Bryan Fischer, the former Boise pastor now with the American Family Association, is making headlines again by attacking presidential candidate Herman Cain re: abortion statements. Dan Popkey/Idaho Statesman quotes Fisher from Michelle Goldberg in The Daily Beast. Writes Goldberg: “That could have come right out of the Planned Parenthood playbook,” Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says of Cain’s comments. “To us, it’s like somebody saying, ‘I’m personally opposed to gassing Jews, but if you want to do that I’m not going to stand in your way.” You can read more from Popkey here.

Question: What do you make of Herman Cain's abortion stand?

• RE: SPLC Report: The Propandists: Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association & the Demonization of LGBT People/Jody May-Chang and Jill Kuraitis

Former Idaho Values Alliance leader Bryan Fischer and the American Family Association (AFA) are the subject of a 21-page report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The report quotes former Cole Community Church Pastor Roper on Fischer's departure from the church. It also features Idaho Family Forum founder Dennis Mansfield on why he left the church Fischer subsequently founded, Community Church of the Valley, and how Fischer overtook him as the leading evangelist-politician in Idaho. Fischer left Idaho in 2009 and now hosts a radio show for the Mississippi-based AFA. On Saturday, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney criticized Fischer for using “poisonous language.” Fischer retorted that Romney's comments were “tasteless and tawdry” and that Romney allowed the SPLC, New York Times and People for the American Way to dictate his remarks at the Values Voters Summit where both men spoke/Dan Popkey, Idaho Statesman. More here.

Question: What do you make of the SPLC report?

I love a good “issue analysis.” Almost as much as a nice, righteous fistfight. Wouldn’t it be great if today’s Values Voters Summit delivered both? I’ve got the right guy for fresh, out-of-the-box analysis – Idaho’s own Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for the American Family Association. And I’ve got a dream that sometime today in the nation’s capital among voters of value, between the Heritage Foundation Breakfast and the American Values Luncheon, between “Straight Talk on Gay ‘Marriage’ ” and “How the Welfare State Erodes the Family,” Mitt Romney will punch him. Fischer, who was a Boise pastor and right-wing gadfly for 25-plus years, brings a unique bag of nuts to his political analysis. Here’s one: Homosexuality caused the Holocaust. Here’s another: The government “incentivizes” African-Americans to “rut like rabbits.” And another: Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from holding any sovereignty on American soil/Shawn Vestal, SR. More here.

Question: Why has Bryan Fischer gotten so much attention?

You might say he’s an equal opportunity bigot. Bryan Fischer (pictured) of the American Family Association (AFA), who has made hate-mongering remarks about the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island, African Americans,  Muslims, gays and grizzly bears revealed recently that he isn’t too fond of Mormons, either. On a recent episode of his television show Focal Point, Fischer said that the First Amendment does not apply to Mormons and that the Church of Latter Day Saints still supports polygamy. But next week, Fischer will be sharing a stage with America’s most famous Mormon, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, TPM reports in a story headlined “Awkward: Mitt Romney Set to Share Stage with Anti-Mormon Shock Jock”/Gail Courey Toensing, Indian Country. More here. (AP photo)

Question: Politics makes strange bedfellows?

Bryan Fischer (pictured), who ran the Idaho Values Alliance from 2005 to 2009, appeared on Thursday morning's Today show, in a story titled, “The Politics of Personal Life.” The story focused on how GOP presidential candidate and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is explaining his two divorces, infidelity and three marriages to evangelicals, a substantial portion of Republican primary voters. Fischer appears early in the four-minute piece, speaking on behalf of the Mississippi-based American Family Association. Now a radio host for AFA, Fischer told NBC: “The problem with Mr. Gingrich is not once, but twice, he has violated that solemn and sacred oath. And that's why it's a show-stopper for me”/Dan Popkey, Idaho Statesman. More here.

Question: Would Newt Gingrich's 2 divorces influence how you vote in the 2012 presidential election?

Bryan Fischer

From Right Wing Watch:

Bryan Fischer is back with another history lesson for us all - this one on how the Native Americans deserved to lose control of North America because “the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality” made them “morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil.”

You see, there are three ways that control over land is established: settlement, purchase, and conquest.  And in the case of Native Americans, it turns out that they were just like the Canaanites who were so immoral that God decided that “the slop bucket was full, and it was time to empty it out” and so he tasked Israel with being the “custodian to empty the bucket and start over.”

And in North America, that task fell to the Europeans … and Fischer notes that “many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism” because they refuse to embrace Christianity, as demonstrated by the Native American invocation at the Tucson memorial:

H/T Kootenai Conservative

I think DFO instituted some kind of Bryan Fischer topic ban because some of you get a little out of control when he posted some of Fischer's opinions. So I front page this with some hesitation. Can we discuss this topic without going off into rants about Mr. Fischer's sanity, morals or family life?
I'd like to think we can.

I'd like to know if you think Fischer's opinions about Native Americans are more wide spread than we know?

Hard to fathom that someone is giving Larry Craig a challenge as undisputed champion, but the Village National Idiot has launched himself, and the American Family Association (AFA), the social conservative organization Bryan Fischer was selected to represent, into notorious territory by its addition as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). As the watchdog organization instrumental in taking down the Aryan Nations compound in northern Idaho, the SPLC now lists the AFA, along with the Family Research Council (FRC) in the same category as the KKK and the Aryan Nations, which unfortunately is still active in Idaho. Their leader just last year described Obama’s election as “the greatest recruiting tool ever”/Sisyphus, 43rd State Blues. More here.

Question: Do you agree with the listing of the American Family Association and the Family Research Council as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center?

Bryan Fischer, the “Director of Issues Analysis” for the conservative Christian group the American Family Association, was unhappy yesterday that President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier for saving lives. This, Fischer wrote on his blog, shows that the Medal of Honor has been “feminized” because “we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.” Here’s how the AP described Medal of Honor winner Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta heroics: “Giunta, the first living Medal of Honor winner of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, braved heavy gunfire to pull a fellow soldier to cover and rescued another who was being dragged away by insurgents.” Fischer’s take? “So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?”/TPMuckraker. More here. And: Fischer’s full post here.

Question: Are we feminizing the Medal of Honor by rewarding it to soldiers who save people rather than those who kill the enemy?

Having been the guy in Idaho to seal the tomb on the Religious Right a while back, saying that it is dead in Idaho, I found the following thing interesting: The Idaho Values Alliance has a new leader: Mr. Gary Brown (pictured). Here’s the link to their website, so you can see both his intro note AND Bryan Fischer’s letter of hand-off to Mr. Brown. A couple months ago, I was introduced to Mr. Brown and found him to be an affable man and very well spoken of. He was introduced to me by a close friend and I sat for about 40 minutes listening to him tell me about his life. His decision to locate to CdA — rather than Boise - was a curious thing. Not sure how that will work — or even if it is a part of the new IVA plan to lobby at the Capitol, but we’ll see/Dennis Mansfield. More here. (Read:Dustin Hurst’s Idaho Reporter story re: resurrected IVA here.)

• Jacket forty-nine ninety-five/Fort Boise
• Minnick’s attack ad falls flat/Idaho Conservative Blogger
• U.S. Senate candidate says he’s reduced his tax debts/Kevin Richert
• Idaho Legislature: Kathy Sims likely to win Sayler seat/Randy Stapilus
• Timothy Egan: A voice of the West/Marc Johnson, The Johnson Post
  

Question: Why did the Idaho Values Alliance select Coeur d’Alene rather than Boise for its HQ in its newest incarnation?

I confess that I hadn’t been following all that closely the controversy in New York City over the proposed construction of a Muslim cultural center not far from the site of the September 11 attack. Until, that is, I saw an item featuring the former Idaho fire brand, Bryan Fischer, suggesting that the country ought not allow the construction of another Mosque, ever, anywhere, at anytime. … It was his latest column that grabbed my attention. Here’s the first graph: “Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.” OK then/Marc Johnson, The Johnson Report. More here.

Question: Should New York City allow the construction of a Muslim cultural center near the site of the 9/11 attacks?

BSU has been ignoring this constitutional standard for 14 years now, despite repeated appeals on the part of faith-based student clubs for fairness and equality in student funding. In other words, a university that prides itself on its inclusiveness has systematically been excluding people of faith for years. It took a lawsuit filed by six students on December in federal court to finally get BSU’s attention. What an appeal to the constitution, law and fairness could not do, the threat of being drilled in court for being on the wrong side of the law did/Bryan Fischer, Idaho Values Alliance. More here.

In a truly bipartisan effort which the IVA wholeheartedly supports, two Republican and one Democrat lawmaker are coming together to work on legislation to provide, for the first time in Idaho law, mandatory minimum sentences for those who commit sex crimes against children. Many people are unaware that in Idaho an offender has to commit two sex crimes against children before the law mandates a minimum time behind bars. This loophole - all in the name of giving judges “discretion” in sentencing - resulted in a 150-day sentence for Bradley Stowell, a man who abused two teenage boys at a Boy Scout camp and admitted molesting 24 other victims, one as young as six. Yes, you read that right - 150 days for molesting two dozen children/Bryan Fischer, Idaho Values Alliance. More here.