Today, NPR ran a story on the tension between Tea Party activists who want to focus on economic and spending issues, and social conservatives who want the movement to take a stand on things like abortion and gay marriage.
And, for some reason, NPR thought that a anti-gay, anti-Muslim bigot like the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer was the best person to make the case for the social conservatives:
Morning Edition is taking a closer look at the groups that make up the Tea Party. Steve Inskeep talks to Toby Marie Walker, lead facilitator for the Waco Tea Party, and Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association. Walker says the Tea Party’s issues need to remain strictly fiscal. Fischer says that if the Tea Party doesn’t incorporate social issues into its agenda, it runs the risk of dividing the conservative movement.
Fischer said that he didn’t expect the Tea Party to make social issues “front and center,” but warned that if it “ever sends a signal that the gay agenda is okay with them, that same-sex marriage is okay with them, that abortion is okay with them, the energy is going to bleed out of the movement.”
Of course, if Fischer had his way, the Tea Party movement would be calling gays sexually deviant pedophiles who ought to be banned from serving in public office because they are savage and brutal terrorists.
So maybe the Tea Party movement shouldn’t necessarily be listening to Fischer … and maybe NPR ought to do a little background research on the people to whom it is giving airtime.
