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The mental rot of religiosity at work:
Grotesque human chauvinism alive and well in America
WITH BONUS FEATURE ABOUT FISCHER’S PARTICIPATION IN SPREADING ANTI-GAY LIES
By Tana Ganeva |
Bryan Fischer: Far worse than just a lunatic.
Having successfully stopped people from being gay, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is taking on another moral scourge: grizzly bears. The weird AFA spokesman, who has compared Muslims to Nazis, suggested a Sea World Killer Whale be stoned, and likened gay sex to domestic terrorism, has penned a blog post obliquely calling for some sort of grizzly bear genocide (flagged by Kyle at Right Wing Watch). Says Fischer:
••••
One human being is worth more than an infinite number of grizzly bears. Another way to put it is that there is no number of live grizzlies worth one dead human being. If it’s a choice between grizzlies and humans, the grizzlies have to go. And it’s time.
••••
God makes it clear in Scripture that deaths of people and livestock at the hands of savage beasts is a sign that the land is under a curse. The tragic thing here is that we are bringing this curse upon ourselves.
Fischer’s disturbed rants would just be funny, were it not for AFA’s reach and clout: the Christian group owns 180 radio stations and publishes a magazine with a circulation of 170,000. They claim over 500,000 members, 2.5 million supporters and a 20 million dollar annual budget. Some of that money was recently used to undermine Iowa’s judicial process; AFA was instrumental in a successful campaign to oust 3 Iowa judges who voted to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.
The AFA is also one of those groups that prominent GOPers pander to — and help legitimize — when they’re trying to score points with “values” voters. (At the last Values Voter Summit Fischer shared the stage with Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Michele Bachmann.)
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Tana Ganeva writes for AlterNet.
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BONUS FEATURE
Bryan Fischer’s Lively Connection – The death penalty for homosexuals
First posted By Jody May-Chang On December 9, 2009
During Bryan Fischer’s self-righteous reign of terror in Idaho, he literally made a career out of issuing outrageously pious and ungodly statements aimed at dehumanizing and vilifying lesbian, gay and transgender people. He managed to do so with such skill that his propaganda was rarely, if at all, questioned by reporters covering him.
One of his most abhorrent deeds has been Fischer’s shameless promotion and support for Scott Lively, in his May 14, 2008 post “The truth about homosexuality and the Nazi Party [1]” he abundantly quotes and summarizes Lively’s anti-gay Nazi propaganda book ‘The Pink Swastika’. Lively’s book, and Fischer by extension, among other things, blame homosexuals for starting the Nazi party.
Fischer Writes:
•“In fact, the Nazi Party began in a gay bar in Munich.”
•“Most of Hitler’s closets aids were homosexuals or sexual deviants.”
•“Heinrich Himmler, second in powered only to Hitler, was publically opposed to homosexuality but may have been a closet homosexual himself… Himmler was deeply immersed in the occult…”
•“May of the guards and administrators responsible for concentration camp horrors were themselves homosexuals.”
•“The ‘Butch’ homosexual guards and capos were capable of unrestrained cruelty, sadism and savagery. A guard at Auschwitz, for instance, strangled crushed and gnawed to death as many as 100 boys and young men a day while raping them at his leisure.”
•“Some parts of the American Nazi movement are explicitly homosexual.”
•“What’s the point here?” Fischer asks, “Simply that there is another side to the constant refrain from homosexual activists who frequently mention the Nazi persecution of homosexuals and in doing so imply Christian who opposed the normalization of homosexuality Are in effect crypto-Nazis.”
Last year, Fischer wrote these things [2] to promote and encourage attendance for the “Shake the Nation” religious hate fest held here in Idaho. Why is it necessary to revisit this? Well, for two very important reasons.
First of all, Bryan Fischer’s blossoming national fame [3] has its roots in here thanks to the Idaho media which gave him free reign to make outrageous statements while never holding him accountable. The Idaho media gave Fischer ink and face-time on camera without so much as a single hard question.
The Idaho media’s kid glove treatment of Fischer has allowed him to attain his long sought after status as a national celebrity. His most recent claim to fame is his anti-Muslim racism, which is a huge embarrassment to fair minded Idahoans.
The second, and most troubling reason that revisiting this relevant, is because of Bryan Fischer’s connection and support of Scott Lively who now is an evangelical celebrity who promotes the notion that you can ‘pray the gay away’ – Fischer’s cronies are “credited to have inspired” Bill No. 18, The Anti-Homosexual Bill of 2009 in Uganda.
This bill, which is very likely to become law, will impose harsh sentences upon those who are gay, suspected of being gay or offer protection to those who support gay people. These so-called gay offenses include:
•Commits the offence of Homosexuality, Life in prison
•Aggravated Homosexuality, Death
•Attempting to commit Homosexuality, 7 years in prison
•Attempt to commit Aggravated Homosexuality, Life in prison
•A person who funds or sponsors homosexuality, min 5 – max 7 years in prison
•Know someone is gay and do not report them within 24 hours – 3 years in prison
•Extradite citizens back to Uganda from anywhere in the world for prosecution if suspected of committing any of the above crimes.
Last spring, Scott Lively, who is now the president of “Defend the Family,” went to Uganda with Don Schmierer of “Exodus International” and Caleb Lee Brundidge of “The International Healing Foundation” to conduct an anti-homosexual seminar.
Lively is quoted by LifeSiteNews.com [4] saying that his trip to Uganda was “with the purpose of getting them to liberalize the law making it more oriented toward therapy” and says the current bill “went too far.”
Lively is a fraud who is now trying to distance himself from his own propaganda, but what is very clear here is that he is deeply rooted in a longtime campaign of contempt against homosexuals. Lively, like Fischer, is a bold-faced liar and a propagandist. He admitted going to Uganda to testify in favor of this immoral legislation. In his own words, his reason was because of, “a lot of external interference from European and American gay activists attempting to do in Uganda what they’ve done around the world – homosexualize that society, ” and “the many male homosexuals coming into the country and abusing boys who are on the streets.”
Fischer shamelessly promoted Scott Lively by encouraging the public to listen to this man’s hate speech. At the time Lively came to Idaho Fischer said that his merchant of hate will, “address some of the lessons we must learn from Nazi Germany and its disastrous embrace of homosexuality.”
Fischer posted a ‘Shake the Nation’ event on his website to promote the conference which he later deleted, but not before I had a chance to PDF that post.[5] You will note that ‘Shake the Nation’ was organized by Fisher’s good friend Tom Munds who appears to have thought twice about stepping into Fischer odorous shoes.
A good friend once told me, “Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you what you are.” Bryan Fischer aligns himself with hate mongers then tries to rewrite history by deleting it from is his website. The Idaho news media had an opportunity to shed some light on Bryan Fischer, but instead of defending the public’s right to know about this miserable fraud, they ran to him as if he was the official spokesman of the Christian community.
The Idaho news media shares some responsibility in failing to examine Fischer’s record and giving him the keys to the newsroom to spread his propaganda.
Now the world is hearing about Scott Lively and the Ugandan Bill No. 18 that calls for throwing gays in prison and executing them. The rightwing echo chamber screams about so-called “death panels” – well, this is what they really look like thanks to the unchallenged rants of a con-men like Bryan Fischer and his cronies.
Who needs the Taliban when we have mean-spirited criminal reactionaries like these around?