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?
