So you probably imagine those speaking at the "Values Voter Summit" are the real extremists in America. The fringe of the Republican party. Think again. It is the Republican party, it you can judge by their new darling, elected officials, and presidential candidates: Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and of course Mitt Romney (does his appearance, and the prominence of Glenn Beck mean that the Christian Right isn't afraid of Mormons anymore? Or is it all an LDS plot to convert them all?).
So, yes, you could pretty much call this gathering establishment Republican. They were there arm-in-arm with people like this guy, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer. Fishcer's most recent greatest hits have been complied by PFAW.
- 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)
- Says 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: "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)
Bryan Fischer's been on my radar for a long time, because before he moved to Mississippi for the AFA job, he led the much smaller but no less dangerous Idaho Values Alliance, where his and his organization's clout in the state legislature managed to kill an expansion of anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation. He may have reached his pinnacle when he celebrated the deaths of 14 people killed in a plane crash in Montana because "among the victims were members of Bud Feldkamp’s family, including two of his daughters, two sons-in-law, and five grandchildren. Feldkamp, it turns out, is the owner of the nation’s largest privately owned, for-profit abortion chain."
But the list that PFAW complied struck me particularly was his screed on gay adoption as "a terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children." Here's how much Bryan Fischer really cares about children. Fischer actively lobbied against a bill in the legislature that would have required licensing and set minimum safety standards for day care centers that care for four or more children who aren't family members of the operator. Here's what he opposed:
Criminal background checks, first aid and CPR training, a functioning telephone on the premises, smoke alarms, fencing around water hazards, and basic ratios of the number of adults to children.
For Fischer, typical of the American Taliban, demonizing and discriminating against gays and lesbians is the real issue, not the well-being of children. He got this bill tabled, even after the testimony from a young mother whose "5-month-old daughter suffered two broken ribs, a fractured arm, bleeding on the brain and hundreds of hemorrhages in each eye" from being abused by an unlicensed day care provider. That provider ended up with a felony conviction, but that wouldn't prevent her from providing care for children. Which was just fine by Fischer. That's some American Taliban--and unfortunately plain ol' GOP--values for you.