According to
People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch, former Minnesota Governor and potential presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty chose an interesting venue to promote his new book - the American Family Association's radio program with Bryan Fischer.
Now Fischer is infamous for his ugly statements about not only the Muslim community but lgbts. Fisher has:
•Said that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office.” (8/5/2010)
•Insisted that gays are biased, sexually deviant felons, not to mention pedophiles, and should never serve on the Supreme Court. (4/15/2010, 4/16/2010)
•Called gay adoption “a terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children.” (8/10/2010)
•Argued that we should“impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse." (2/3/2010)
•Wrote: “The inescapable conclusion is that gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism.” (6/10/2010)
•Said: “Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.” (5/25/2010)
As we all know, the AFA has been called an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and mostly because of
comments made by Fischer.
However Pawlenty was only interested in playing nice with Fischer, even to the point of talking positively of reinstating Don't Ask, Don't Tell:
Bryan, I have been a public and repeat supporter of maintaining Don't Ask, Don't Tell. There's a lot of reasons for that, but if you look at how the combat commanders and the combat units feel about it, the results of those kinds of surveys were different than the ones that were mostly reported in the newspaper and that is something I think we need to pay attention to. But I have been a public supporter of maintaining Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I would support reinstating it as well.
Now why a prospective presidential candidate would grace a program from someone who voices such awful opinions is beyond me. Let's be clear about something - if Fischer's comments had been racist or anti-Semitic, Pawlenty wouldn't have dared to come on his program.
But since they pertaining to the lgbt community, some folks may think that these comments and Pawlenty's appearance on the program of the person making then are both okay.
And it's par for the course for Pawlenty.
Ever since the buzz about his presidential aspirations was made public, Pawlenty seems to have been on a mission to establish his so-called "conservative credentials" on the backs of the lgbt community.
On May of last year, he
vetoed a bill aimed at giving same-sex partners the same end-of-life rights as married couples.
In December of 2009, he
backtracked from pro-gay legislation that he signed, claiming that the bill would led to third-graders being taught by "cross-dressing" teachers.
No doubt Pawlenty's mind is on the 2004 election, when anti-gay marriage amendments sent conservative voters to the polls and gave President Bush a second term.
Someone should inform Pawlenty that the lgbt community aren't exactly as compliant as we were back then. And we won't wait until someone uses us as scapegoats before we fight back.
In other words, if Pawlenty thinks he is going to get to the White House on the backs of the lgbt community, someone told him wrong.
Related posts:
Perhaps anti-gay hate groups should put a muzzle on Bryan Fischer
Family Research Council's 'we are not a hate group' campaign gets destroyed on two fronts
American Family Association will not confront reason why its considered a hate group
Hat tip to PFAW for providing the list of Fischer's comments.
