freedom of religion

Whenever I see articles like this one about Dakota Ary, a fourteen year-old Texas student who was suspended for reportedly saying in class that, as a Christian, he believes homosexuality is wrong, I am always reminded of the story of Raymond Raines or, more recently, the eight year-old Massachusetts student supposedly suspended for drawing a picture of Jesus.

These absurd stories are almost always generated by the Religious Right legal groups who have been hired to represent the families of the "victims" - does anyone remember Edwin Graning? - and the resulting stories inevitably present only their version, often because school systems have policies of not commenting on specific student-related cases.

And that is exactly what is happening with Ary as he is being represented by Liberty Counsel and every article written about the situation presents only that side of the story as Ary's school district is refusing to comment.

And so it just serves up a prime opportunity for Bryan Fischer to renew his "gays commit hate crimes" campaign and trot out his "The Nazis were all gay" claims:

One can be forgiven for asking what in the world a German teacher is doing talking about homosexuality in his classroom in the first place. Apparently the tenuous link was that the teacher brought up the topic of homosexuality in Germany.

Fine. Does this teacher tell his students that Adolf Hitler was a homosexual, and developed a police record as a homosexual prostitute on the streets of Vienna? Does he tell his students that the Nazi Party started in a homosexual bar in Munich? Does this teacher tell his students that virtually all of the Brownshirts, the Storm Troopers who served as Hitler’s thugs and enforcers, were themselves homosexuals?

Does he tell his students that students in German schools are taught these things because they never want a repeat of the Nazi horror?

Thanks to the intervention of Liberty Counsel and attorney Matt Krause, the school has backed this Gaystapo teacher down and rescinded this Nazi-esque suspension in time for this honors student to play in the school’s next football game.

As a culture, we must come to grips with the simple truth that we are going to have to choose between the homosexual agenda and freedom because we cannot have both. There is no room in the homosexual lobby for freedom of religion, conscience, speech, press or even association.

Quite simply, we must choose between homosexuality and liberty. Let’s be sure we make the right choice.

Bryan Fischer has made it quite clear that he does not believe that the First Amendment applies to Muslims or any "non-Christian religions."  And that is why he can feels he can advocate for bans on immigration and service in the armed forces by Muslims as well as prohibitions on the construction of mosques in the United States.

Now obviously, the idea that the First Amendment doesn't apply to non-Christians is a pretty radical one ... so much so, in fact, that Fischer's employer, the American Family Association, decided to release an official statement distancing the organization from Fischer's views:

America’s Founders disagreed how broadly the First Amendment extended Freedom of Religion. Since James Madison, known as the Father of the Bill of Rights, insured that the Congressional debates over the Bill of Rights were conducted in secret, Americans must look to later sources to understand the positions taken by their Founders. Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, whom Madison appointed to the Supreme Court and who later founded Harvard Law School, openly debated over the place of Christianity in American law. Jefferson advocated a broad view that that all religions, not merely variations of Christianity, were to be protected. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote:

[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.' The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.

Joseph Story stated a contradictory view in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States:

The real object of the [First] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

Jefferson’s position has ultimately prevailed; under American law all religions enjoy freedom from government interference. However Joseph Story’s view continues to have proponents, including Bryan Fischer, one of American Family Radio’s talk show hosts. However, the American Family Association (“AFA”) officially sides with Jefferson on this question. AFA is confident that the truth of Christianity will prevail whenever it is allowed to freely compete in the marketplace of ideas.

As we have said time and again, it is amazing how the AFA can pay Fischer, publish his writings and give him two-hour daily radio platform from which to spout his relentless stream of bigotry yet continue to claim that Fischer's views ought to in no way reflect upon the organization.

Name one other organization that regularly has to declare that the things said by its own spokesman should not be construed as reflecting the views of the organization itself.

• Frank Graffney says the terrorist attacks in Norway demonstrates the urgency to fight…you guessed it, Sharia law.

• Live Prayer’s Bill Keller says that while a Christian who commits acts of violence is an apostate, “a Muslim commits acts of terror, killing innocent people, they are simply following the teachings of their false religion.”

• Conservatives defend Herman Cain for saying communities can ban mosques; claim states' rights trump freedom of religion.

• Meanwhile, Cain is skipping an interview with Stephen Colbert.

• Michael Brown, author of A Queer Thing Happened To America, gives his take on the Norway attacks: “Sadly, the atmosphere in our country has become so toxic that venerable ministries like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association have been branded as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, while People for the American Way sends out regular warnings about evangelical Christian leaders on its RightWingWatch website. And this will surely intensify in the days to come in the wake of the tragedy in Norway.”

Bryan Fischer has been demanding a ban on the construction of mosques in the United States for a year now and argues that such a prohibition is entirely constitutional because the First Amendment does not apply to Islam.

In fact, as Fischer is fond of saying, the First Amendment does not apply to any "non-Christian religions":

[T]he First Amendment was written neither to guarantee freedom of religion to Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus nor to prohibit their free exercise of religion. It wasn’t written about them one way or another.

It was written for one specific purpose: to protect the free exercise of the Christian religion ... We must be clear: the First Amendment does not prohibit the free exercise of alternative religions, but neither does it guarantee it. It simply does not address the issue at all.

In defense of this view, Fischer has lately started arguing that prohibitions on polygamy prove that "non-Christian religions" (i.e., Mormonism) do not have First Amendment protections:

That the free exercise clause provides no guarantee for non-Christian religions is made clear in the case of Mormonism. It was part and parcel of the “free exercise” of the Mormon faith to have as many wives as you wanted. Congress said nope. In fact, the Mormon church was required to prohibit plural marriages as a condition of Utah’s statehood.

(It’s worth noting in passing that the Mormon church has never renounced plural marriage. It has simply instructed its followers to obey federal law in the matter.)

Idaho came into the union in 1890, at virtually the same time as Utah, and the first page of Idaho’s state constitution makes it explicitly clear that the free exercise of religion shall in no sense be construed to justify plural marriages.

...

In fact, the Republican Party came into existence in 1854 to combat two evils: slavery and the pernicious Mormon practice of plural marriage, what the original GOP called "those twin relics of barbarism." (Let me point out that I’m talking about the LDS faith as it existed then, not as it exists today.)

Clearly, then, as our political experiment with the Mormon faith makes clear, there is no guarantee of the free exercise of religion for religions which are outside the stream of historic Christianity, as Mormonism is. (It denies the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, the unique deity of Christ, his all-sufficient atoning sacrifice on the cross, and the completeness of God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments.)

Following Fischer's logic, it only stands to reason that local communities likewise have the power to deny Mormons permission to build temples in their communities as well.

Fischer claims that the Mormon church "never renounced plural marriage" and therefore it must be entirely acceptable for local officials who do not want Mormons or their "pernicious" teachings polluting their communities to deny them permission to build houses of worship, precisely because the First Amendment does not apply to "non-Christian religions" like Mormonism. 

The AFA's resident spokesbigot Bryan Fischer operates on a very consistent pattern:  he spends months saying and writing outrageously bigoted things but when some pressure starts to mount over all of the bigoted things he says, he lashes out and accuses his detractors of lying about what he said.

He has done it several times before, and now that Gov. Rick Perry is getting some heat for associating with Fischer and the AFA, he has done it again, taking issue with this Tim Murphy piece in Mother Jones.  Fischer claims that Murphy "strung together a litany of lies and distortions" and then proceeds to try and set the record straight.

In three instances Fischer fully admits to the views attributed to him - gays should be banned from public office and Muslims should be banned from the military and from building mosques:

- "gays should be banned from holding public office" — This is accurate. I do believe this, for the same reason that I believe Anthony Weiner should resign, as did Larry Craig, John Ensign and Mark Foley and numerous other Republicans caught in sexual misconduct. Aberrant sexuality morally disqualifies a practitioner from public office, and whatever else homosexual behavior is, it is aberrant sexual behavior.

- "there should be a permanent ban on mosque construction in the United States" — Partly true. What I have recommended is that local planning and zoning boards no longer issue permits — what about the word "permit" do people not understand? — for the building of mosques. This is because 81% of the mosques in America distribute literature that supports violent jihad and the imposition of sharia law by force, and 95% of Muslims who attend prayers regularly attend one of these mosques. I have suggested our policies toward Islam should be the same as our policies toward the KKK and white supremacist groups, since they are equally and violently antisemitic. Whatever the NAACP thinks ought to be done to halt the spread of the KKK and white supremacists I'll be happy to adopt as our policy against the spread of Islam.

- "Muslims should be prohibited from serving in the armed forces" — True. Serving in the United States military is a privilege not a right, and we should have no room in our military for those whose religion teaches them to "slay the idolaters wherever you find them" (Surah 9:5). If you don't think this policy suggestion makes sense, ask the families of Major Nidal Malik Hasan's homicidal rampage at Ft. Hood, done in the name of Allah.

But Fischer takes issue with several other assertions ... and, in typical Fischer fashion, attempts to clarify the record by more or less reiterating the very thing he claims he never said in the first place:

1. "gays caused the Holocaust." False. What I spoke is the simple truth: the Nazi Party was responsible for the Holocaust. If the question is then further asked, who was responsible for the Nazi Party, the answer, as a matter of simple historical truth: homosexual thugs. The Nazi Party was actually formed in a gay bar in Munich, and virtually all of Hitler's early enforcers in his rise to power were homosexuals.

Here is what I wrote in my column on what Nazi Germany teaches us about the wisdom of allowing open homosexuals in the military:

"Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews. Gays in the military is an experiment that has been tried and found disastrously and tragically wanting. Maybe it's time for Congress to learn a lesson from history."

So I clearly lay the blame for the Holocaust on the Nazi Party, but attribute the rise of the Nazi Party to homosexual brutes. That's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of historical fact, as inconvenient as that fact may be to the mavens of political correctness on the left.

2. "gays...are planning on doing it (the Holocaust) again." False.

Here is the transcript of my remarks:

"Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. There is no room in their world for dissent, there is no room in their world for disagreement, there is no room in their world for criticism. You criticize homosexual behavior, they tag you as a bigot and a homophobe and then they go to work to silence you just like the Roman Catholic Church did in the days of Galileo — it's no different; it's the Spanish Inquisition all over again.

"Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany."

Clearly the parallel I was drawing here is that homosexuals are out to suppress freedom of speech, religion, and dissent just as the Nazis did. This is indisputable.

So Fischer never said that gays caused the Holocaust and they are going to commit another one against Christians - he simply said that the Holocaust was the fault of the Nazis (who were all gay) and that, if given the chance, gays would do the same thing again today.

So you can see that that is totally different. 

Fischer also claims he never called for the forced conversion of Muslims or their deportation from America:

5. "foreign Muslims should either be exterminated or forced to convert to Christianity" — Horrendous distortion. What I said was that, if we are attacked from or by a Muslim nation, we should go in with military force and neutralize the threat. Then I suggest we bring missionaries in, since it is Christianity that has made the United States the freest, strongest, and most prosperous nation on earth. If they don't want to listen to our missionaries, fine. We'll bring them and our soldiers home. But we let them know that if you attack us again and we have to come back, this time we'll come back not with missionaries but with overwhelming lethal force.

6. "American Muslims should be deported" — Wrong again. What I have written is that American Muslims who have been naturalized of course should remain, as well as American citizens who convert to Islam. But I do believe we should not extend citizenship any longer to immigrant Muslims, even the ones who are here legally. When their legal immigration provisions expire, we should happily bear the cost of repatriating them to their homelands. Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the god of Islam teaches his followers to kill Americans. It's simply bad policy to extend citizenship to people who have a solemn, sacred, religious obligation to exterminate us.

Fischer was quite clear when he said that when the US goes into a Muslim nation, it must try to convert them to Christianity but if the Muslims refuse to convert, then the next time the US returns, it will be to kill them. 

Likewise, Fischer has asserted that simply by virtue of being a Muslim, they are guilty of treason and that Muslims living in the US ought to be deported.

Yet, somehow Fischer thinks it is an unfair distortion of his views to claim that he supports forced conversion and the deportation of Muslims.

Fischer has a long history of saying openly bigoted things on an almost daily basis ... and he has just as long a history of claiming that all of the bigoted things he said were taken out of context or misrepresented.

As I have said before, it is utterly pointless to try and have any sort of rational debate with Fischer ... and this is further evidence of just why that is the case. 

In May Rep. Pete Stark (R-CA) introduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which prohibits “discrimination in adoption or foster care placements based on the sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status of any prospective adoptive or foster parent, or the sexual orientation or gender identity of the child involved.” While it is unlikely that the GOP-controlled House would approve the legislation, it is an important step in the fight to ensure that children awaiting adoption or foster care can find homes.

But the “pro-family” Religious Right wants to stop the bill in its tracks.

Focus on the Family along with the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg attacked the bill, claiming that “children will suffer” if it passes:

“We need to do all we can to encourage successful and innovative partnerships, rather than try to shut agencies out of the process,” said Kelly Rosati, vice president of community outreach at Focus on the Family. “It’s the children who will suffer.”

Sprigg agreed.

“This represents one more case,” he said, “in which we are seeing the rights of adults placed ahead of the best interests of the children.”

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel even alleged that the legislation is unconstitutional and demonstrates how the “homosexual activist political tsunami destroys everything in its path that is righteous, good and beneficial to society”:

At least one pro-family attorney disagrees with the liberal Democrat from California. "This bill has nothing to do with providing adoptive homes for children in need and has everything to do with shutting down all biblically-sound Christian adoption agencies around the country," contends Matt Barber, vice president of Liberty Counsel Action.

And he argues that the proposal is unconstitutional because it violates the freedom of religion, which is protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

"This bill puts the [political] demands of selfish, adult homosexual activists...ahead of the welfare of children and religious liberty, and it must be stopped," Barber adds.

So he decides this is the latest example of how the "homosexual activist political tsunami destroys everything in its path that is righteous, good and beneficial to society." He cites a preponderance of studies that conclusively show children are best served in a home with a mother and a father.

Newt Gingrich will announce his decision to run for President tomorrow on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. After an address to the Georgia GOP, he will embark on a tour of Iowa. Tracking Gingrich’s comeback in Republican and Religious Right circles, Right Wing Watch has compiled a “Top Ten” list of Gingrich’s truculent and divisive rhetoric and consistent disrespect for the rule of law, freedom of religion, and equality:

1. Gingrich With Hagee, Warning US Becoming "Secular Atheist Country Dominated by Radical Islamists"


2. Gingrich Says He Stands for Religious Liberty but Denies Rights To Muslims


3. Gingrich Wants Ground Zero Declared a National Battlefield Memorial to Stop Park 51


4. Gingrich Says His Infidelity Was Due To The Fact He Was Working So Hard To Save America


5. Gingrich Group Funneled $125K To AFA To Remove Iowa Judges Who Supported Marriage Equality


6. Gingrich Group Calls For Elimination of Ninth Circuit Over Cross Ruling


7. Gingrich Warns of Sharia While Condoning Dominionist Ideology


8. Gingrich and Huckabee Recommend the Ravings of Anti-Gay Activist Matt Barber


9. Gingrich's Presidential Campaign To Heavily Rely On Barton's Counsel and Advice


10. Gingrich Joins Lou Engle To Urge America to Rediscover God

On Friday Right Wing Watch reported that Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association, urged the U.S. to require immigrants, Muslims in particular, to “convert to Christianity.” At some point after it was posted, the AFA removed Fischer’s article from their website and he then rewrote the three paragraphs RWW highlighted so that now the article argues the exact opposite of what he originally said:

In the original article, Fischer said:

Allowing Muslims to immigrate into the United States, a Christian nation by origin, history and tradition, without insisting that they drop their allegiance to Allah, Muhammad, the Qur’an, and sharia law, is to commit cultural suicide. We believe in freedom of religion for Muslims like we do for everybody else. But if they insist on clinging to their religion, they will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country which shares their values: death for those who leave Islam, the beating of wives by their husbands, and the labeling of Jews as apes and pigs.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our faith, our heroes, and our history. Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.

…

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), convert to Christianity, fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

Now, the three paragraphs read:

Does this mean that folks need to convert before they immigrate? No, but at a minimum, it would mean making sure that immigrants to the United States affirm and believe in the superiority of the Judeo-Christian system of values and truth claims over alternative value systems such as sharia law.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our values, our heroes, and our history.

...

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

This wouldn’t be the first time the AFA censored their chief spokesman, as the group in February scrubbed Fischer’s article where he said that Native Americans were rightfully expelled from their land and are punished with poverty and alcoholism for not converting to Christianity. Just last week, Fischer removed and altered his piece claiming that African Americans “rut like rabbits.”

Unfortunately for Fischer, we saved a version of his original post:

• Right Wing Watch In Focus: How Not to Respond to Political Bullies: Lessons from the Smithsonian’s Response to the Manufactured Right-Wing Controversy Over Hide/Seek.
• Julie Ingersoll @ Religion Dispatches: Republicans Tell Iowa Homeschoolers Education Not Government's Role.
• Warren Throckmorton: Bryan Fischer: Freedom of religion only for Christians.
• Towleroad: Two Iowa Republicans Plan to Call Out Anti-Gay Activist Bob Vander Plaats on Campaign to Oust Judges.
• Kristin @ Bold Faith Type: Denying Peter: King Dismisses Broad Coalition of Religious Leaders Who Opposed Hearings.
• Zaid Jilani @ Think Progress: Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes.
• Rachel Tabachnick @ Talk 2 Action: NAR Apostles' Brand of "Transformation" to be Promoted at Conference at Harvard.