Bryan Fischer defended the American Family Association against the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” designation , arguing that “what the SPLC calls ‘myths’ about homosexuality turn out to be what neutral observers call ‘truths’ about homosexuality.”
The SPLC added the AFA to its list of hate groups last week, arguing that in recent years, the AFA “has seemed to specialize in ‘combating the homosexual agenda.'” The report cites Fischer specifically for one post he wrote about the subject:
Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.”
Fischer, who is the “Director of Issues Analysis” for the conservative Christian AFA, decried the SPLC’s list as “predicated on the fact that we tell the truth about homosexuality and oppose the normalization of homosexuality in any way, shape or form.” He defended the AFA and the Family Research Council, another Christian conservative group that was also on the list, by referring to part of the SPLC report called “ten anti-gay myths debunked.” Fischer argues that these are not myths at all, but “truths,” and attempts to debunk these debunkings on his AFA blog.
“Until the Southern Poverty Law Center adds the FDA and the CDC to its list of ‘hate’ groups,” he writes, “there is no reason to think that either the AFA or the FRC belongs on that list. In point of fact, we are ‘truth’ groups, not ‘hate’ groups.”
And what are some of these “truths?” Fischer writes that “homosexuals controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust,” “homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals,” and “hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia.”
He adds that being gay is a choice and anyone can “leave homosexuality”: “People leave the homosexual lifestyle every day, just like people stop abusing drugs and alcohol every day.”
Fischer, a favorite among social conservative Republicans, is also known for arguing recently that the Medal of Honor has been “feminized” because “we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.”
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