Friday, June 15, 2012

Meet the Radical Radio Talk Show Evangelist Pushing Romney and GOP Around

Remember the days when the relatively moderate Rick Warren was a big influence on the republican party. Now, there's Bryan Fischer, a Christian evangelical who has twisted views of gay people and believes women fall under men's authority:
In April, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, hired an openly gay man, Richard Grenell, to serve as his campaign’s national-security spokesman. The next day, Fischer launched a public attack on Grenell, a Republican foreign-policy expert who had previously worked as the spokesman for John Bolton, President George W. Bush’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Fischer had no argument with Grenell’s political views, which are consistently hawkish. The problem was his sex life: gay men, Fischer said, have “random, frequent, and anonymous sexual encounters—that becomes a significant issue when we talk about appointing somebody to a post as sensitive as the spokesman for national security.” After other conservative pundits took up Fischer’s cause, Grenell resigned from the Romney campaign. The resulting controversy has helped make gay rights one of the defining social issues of the 2012 campaign. Read more at the New Yorker
If a radio talk show host can force Romney to do something, imagine how boneless he'd be as president. Here's more on Fischer's view of women, which is more in step with Saudi Arabia. AN:
In 1993, Fischer was crushed when Roper retired and endorsed a different successor. Roper’s and Fischer’s wives had been close friends. “I didn’t know it was going to hurt him that much,” Roper told me. “I sincerely love Bryan Fischer.” But friction had grown between the two men—and between Fischer and the congregation—over various doctrinal issues. “The central issue was gender,” Fischer told me. The church, he said, had “adopted policies that would have allowed women to exercise authority over men.” He opposed this, citing the Apostle Paul. Read more at the New Yorker