American Family Association Radio Host: It's Time To Imprison All Gays

[meegbear]

American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer has called for sending homosexuals to prison for forced reparative therapy, a move he says is sanctioned by the Bible. Below, he responds to an email from a complaining listener.

Thanks for writing me about my comments on my program regarding homosexuality. It might be worth noting that what I actually suggested is that we impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse, since both pose the same kind of risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. I'd be curious to know what you think should be done with IV drug abusers, because whatever it is, I think the same response should be made to those who engage in homosexual behavior.

If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program. Secondly, I'm afraid you're simply wrong about the Bible's perspective on the law and homosexuality. Paul lists quite explicitly in 1 Timothy 1:8-11 the actions and behaviors that are the proper concern of the law:

"Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine..."

The bottom line here is that, biblically, those "who practice homosexuality" should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery. You express a belief in the Scriptures, and I trust your confidence in Scripture is not selective. If you believe all Scripture is inspired, then you are compelled to accept that legal sanctions may appropriately be applied to those who engage in homosexual behavior.

In November, Fischer called for banning all Muslims from the U.S. military. In addition to his radio show for the American Family Association, Fischer is the executive director of the Idaho Family Alliance.

Remember folks, the Christianist right is not about hatred and bigotry. It's about the gentle redemptive love of Jesus, forced upon you at the barrel of a gun in prison as they beat the gay out of you.

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/01/american-family-association-radio-host.html

[Mari333]

1. idiots.

keep talking, you moron. no one is listening.

[ThomCat]

12. Unfortunately, a lot of people are listening.

They have a broad base of support out there. They are wealthy and influential because of it.

There are more people listening to him, and people like him, than there are listening to us. :(

[redqueen]

26. I really want to believe you're wrong.

Unfortunately, though... you are probably right. :(

[ourbluenation]

28. I really don't think so. I don't.. They are a sliver of the population but get a lot of ink. n/t

[ThomCat]

30. Then you've never lived in an area that was truly infested by religion.

You're lucky.

When you are in an area where love of religion runs thick enough to be contagious, you get people like that by the bus-load. It spreads, and everyone gets pressured to join and conform. Everyone who isn't part of that crowd knows people who are, and have been asked and invited to join them repeatedly.

Some will tell you it's a southern thing. Others will tell you it's a mid-western thing. You can find pockets of it almost everywhere, thought it's definitely most common in the Bible Belt.

I used to work in a research firm, and we were commissioned to do a national survey of faith. We were funded by an atheist organization, so we worded the survey to find doubt and lack of belief. We still found numbers in line with every other major national survey on faith. The only difference between our number and theirs was that we found a statistically significant number of wiccans, pagans and other non-traditional faiths emerging for the first time in the US landscape.

But overall, we have a much higher number of "true believers" than any other industrialized nation in the world. These people are not a small sliver. Not here in the U.S. :(

[EFerrari]

33. That's bad news, Thomcat.

[marmar]

2. Can't we just give these Dominionist nuts three big, sparsely populated states....

...... say Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, put up a big penetration-proof electric fence, and never, ever hear from them again?

[SteveM]

3. Hell, not in those states! Great hunting/fishing. nt

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. Exactly! Why give them three states with some of the most beautiful scenery.

Give them Kansas.

Better yet, give them Midway Island.

Can't cause too much trouble way out there in the middle of the Pacific.

[Ian David]

11. Give them Oklahoma. It's the only state without a single Blue county. n/t

[Shell Beau]

61. REally? Wow, didn't know that.

[glinda]

64. I think that is an excellent idea.

[a la izquierda]

75. Gee thanks.

Okie Democrats and Leftists, including the many GLBT folks, will kindly pass on your idea.

[Bluebear]

8. Not so fast! Great hunting, hmm...

:evilgrin:

[Stevenmarc]

6. The problem will be solved when God sucks them all up with the Heavenly Hoover

The Rapture can't come soon enough.

[HillbillyBob]

20. Why give them some of the most choice real estate.

give them the mojave desert, parts of utah and az, after all the mormons are there already and they can fight it out.

my take on it is they dont care so much about us as needing a target to distract the sheeple from the pastors that molest kids.

[sasquatch]

32. Give them South Carolina, let the gators and rattlesnakes deal with them

[Jamastiene]

52. Now, why you wanna go giving the gators and rattlesnakes indigestion like that?

What did the gators and rattlesnakes ever do to you? :P

[begin_within]

44. I'd rather they take Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina

not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with those states, but that's the heart of the Bible Belt so they should just congregate there and leave the rest of us alone

[Shell Beau]

62. I can assure you, as a resident of the lovely state of MS, I don't want

them here. Thanks, but no thanks.

[rd_kent]

47. Fuck that! They get nothing.

What they can do is keep their stupid religion to themselves.

[struggle4progress]

69. I'd prefer to stack them on some low-lying island

[customerserviceguy]

70. Nope, forget it

At one time, we gave the Taliban Afghanistan, and look what happened.

Fundies need to learn how to work and play well with others, at least until we can educate their kids out of it.

[walldude]

4. I'm so disgusted I can't even comment... But a K&R

[ck4829]

5. Just to be clear, this guy is saying gays are as bad as slavers

You ever wanted to punch someone right in the jaw? This guy sounds like the perfect candidate.

[BreweryYardRat]

51. Yeah.

That punch needs to be delivered with reinforcement, too -- brass knuckles or something metal clenched inside the fist.

[fasttense]

9. I guess all that stuff Jesus said about love thy neighbor and he who has no sin cast the 1st stone

is just useless to these idiots.

They seem to have a bible that does NOT include Jesus in it.

[begin_within]

45. And they convienently forget this one:

"Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me" - Jesus (Matthew 25:40)

[Ian David]

10. Would bisexuals just get House Arrest? n/t

[KamaAina]

34. Or work release?

:P

[joeybee12]

13. Recommending just so more people see this...n/t

[Hepburn]

14. If I am not mistaken, the group which has the highest incident of AIDS at this time is...

...teenage AA females. Should they be banned, too?

:sarcasm:

[jpljr77]

15. The tag "American Taliban" is on display here, and it can't be argued.

So he extracts "men who practice homosexuality" from that Bible passage to serve his purpose. But let's assume he gets his way. Doesn't that mean that we'll need to really adhere to the words of Paul in the cited verses. So those going to jail will include:

"the ungodly and sinners" - anyone who is not a Christian
"the unholy and profane" - any Christian that does not attend church and anyone who swears in public
"those who strike their fathers and mothers" - any kid that gets into a fight with their parents
"murders" - we already have that one covered
"the sexually immoral" - people who engage in sex before wedlock, people that cheat on their spouses, rapists, pedophiles, etc.
"enslavers" - again, covered
"liars, perjurers" - this one would be fun. Having trouble with a neighbor or business associate? Just accuse them of lying. Simple.
"whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine" - so basically, "Whoever else we want."

Now tell me how the above is not to the far right of the Taliban. These people don't even realize what they're advocating, because they can't stop hating long enough to actually think.

[Initech]

21. The difference between our Taliban and theirs?

Ours doesn't strap bombs to their chest and go around blowing shit up. :nuke:

[Sebastian Doyle]

36. No, they just walk into churches and shoot doctors.

And then claim "protectin' them poor little white babies" as a defense. (Which even a Kansas jury didn't buy, thank God!)

[Dappleganger]

16. Disgusting!

[dmallind]

17. Lost in the furor is that he is absolutely right

That IS what the Bible says - and the New Testament at that.

The conclusion of course being that the Bible, including the NT, insists on some reprehensible social and legal constructs every bit as much as it does the nice stuff everyone learns about in Sunday school, and should never ever be used as a moral or legal guide by anyone not over the insanity horizon and accelerating.

Cue somebody whining about "context" (without ever being able to explain what exactly is contextual, why it is, and how it changes the plain meaning) in a few minutes...

[hayu_lol]

18. Throw them all into prison and let...

their 'god' sort 'em out.

Time to take advantage of special sales on pitchforks, tar, feathers and the like. Time for demonstrations outside the homes of these purveyors of horseshit.

[liberalhistorian]

54. Ya know, you DO realize that some of us loyal DUers and

progressives are Christians, do you not? We're not all fundie theocrats and I'd appreciate not being lumped in with all of the nutballs.

And btw, I see no New Testament basis for what this asshole is arguing, for the imprisonment of gays. None whatsoever.

[jpljr77]

19. Exactly. He's simply following scripture...just like the Taliban. n/t

[liberal_at_heart]

23. Paul was an idiot

He's the same one that said that women shouldn't be allowed to teach the bible and should be subserviant to their husbands.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

39. Not necessarily....

In some of Paul's letters he refers to women in the church as his fellow Disciples (I forget the actual term he used - and I don't have time to hunt it down).

Much of the misogyny of the Bible arose in the period several centuries after at age of Christ.

[B3Nut]

43. In all fairness to paul...

I read an excellent book "Misquoting Jesus" by New Testament scholar (and agnostic) Bart D. Ehrman, in which he made a strong case that those misogynistic passages attributed to Paul were scribal interpolations/insertions that actually contradicted earlier passages within the same books. I thought it was interesting, but of course it throws the whole idea of inspiration/inerrancy right out the window. The problem is we really don't have any of the original autographs, all we have are copies and the copies all vary, sometimes greatly, making it in reality unclear as to what *really* should be in there and providing a strong basis for the idea that the Bible is purely human in origin, that no deity of any kind had anything whatsoever to do with it.

At any rate, I recommend Dr. Ehrman's books, they're very interesting and thought-provoking.

[Lorien]

65. He was indeed. And many so called "Christians" are actually Paulists

they don't believe in any of the actual teachings of Christ.

[dsc]

25. are you fluent in ancient Greek?

Unless you are, you can't know what the context is or isn't.

[dmallind]

27. I'm reasonably capable in it yes albeit not expert. However, language is not a factor

Contextual analysis does not depend on translation. They are two separate factors. Use of a Strong's concordance can help out non-Greek experts (and I'm not pretending I do not have to resort to it, quite frequently) but that does not provide an ability to analyze the meaning for context. Paul is speaking for the faith. There was no movement to exclude Timothy from scripture by any early church father (who certainly did understand his Greek - which is actually rather simple). It is as official as the Beatitudes.

[dsc]

31. the question is what does the word we translated as homosexual acutally mean?

I have no doubt he is condemning something but is he condemning concentual, adult, male male relationships? I think not.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

41. You're probably correct....

Context isn't all about language. There were also fertility cults throughout the region during the Biblical epoch, and much of what is today considered condemnation of homosexual behavior in general was (likely) a condamnation of engaging in the ritual sex practiced by those cults.

Ritual sex. Now those guys knew how to practice religion. All we get are potlucks with tuna cassarole!

[dmallind]

73. Well that's nothing to do with context but...

The word can refer to temple prostitutes yes which is what I suspect you mean, but the roots are quite clear and generic usage as homosexual is more common. It's essentially male and bed/conceive combined - arsen and koite (the correspondence to the related Latin term coitus is obvious).

At this point I should probably remind people that this is what the Bible says not what *I* think is right. All too often people attack the messenger.

[Sebastian Doyle]

40. Paul's writing in the NT doesn't say anything about imprisoning or killing homosexuals.

There's something about "effeminate abusers of themselves with mankind" not getting into Heaven, but that's not exactly on the same level as Leviticus.

But then Paul just had a hangup with sex of any kind, even married heteros. So he's probably not the most unbiased authority on the subject. In terms of the Bible, that authority would be Jesus Christ, who never said anything on the subject of homosexuality. And even His Dad, who supposedly (according to Phelps and the AFA) hated queers so much that He nuked all of Sodom county to wipe them out, somehow forgot to mention anything about teh gayz in His top 10 list that He faxed to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

So the Bible actually has Moses & Paul's opinions on homosexuality, but nothing really from God or JC Themselves.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

42. Regarding Sodom and Gomorrah

I believe a close reading of the text shows that the Sodomites are punished for a variety of reasons, not least of which (as mentioned by Jesus) was their inhospitable nature. The populace of Sodom surrounded Lot's house and demanded that two angels, come down from heaven, be brought out so the whole town could have sex with them.

Fun town.

All homosexuality aside (what gender is an angel, BTW?), my guess is that God was plenty pissed off that a town he'd already had a mind to annihilate for their previous bad acts was now threatening to gang-rape his personal messengers.

[Sebastian Doyle]

48. Yeah, that's pretty much how I've always interpreted it.

Not to mention the fact that the chapter (Genesis 19) ends with Lot's daughters getting old dad drunk and screwing him when he passed out, so it's probably not the best blueprint for morality in any case. (gays = bad/incest = good ??)

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

50. Thanksgiving at Lot's Place must have been a gas....(nt)

[Jamastiene]

53. They always conveniently leave that part of the story out

when they are using the Bible against gay people. They seem to have no problem with Lot and his daughters screwing. :crazy:

[hobbit709]

74. Their true sins were

The inhospitability and their failure to care for their widows and orphans. In other words, they acted like Republicans.

[walldude]

55. Good, problem is this isn't the United States of the Bible

they can believe whatever mythological crap they want. The bible says all kinds of insane shit if we lived by it's rule there wouldn't be anyone left to jail or kill.

[TrogL]

58. err, no it doesn't

http://members.shaw.ca/trogl/bibquote.html

[Ohio Joe]

60. I got your context

The law being talked about is the christian gods law, not the laws of men. Read the paragraph before 1:8 and it is clear the laws of men are not what is being talked about. Douchebag fundies.

[pipi_k]

22. Ten to one this Bryan Fischer guy...

has had a few "gay interludes" in his lifetime.

Not that there's anything wrong with it...just that most of the ones who screech the loudest against something that shouldn't concern them are the ones with their own interesting little peccadilloes they'd rather not deal with.

So they focus on others.

I've seen it happen so many times.

[agent46]

24. Prisons come later--

Why not cordon off some ghettos and relocate all the gays there first?
:sarcasm:

Better watch this stuff carefully. Seems like the rhetoric is ratcheting up incrementally.

[Joanne98]

29. The American Family Association belongs to the secretive religious cult called "The Family"

[KamaAina]

35. Well, in that case, lesbians should not only not be imprisoned

they should be given a tax-free stipend or something.

It might be worth noting that what I actually suggested is that we impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse, since both pose the same kind of risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

Lesbians have the lowest risk of contracting HIV/AIDS of any group. So there! :P

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

37. Make a helluva fine movie....

Gays in prison, working at hard labor, sweat glistening on their bare torso's...

Shit. I just totally spoiled "Cool Hand Luke" for myself.

Lucille!

[ddeclue]

38. What an arse!

[rucky]

46. NOW can we call it a hate group?

[Sans Culottes]

49. k&r n/t

[Bjorn Against]

56. I hope someone asks him if he supports prison time for people who eat shellfish

I sure hope that Bryan Fisher didn't say this while he was wearing any clothing of mixed fibers, because if he did then I think we need to lock him up and throw away the key. If his confidence in the scriptures is not selective then he is compelled to support the imprisonment of everyone who had shrimp for dinner tonight.

[Lorien]

66. They should be marching on Walmart and Red Lobster. nt

[TrogL]

57. It doesn't work

http://members.shaw.ca/trogl/orient.html

Even their most ardent proponent, Nicolosi, admits it.

Here's a hint. What Would Jesus Do? See how he deals with the issue of eunuches.

[flvegan]

59. Getting paid to be a stupid fucking bigot.

Should be a crime.

[Starry Messenger]

63. How's that whole "reaching out" thing working?

I guess that magic trick with Rick Warren didn't take. In other news, bigots still hating.

[Canuckistanian]

67. The "Idaho Family Alliance"?

I can just guess what their mission statement is.

[donheld]

68. Too many Xtians too few lions

[bulloney]

71. Why stop at imprisoning gays? How about those with tourette's syndrome?

Or, anyone with "abnormal" behavior?

[DainBramaged]

72. Witch hunts and the Inquisition, only in the year 2010.......

This guy needs to spend some time in prison in Turkey.............