also this level of understanding this as a bad decision spiritually. I’m a Bible-believer, I’m a Christian and I think many people who listen to this program are and in our Bible we see God rain down destruction on an entire city and people group because of the wickedness of homosexuality. I don’t want to continue to see every area of life in America succumb to the pressure of political correctness from the forces on the side of the homosexual agenda. I am worried about what God will do with this nation if we are not careful.

Buster Wilson of the American Family Association routinely uses his radio show to push bizarre and false claims that the government is fomenting violence against its citizens and building concentration camps while also promoting quasi-birther allegations.

So it was no surprise that a caller on his show seemingly threatened President Obama’s life, telling Wilson that “we need to take him out, one way or the other.”

While Wilson made sure to reject and distance himself from the caller’s threat, he went on to tell her about his latest conspiracy theory, one endorsed by fellow AFA radio host Bryan Fischer, about how the government is seeking to make ammunition unavailable to gun owners. The next caller told Wilson that they might soon be sharing a jail cell.

Wilson: Cynthia, thanks for calling from Palestine, Texas, glad to have you on.

Caller: Thank you sir, I just want to say nobody is bringing up the fact that that Muslim shot up Fort Hood and they knew he was on the move to do that, and Benghazi you bet and the Border Patrol, where’s the bullets for them? But you want to come out here and you want to take everything we’ve got and set up the Muslim Brotherhood just clearly shows it’s like a zero dart right into the center. Also talking about holding us hostage to get his ceiling, the checks won’t come, you know, this guy. America, we need to take him out, one way or the other.

Wilson: Okay Cynthia, thanks for calling. Well I want to be careful on saying things like that we don’t want anybody to think we’re talking about—we don’t support any kind of concept of taking the President out. We had an opportunity to vote him out and the country didn’t take it so he is rightfully our president, he was voted by the majority so there you go, he’s in. but you did sort of sum it all up in one sentence everything from Benghazi to Fort Hood to Fast and Furious to the Border Patrol.

You know something else that a lot of people are not mentioning, I called my dealership that I trade with on a regular basis today to ask about the purchasing of another gun and they didn’t have any. They couldn’t tell me when they were going to have any in, they couldn’t tell me when they were coming, they didn’t know if there were going to be any more coming. She said “until we have the dust settled on all this stuff from yesterday” she couldn’t tell me if there were going to be any more guns coming in stock.

Ammunition, same thing, can’t find ammunition. You can find a few guns but you can’t find ammunition. Somebody asked me last night and I thought it was a perfect question to ask, almost a billion and a half rounds of ammunition purchased last year by the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol and even the armed services of the Postal Service ordered a large cache of ammunition. Why is the government ordering these huge, I mean the numbers are unbelievable, almost a billion and a half rounds by Homeland Security alone, why is the government ordering such large amounts of ammunition and you and I, Mr. Average Joe America, can’t find any ammunition? Is it just the supply and demand thing or is there something else going on? I don’t know, I don’t want to be the conspiracy theory guy, but it is a question somebody needs to answer. Let’s talk to John from Alabama.

Caller: Long time no hear Buster. Maybe one day we can get to share a jail cell and praise the Lord together.

Wilson: I hope not but I’m ready to go if need be.

After the caller warned that Obama is implementing the planks of the Communist Manifesto and creating a Nazi-like state, Wilson moved from his standard ‘I’m just asking the question’ excuse to plainly arguing that the government is planning to make ammunition unavailable to gun owners in order to “make our guns obsolete.”

Wilson: I’ve said this before, what they’re going to do in the place of confiscating the weapons that they know will cause too much civil unrest, they’re going to go after the ammunition. As I mentioned earlier, right now I can’t find anywhere where I live to buy the ammunition I want, it’s not out there. I believe whether it’s through taxation or whether it’s through demands on the corporations that are the manufacturers, they are going to do something that will stop the flow of ammunition and that’s how they will make our guns obsolete. It’s a Second Amendment right, that’s why we look at it. I just shared with you two stories today about how they are attacking the First Amendment right. The First and Second Amendments, our government, this government today, seems to be in all-out war against.

The American Family Association’s Buster Wilson has been warning for the last few weeks that President Obama is getting ready to confiscate guns en masse. When Obama announced his twenty-three executive actions yesterday, gun groups largely shrugged them off, but not Wilson. In his latest effort to stoke fear, he’s warning that the Obama administration may take guns away from pastors and radio talk show hosts like himself who denounce homosexuality:

Wilson: What if the Attorney General, and listen the reason I say this might happen is because if you remember the first report put out by the Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, when the President became President of the United States, she put out a paper talking about the people who are the categories of people who might be homegrown terrorists. In that list she put people who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ, people who believe in pro-life issues, people who don’t believe in having illegal aliens here, they put a lot of good, decent categories of people in that paper. Well here’s what number four says, the Attorney General can put who he wants to on the list of people who are too dangerous to get guns. What if he decides radio talk show hosts who don’t believe in gay marriage, they’re dangerous, so they shouldn’t get guns; what about pastors who preach against abortion and homosexuality, they’re too dangerous get guns; that could happen.

Contrary to what Wilson said, the fourth executive action simply directs the Attorney General to make sure that people who are already prohibited from owning a firearm do not do so, not to come up with any new categories:

Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

Not only did Wilson clearly distort the plain wording of the executive actions, but he also grossly misrepresented the DHS report on right-wing terrorism.

He said that the DHS report tacked “good, decent” people “who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ, people who believe in pro-life issues, people who don’t believe in having illegal aliens here.”

Not so.

The 2009 report [PDF], which concentrates on racist and anti-government militias, only mentions abortion in a single footnote as an example of how violent actions can be driven by a single issue, such as the bombings of clinics or the murder of abortion doctors. The only references to the Second Coming or Christianity are to the racist, anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement – whose members have engaged in violence – and a note about how End Times and doomsday prophesies have in the past radicalized certain individuals or groups.

As for immigration, the DHS only addresses the connection between anti-immigrant militarism and hate crimes against Hispanics, like violent border vigilantes, not political activism on illegal immigration.

The author of the report, Daryl Johnson, is actually an anti-choice, Mormon gun owner and a Republican. His warnings were prescient – right-wing extremists recently committed a massacre in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and a shooting at the Holocaust Museum.

But to Wilson, completely twisting Obama’s gun orders and the DHS report on right-wing extremism are all par for the course of a job of an AFA spokesman.