For several years now, our RightWingWatch blog has been reporting on the bigoted shenanigans of one Bryan Fischer. Fischer, a leader of the American Family Association and host of a weekly show on the AFA’s radio station, is one of the more spectacularly extreme public figures on the Right. He’s said that all Muslim citizens should be treated as traitors; he’s called for banning Muslim Americans from the military; he thinks the U.S. should ban the building of new mosques. He’s also argued that gay people aren’t fit to hold public office, and asserted that “gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism.” And don’t forget his infamous pseudo-history lesson on how gay men were the only people “savage and brutal and vicious enough” to serve Hitler.
You’d think that even in a party that’s moving rapidly to the right, serious, mainstream GOP presidential contenders wouldn’t want to be associated with someone as extreme and incendiary as Fischer. You’d be wrong.
This weekend, Fischer will be speaking at the Family Research Council’s annual Values Voter Summit. Joining him will be leading GOP figures Mitt Romney, Bob McDonnell, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jim DeMint and Mike Pence.
Do these GOP leaders know about Fischers record of hate speech? And if they do, are they still willing to acknowledge his credibility be appearing alongside him this weekend?
We’ve drafted a letter to the Summit attendees, asking them these questions. You can add your name to the letter here.
Values Voter Summit Participants:
Reasonable people can, and do, have reasonable differences of opinion. Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, is not a reasonable person.
By sharing a stage with Fischer at this year’s Values Voter Summit, public figures acknowledge the credibility of his shameless anti-Muslim and anti-gay propaganda. 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; insulted Muslim servicemembers; claimed that brave Americans died in vain because Iraq was not converted to Christianity; and called gay people deviants, felons, pedophiles and terrorists. Bryan Fischer is no mainstream conservative. And neither is any person who shares a platform with him while refusing to denounce his hate-filled propaganda.
We urge you to denounce Fischer’s extremism and separate yourself from his comments.
And, in case you need more proof of Fischer’s extremism, watch the video of him trying to defend himself against our charges yesterday.
And finally, here’s Rachel Maddow asking the question: Are there any political consequences to appearing with Bryan Fischer?
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