Values Voter Summit

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

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.

• Stephanie Mencimer @ Mother Jones: Stone the Whales! Gay Sex is Terrorism! Muslims Suck!
• Michelle Goldberg @ The Daily Beast: My Ex-Gay Life With the Tea Party Queen.
• Raw Story: Christine O’Donnell: School shootings caused by lack of Bible and prayer studies.
• Rachel Slajda @ TPM: Christine O'Donnell's Sexual Evolution.
• Ben Armbruster @ Think Progress: SC Senator Defends Slave Photo: ‘It’s A Great Statement As To How Far The State Has Come’.
• Joe.My.God: Brittany Novotny Vs. Sally Kern.
• Amanda Terkel @ Huffington Post: 'Values Voter Summit' Will Likely Be Missing Jewish Voters: Conservative Conference Coincides With Yom Kippur.
• Greg Sargent: Cornyn: GOP's stance on social issues alienating independents.
• Brian Beutler @ TPM: Vitter Pledge To Tea Party: 'I Will Conduct Myself...In A Morally And Socially Appropriate Manner'.

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:

• Demanded that no new mosques be built anywhere in America. (8/10/2010)

• Argued that inbreeding has caused Muslims to be stupid and violent. (9/10/2010)

• Said that Muslims should be banned from serving in the U.S. military. (11/9/2009)

• Insisted that all Muslims are traitors, called for the deportation of all Muslims from the U.S. (4/10/2010)

• Claimed that U.S. service members died in vain because the U.S. failed to make Iraq a Christian nation. (8/19/2010)

• Said that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office.” (8/5/2010)

• Insisted that gays are biased, sexually deviant felons, not to mention pedophiles, and should never serve on the Supreme Court. (4/15/2010, 4/16/2010)

• Called gay adoption “a terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children.” (8/10/2010)

• Argued that we should“impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse." (2/3/2010)

• Wrote: “The inescapable conclusion is that gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism.” (6/10/2010)

• Said: “Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.” (5/25/2010)

• Disparaged family values in the Hispanic community, saying “Also, the illegitimacy rate among Hispanic women is over 50%. I’m not sure pro-family values are as strong in the Hispanic community as Dr. Land wants to believe.” (7/23/2010)

• Called the President a “fascist dictator” for taking steps to hold BP accountable for the Gulf oil spill: “And remember the President's been a fascist ... he says ‘I've been a fascist from day one. They can't blow their nose without asking permission from me, they can't clean the wax out of their ears unless they get a sign-off from me.’ That's what fascist dictators do!” (6/18/2010)

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

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.

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?

Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition held a conference in Washington, D.C. this past Friday and Saturday. It attracted some of the expected Religious Right figures – Ken Blackwell, Gary Bauer, etc. – and featured such goodies as Dinesh D’Souza discoursing on the source of President Obama’s “rage.”

As if he's trying to prove the point that I made earlier that he's a viciously anti-Muslim bigot, the AFA's Bryan Fischer unleashes his latest attack, writing a post based on the claims of Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels in which he claims that Muslims are dangerous, violent, and stupid because of rampant inbreeding:

Lowered intellectual capacity is another devastating consequence of Muslim marriage patterns. According to Sennels, research shows that children of consanguinous marriages lose 10-16 points off their IQ and that social abilities develop much slower in inbred babies.

The risk of having an IQ lower than 70, the official demarcation for being classified as “retarded,” increases by an astonishing 400 percent among children of cousin marriages.

In Denmark, non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the intelligence test required for entrance into the Danish army.

Sennels says that “the ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world.” He points out that the Arab world translates just 330 books every year, about 20% of what Greece alone does.

In the last 1,200 years years of Islam, just 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic, about what Spain does in a single year. Seven out of 10 Turks have never even read a book.

Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to succeed in the West. “A lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces critical thinking, surely makes it harder for many Muslims to have success in our high-tech knowledge societies.”

Only nine Muslims have every won the Nobel Prize, and five of those were for the “Peace Prize.” According to Nature magazine, Muslim countries produce just 10 percent of the world average when it comes to scientific research (measured by articles per million inhabitants).

In Denmark, Sennels’ native country, Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among children with special needs. One-third of the budget for Danish schools is consumed by special education, and anywhere from 51% to 70% of retarded children with physical handicaps in Copenhagen have an immigrant background.

Learning ability is severely affected as well. Studies indicated that 64% of school children with Arabic parents are still illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The immigrant drop-out rate in Danish high schools is twice that of the native-born.

Mental illness is also a product. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of schizophrenic illness. The increased risk of insanity may explain why more than 40% of the patients in Denmark’s biggest ward for clinically insane criminals have an immigrant background.

The U.S. is not immune. According to Sennels, “One study based on 300,000 Americans shows that the majority of Muslims in the USA have a lower income, are less educated, and have worse jobs than the population as a whole.”

...

Bottom line: Islam is not simply a benign and morally equivalent alternative to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Sennels points out, the first and biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. Simple Christian compassion for Muslims and a common-sense desire to protect Western civilization from the ravages of Islam dictate a vigorous opposition to the spread of this dark and dangerous religion. These stark realities must be taken into account when we establish public polices dealing with immigration from Muslim countries and the building of mosques in the U.S.

Let’s hope America wakes up before a blind naivete about the reality of Islam destroys what remains of our Christian culture and our domestic tranquility.

So let me ask again why conservative leaders like Newt Gingrich, Bob McDonnell, and Mike Huckabee are so willing to share the stage with a viciously anti-Muslim bigot like Bryan Fischer at the upcoming Values Voter Summit?