Bryan Fischer #fundie

Bryan Fischer #fundie towleroad.com

The pro-family movement is relentlessly demonized by those who want to normalize sexual aberrations. We are accused without ceasing of being hateful, homophobic bigots. Our organizations are tagged as hate groups. If anybody has been demonized, marginalized, and turned into social pariahs, it is the pro-family movement.

Meanwhile, Chas Bono is hardly a pariah by anyone's definition. She is the talk of Hollywood, and when the dancing starts will literally be the belle of the ball.

If the left's template is correct — that turning folks into social pariahs makes them kill themselves — then we should be awash in suicides here at the American Family Association. Our staff should be suffering from an epidemic of self-murder. But here we are, enjoying our lives, our families, our friends and our churches while nary a thought of suicide crosses our minds.

81 comments

old comment by Z

You have no idea what being a social pariah is like.

Have you tried walking down the street holding your wife's hand, being pelted with insult for "flaunting your heterosexuality"? Have you heard people whisper behind your back and pull their children away if you dare show your affection to a woman in public, however innocently, because you're one of "those people"? Have you heard people spit and swear in disgust because of the clothes you wear?

No, being an asshole "pro-family"-person (only pro those families that don't include homosexual children I guess.. those families just don't count) isn't something that people can see until you start preaching. When you preach, sure, rational people will tell you that you're an asshole. But when you're not preaching, you go around as anyone else.

And when you are preaching, you always have your congregation and friends close at hand, I'm sure. You're not alone in the way a bullied queer kid usually is.

Fuck I wish I could say things like the above to these people and have them understand what I mean :)

old comment by LDM

"If anybody has been demonized, marginalized, and turned into social pariahs, it is the pro-family movement."

You keep poking your nose in other people's business, trying to push your beliefs on them, and tell them how to live their lives, at some point they're going to be sick of your shit and want nothing more to do with you.

"But here we are, enjoying our lives, our families, our friends and our churches while nary a thought of suicide crosses our minds."

Maybe not your minds, but I can name at least 4 kids from my very Catholic, and very pro-family high school that attempted suicide, and 3 of them succeeded, including siblings of two good friends of mine. And I don't even want to talk about the alcoholism, drug abuse and teen promiscuity, among other things, that went on there.

And enough already with playing the fucking persecution card. You can't poke a sleeping bear and not expect to get your head bit off.

old comment by CanadianBroad

Really? But how odd. NOT.

The AFA exists to bring together hateful, homophobic, bigots - they therefore have a large social group that relelentlessly tells they are right and normal.

Voila! Lots of social support + obvious disrespect for the "different" and "outsiders" = smug, self-centered assholes who have a "purpose" and are therefore disinclined to kill themselves.

Add in that suicide is sin, and suffering is a priviledge, and I'll bet any possibly suicidal feelings are repressed so far that cutting off their big toe would eliminate them.

I suppose that hoping an asteroid lands right on top of their next national convention is kind of petty, huh? (sigh)

old comment by Doubting Thomas

We are accused without ceasing of being hateful, homophobic bigots.

That's because you're all hateful, homophobic bigots.

Our organizations are tagged as hate groups.

That's because any organization with the word "family" in the title is, without exception, a homophobic group of self-righteous busybodies who can't stand the thought of anyone enjoying any kind of sex without consequences or anyone different from them, and think it's their duty to remove any traces of sexual or religious nonconformity from society.

But here we are, enjoying our lives, our families, our friends and our churches while nary a thought of suicide crosses our minds.

Then you're obviously not being bullied and marginalized like you claim you are.

old comment by Anon-e-moose

"If the left's template is correct that turning folks into social pariahs makes them kill themselves then we should be awash in suicides here at the American Family Association. Our staff should be suffering from an epidemic of self-murder. But here we are, enjoying our lives, our families, our friends and our churches while nary a thought of suicide crosses our minds."

Oh yeah. Just ask JonBenet Ramsey. [/hyper-sarcasm] Her parents enjoyed their lives vicariously through their daughter in those putrid 'child beauty contests'-cum-paedophiles conventions, so beloved of the Midwest & Bible Belt states; also their friends and church, while nary a thought of suicide crossed their minds. Oh, no. They had thoughts of murdering their own daughter.

First, there was the Nothing Family. Which begat the Wood Family. Which begat the Oil Lamp Family. Which begat the Candle Family. Which begat the Coal Family. Which begat the Steam Family. Which begat the Gas Family. Which begat the Electric Family.

As for the Nuclear Family, if that's the best you lot can come up with, then it's about time it was upgraded, nay, replaced by the Fusion* Family; ultimately by the Antimatter** Family. (Elton John & David Furnish, and their son, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John). [/smartarse]

Times change. As do technologies; the obsolete replaced by the new. Therefore attitudes must change too. And if that means forcibly, via legislation, so be it.

*- Joint European Torus Project

**- Large Hadron Collider

old comment by dionysus

It only works if you're isolated, you dumbfuck! If you have a whole organization that's essentially an echo chamber for you that you talk to every day you're not going to be quite as affected by what people think of you. If, on the other hand, you're in a school and you have no idea where to turn to it's quite different. Not only that, but when's the last time a "pro-family" (scare quoted because you're not really pro-family, just pro-bigotry, otherwise you'd welcome gay marriage as it creates more families) member was killed or harassed to the point of stalking just for being born a certain way? Finally, you're an adult so I'd hope you'd be able to handle a bit of criticism. Gays are tormented from the time they are vulnerable children. But wait, silly me. You assholes don't care about children once they're already born.

old comment by Mister Spak

@Lupine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_America:_Letter_of_Warning_to_a_Young_Patriot

Which book describes how to destroy democracy in 10 easy steps.

1.Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2.Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3.Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4.Set up an internal surveillance system.
5.Harass citizens' groups.
6.Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7.Target key individuals.
8.Control the press.
9.Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10.Suspend the rule of law.[5]

How many of these did you see in the Bush regime? Even worse, how many have been undone by the current president?

old comment by Swede

A protip; if you say hateful bigoted thing, you are often seen as hateful and bigoted.

I'm pro-family; I want everyone to be part of a family of sorts. How that family look is of lesser significance, just as long as you have a place where you can be yourself, where you're always welcome, where you matter and where people listen to you.

33 percent of the world population are Christians, you are hardly marginalized.

We do not want to normalize sexual aberrations; sexual acts that are non-consensual or harm others should be both illegal and tabooed.
Consensual sex between adults is no-one else's business. If you want to Do It hanging from a trapeze singing Tarzan Boy by Baltimora, it has no impact on my life whatsoever.
As long as I don't have to participate, that is. Consent is the key.

Don't like gay sex? Don't have any. It's as simple as that, dearie.
Or is that the problem? You do want gay sex, but to you it's WRONG, so you hate anyone who allows themselves to be themselves?
Well, you built your own prison.

old comment by JSS

In the office:
We slander gay people in the worst ways, justify the slaughter of Native Americans, promote marginalizing the poor and demonizing non-christians, encourage bullying in schools, cry persecution when those who don't agree with us are tolerated while becoming completely oblivious as to our persecuting and *gasp* people actually dislike us?

Why are people so cruel as to not give us our well-deserved martyr status that comes with the horror of *gasp*, being hated for wanting to persecute?

Outside the office:
Eh. Our lives are fine. No unhappiness here. We're not being bullied like gay people are. So yeah, stop with the whole ... persecution ... thingy.

old comment by Angua

Oh, Bryan, you fool. You aren't pro-family. You're pro-tradition and pro-patriarchy. You're for family units where a male has control over a female. This is why you don't care about single parents. This is why you're so scared of same-sex couples. This is why you're scared of women coming out of the kitchen. You're scared of anything that unbalances your precious binary view of gender roles -- a view that has men like you wielding authority.

It's hardly a wonder that you are so transphobic. I wouldn't call you homophobic here -- you are homophobic, but that has nothing to do with this particular comment. This particular comment is transphobic.

I guess it must wreck havoc upon your quaint little mind. It seems to suggest that gender is complicated. It suggests that being a man or a woman is more than just a matter of genitalia. In your little world, sex is simply a question of whether or not you have a y-chromosome. How dare reality tell you that things aren't that simple?

Chaz Bono is a he. Chaz Bono is a man. He's more of a man than you will ever be, Bryan.

old comment by Brendan Rizzo

@ Headache, Mr. Spak, et al.:

Ah, Headache, here you are missing one major point. Where were the Germans who opposed the Weimar Republic's steady slide towards fascism? Where was all the savage and vicious political satire of Hitler and the Nazis BEFORE they came to power and eliminated free speech? Hell, where was the German equivalent of the Bill of Rights? You can't compare America to Germany. It seems like the Germans overwhelmingly supported the Nazis long before they actually came to power. (The obvious exceptions of course being the Jews.) I have brought this point up more than once now that the Tea Party is the single most hated group in America. No one listens to them. As for "hatred of all people and things non-American" (a very dubious assumption) I'll have you know there's nothing nationalistic about that. I came to this site feeling completely neutral about Europeans. Then you, Headache, came along and started bashing and personally insulting me and all my compatriots in your unparalleled arrogance, and legions of non-American commenters did the same, never once acknowledging anything good to come out of the United States, so if I hate Europeans, it's all your fault! You hated us first. Way to go. Nice job breaking it, guys. If you Europeans think that you're so intelligent and have advanced beyond the petty superstition and bigotry that is supposedly ubiquitous in American society, then how come not a single one of you, can provide an exhaustive list of not only the things wrong with the United States, but the ways in which Europe avoids those problems, so that we Americans do not have to reinvent the fucking wheel! Not a day goes by, it seems, without someone on this site bashing the whole of the US, in the "guise" of only targeting fundies. Well, I bash fundies all the time and I never imply that everyone in their country sucks. But with you people, you can practically see the reverse nationalism (that is, claiming that one nation is inferior to all others) and cultural posturing dripping from every word.

And Mr. Spak, don't you understand by this point that everything that Headache says is always wrong? There has not been a single non-bigoted sentence ever to come out of his mouth? Where was the scapegoating of all Muslims? (Remember, the terrorists actually did something. The Jews were completely innocent.) Where are these thugs not answerable to citizens? I don't see any brown shirts running around, do you? Where are the citizens' groups being harrassed (by the government, not by other citizens' groups.)? Who has been arbitrarily detained or released? Who are the "key individuals" being targeted? Surely you can't mean the leaders of al-Qaeda; they were actual criminals. (Unless, like Headache, you believe that the US is so irredeemably evil that everyone who opposes them are the good guys by default and subject to propaganda campaigns.) How is the press being controlled? If it were truly being controlled, we wouldn't have any alternative to Fox News. Free Republic is nowhere near an authority in anything; not even the Republican Party has gone so far as to claim the Democrats are traitors. And treason is a crime that is specifically described in the Constitution. No matter how loudly certain people are called "traitors", they will never be tried for treason for as long as the Supreme Court exists. And lastly, WHO HAS SUSPENDED THE RULE OF LAW? Not even Bush was that brazen. Will all you haters stop and think before claiming that the US is sliding down the inexorable road to fascism? Have you even considered the idea that the reason that Obama hasn't repealed everything horrible that Bush has done is because his first priority is fixing the goddamn economy? He can't just wave a magic wand and fix everything immediately. What, did you expect a being akin to a god when Obama got elected or something? Aye aye aye...

old comment by Professor M

@ Brendan Rizzo --

There was satire of and opposition to the Nazis before they gained power; but it was mostly of the artsy intellectual sort (the Weimar period was actually pretty effective at producing artists in all media; the ones that survived long enough to get out of the country went on to enrich the culture of a number of other places, especially the U.S.) which didn't spread as well. Political opposition was mostly from the socialists (the "mainstream" conservatives were the Nazis' primary political allies...until the Nazis grabbed total power), who at the time relied on a particular population of youngish working-class men as a political base -- but that base had been decimated by WWI.

Though yes, these circumstances are quite different from what we're seeing with the Tea Party. The teabaggers aren't likely to overthrow the U.S. government and replace it with a fascist regime, as much as they might like to. On the other hand, the teabaggers do present a danger in that they make the "mainstream" right-wing totalitarian theocrats look moderate by comparison. We have a far-right party and a center-right party in the U.S., and are using the visibility of the teabaggers as an excuse to move further to the right. Not fascists, for the most part, but still with the potential to be rather horrifying.

old comment by Alexa

"Do you seriously think that the genitalia someone was born with is the only thing that defines their gender?"

Uh ... yes? The way you phrase this suggests that you believe I should say no. I'll introduce you to a dictionary sometime.

"Your ideas about gender are so simplistic and quaint, that I almost find it cute. It's like a toddler throwing a tantrum about how vegetables are bad, because anything that doesn't taste like gummy bears must be evil. It's so binary and ignorant, it's almost precious."

What I think is precious is that there are people who go around thinking that it's perfectly normal for a little girl to think that if she has some surgery and injects herself with hormones she'll be a boy when she grows up. It's so far removed from reality that it's practically science fiction, except science fiction (the GOOD kind anyway) is presented as an actually plausible scenario. Lop off your dick or chop off your tits, all you've done is mutilate yourself. You haven't changed your gender one iota.

"Mind you, I can at least exclude the toddler because of her age. And the toddler typically won't call anyone who tries to explain that the world of food is much more complex than that a "fucking idiot." "

Yes, flame me for my audacity to have common sense on a liberally dominated message board. "Heaven help us! He sees the world as it is! We must destroy!"

old comment by Eniliad

Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. You people have the balls to demonize us, make us feel like shit, deny us the ability to have a normal life like you do, justify hate crimes against us, spread lies about us, and mock us in entertainment... and then gloat about how you're not depressed?

Depressed, no. Ashamed, you sure as hell be. But I know better, because I was raised Christian. I know how you people think. You'll shift blame, deny responsibility, and ride your fucking white horse because you're Christian and therefore infallible.

Well guess what dipshits... I'm not going to kill myself, no matter how bad you might want me to. Because the fact YOU want me gone so much is all the more reason to stay alive.

old comment by Feral Dog

Alexa needs lessons on the difference between "sex" and "gender".

"Sex" is biologically determined: Chromosomes and body development, etc. Barring abnormalities, the sexes are "male" and "female".

"Gender" is a social construct: generally, XX that developed along those lines is a woman, XY that developed along those lines is a man, though there are some cultures where you can take a third option or switch genders.

The difference between the two is that one is a biological fact that nothing will change (example: doctors need to be aware that a man or woman is a post-op transsexual since male and female bodies can have different symptoms and possibly need different treatments).

The other is social and can be changed- with or without surgery. Therefore, combining biological and social categories: Chaz Bono a female (sex) man (gender).

Bryan Fischer #fundie towleroad.com

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