As we have noted several times before, Bryan Fischer has an utterly incoherent understanding of the First Amendment, insisting that it only applies to Congress whenever he wants to defend some possible establishment of religion violation but insisting that it applies to everyone when he wants to complain about some possible violation of its free exercise clause.
This basic contradiction popped up once again in his latest column in which he warns that Christians are becoming “the new Dred Scott” due to the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down state gay marriage bans. Citing cases involving Christian bakers who refused to provide wedding cakes to gay customers and the false claim that one of the bakeries had been slapped with a gag order, Fischer claims that their First Amendment rights are being violated (emphasis added):
Readers are by now familiar with Aaron and Melissa Klein, who were fined $135,000 by a bureaucrat (no trial by jury, no judge, no right to confront accusers in open court, etc.) for politely declining to violate their own Christian conscience in the conduct of their business.
To add constitutional insult to constitutional injury, this bureaucrat slapped a gag order on the Kleins so they are not allowed even to talk to anybody about this travesty. Their right to the free exercise of religion, gone. Their right to free speech, gone. Their right to free association, gone.
In other words, this bureaucrat just issued a binding decree that the First Amendment applies to everybody in America except Christians. Christians, according to this man, have no First Amendment rights of any kind.
A baker in Colorado, Jack Phillips, is going to court today for similarly declining to use his expressive gifts to bake a cake which included a message of support for same-sex marriage. For his effrontery, having the nerve to actually believe the First Amendment applied to him, he too has been fined, ordered to bake cakes that violate his conscience, sent to re-education camp, and ordered to provide quarterly “compliance reports” to show that he is sufficiently servile to the lords of political correctness.
As we have pointed out before, it is Fischer who insists that “violating the First Amendment is something only Congress can do.” Needless to say, neither of these cases has anything to do with Congress so, by Fischer’s own logic, nobody’s First Amendment rights are being violated since that “is something only Congress can do.”
How Fischer repeatedly fails to understand the basic fact that he cannot claim that the First Amendment can only be violated by Congress and then turn around and also complain that the First Amendment is being violated by things that are not Congress is beyond comprehension.
