Fox news personality Erick Erickson distorts story of Atlanta fire chief

Fox News personality Erick Erickson show skill in lying.

Unfortunately it's not just anti-gay groups and spokespeople who will lie about the lgbt community and situations concerning us.

Other conservatives sometimes jump in with tactics and omissions as noxious as that of groups such as the Family Research Council or the National Organization for Marriage. Last week, Fox News personality (I refuse to call him a journalist) and blogmaster of the site Red State, Erick Erickson raised the alarm about a controversy in Atalanta:

According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle,

Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran is suspended for one month without pay after publishing a book that says homosexuality and having multiple sexual partners is “vile,” “vulgar”, and “inappropriate”.

The 162-page paperback titled “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” is being sold at Amazon.com.

 . . . Chief Cochran is an evangelical Christian who has not shied away from his faith in the past. He left the Atlanta Fire Department to take a job in the Obama Administration. He returned, however, to the city he loves to head its Fire Department. But the gay mafia is loudly complaining that Chief Cochran, by writing this book, will suddenly now not put out the fires of gay homes, or something like that.

Specifically, the accusation is that by being honest about his orthodox Christian views on sex and marriage, Chief Cochran is undermining the public trust in him. You’d think the government would appreciate Kelvin Cochran being a role model to young black men in Atlanta, but they are instead much more focused on not offending the gay rights community.

What Mayor Reed and the gay rights community are saying is that if you work for government you cannot be open about your Christian faith. Again, you will be made to care.

That "you will be made to care" phrase is one Erickson coined a while back. It's his way of claiming that marriage equality will cause people's rights to be compromised.

It's a ridiculous theory, much like Erickson's rendition of Cochran's story.  For one thing, he is being extremely flippant of Cochran's claim about lgbts.  The man is a public servant and, like it or not, lgbts are members of the public. We have a right to get angry when it is discovered that someone paid to serve us has such an awful view of our community.  Would Mr. Erickson defend police officers who were fired for being members of the Ku Klux Klan?

Also, Erickson omitted other parts of the story. According to WSB-TV channel 2 in Atlanta:

In the book based on Christian values, Cochran identifies himself as Atlanta's fire chief and says his first priority as chief is to run the department "to cultivate its culture to the glory of God."

He also has critical views on homosexuality, at one point equating it to bestiality.

City officials say Cochran violated city policy by publishing a book without permission.

"One of the most alarming things is that we did not know about the book when it was published," city spokeswoman Anne Torres said.

City officials want to know how often Cochran distributed the book at work to colleagues.

To recap: Cochran involved his place of employment in the book, claimed that his first priority in his job was a religious one (instead of keeping the community safe), and there is a strong possibility that he may have distributed the book to subordinates.

In other words, this is not a case of Cochran being discriminated or targeted by some fictional "gay mafia." Instead it is a case of Cochran being merely suspended while an investigation is underway to see whether or not he violated rules regarding his employment.

If anyone is "made to care" about the situation, then the fault lies solely with Cochran. Any idea that the lgbt community should roll over and be disrespected or that Cochran's faith gives an exemption from rules everyone must follow is simply ridiculous.