Bryan Fischer belies movement's fanciful productions, admits military to become more equal

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12/27/2010

by Jeremy Hooper

Bryan-Fischer The American Family Association's liability of an employee, Bryan Fischer, has posted one of his most interesting pieces to date. Because while sure, the column is filled with the same sort of anti-gay aggression for which Fischer is known and mocked, particularly when he refers to gays as both "limp-wristed" and "Nancy-boys," there are two elements of Bryan's latest turn at the keyboard gives much insight into the movement whose legitimacy he threatens on a daily basis.

The first revelation comes in this couplet:

It turns out - get this - that 85% of all homosexuals who got discharged on the basis of the law that prohibits open homosexual service in the armed services threw themselves out of the military.

This little factoid is not the fanciful production of AFA or FRC. It comes straight from the Pentagon itself.

Okay, so first off, we have to look at the 85% figure. Bryan goes on use this stat to say that gay and even straight soldiers most commonly used the ban to get themselves tossed from the armed forces. This is an outright lie. Because all the Pentagon report says about this percentage (on page 24) is that "Since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been in place, approximately 85% of discharges for homosexual conduct have been made on the basis of statements by the Service member, while approximately 15% were on the basis of homosexual acts." So while Bryan takes this figure and logic-leaps it to mean this...

"homosexuals - or people who suddenly discovered latent homosexual tendencies when they could use it to parachute out of the military - signed up for the all-volunteer army, got a few weeks into basic and said, forget this noise. I’m outtahere. All they had to do was admit they were gay - whether they were or not - and they got their walking papers along with an honorable discharge.

...the reality is that the Pentagon report speaks only to the kind of action (be it direct, overheard, recorded, ratted out, blackmailed, etc.) that most commonly led to a discharge. The figure simply shows that most discharges were based on some sort of oral identification, not oral -- well never mind.

But that's actually not the point we care to make here. If we got outraged every time Bryan misrepresented a figure, we'd never sleep. So no -- the larger point here, in this site's view, is the second line about AFA and FRC's "fanciful productions," which Bryan contrasts against the Pentagon's factual report. This shows, on some level, Bryan's knowledge that both FRC and his own employer, AFA, deliberately make shit up! Because who would say this about their own movement groups if he or she didn't see the obvious? We might say this or that about something HRC says or does, but we would never refer to that organization's work, in general, as being in realm of "fanciful production." Because the equality side's talking points, even when presented in strategic ways, are not steeped in the kinds of fantasy that's in constant battle with credible reportage. AFA and FRC's work is! We thank Bryan for agreeing with us on this, even if unwittingly.

Bryan's second revelation comes toward the end of his piece:

This may be the silver lining in this whole mess. Conservative groups, simply as a public service, may want to sound this message far and wide out of simple, straightforward compassion, just in order to protect potential homosexual soldiers from themselves and from the distressing discovery that they just kissed off a handy exit option that nobody else had.

The more this message resounds, the fewer homosexuals will want to enlist. It’s one thing to be gay, and say, hey, I’ll give it a few weeks and then bail if I don’t like the food, can’t get enough action in the barracks, or thought I’d enjoy ogling male soldiers in the shower more than I did.

Those days are now shortly to be a distant memory for our homosexual friends. They enlist, they’re stuck with the whole program just like everybody else.

In other words, they had preferential treatment and special privileges, a status and privileges and an exit strategy denied to their honest and straight counterparts. And homosexuals just bargained it away. Now, they will discover to their dismay, they’re back to having equal rights instead of special rights.

Look what's he's admitting here: That DADT's repeal actually creates a MORE equal armed forces. That's major! It's pretty much what we've been saying all along: That repeal simply takes away the supplementary obstacles and arbitrary rules that have affected all soldiers. DADT was noteworthy only because of its special rules and requirements. Gay bans of all kinds are exceptional only because of their exceptions. So on this one note, Bryan is actually right: The military is about to become less "special," more equal. Just as the world will be less "special" once all people are free to benignly exist without certain characteristics turning that existence into a struggle with mandated activism.

Oh, and as for all of the condemnatory nonsense in which Bryan shrouds this second concession? Well why should we even care, really? After all, even Bryan knows his movement is built on fanciful production.

**SOURCE LINK FOR BRYAN'S PIECE: Bryan Fischer: Whoops: homosexuals lose get out of jail free card [AFA]

***

**FOR THOSE NOT FAMILIAR WITH FISCHER: He's the guy who's said that "homosexuals in the military gave us...six million dead Jews," who's said "homosexuals should be disqualified from public office," who has called on Christian conservatives to breed gays and progressives out of existence, has called gay sex a "form of domestic terrorism," who's said only gays were savage enough for Hitler, has compared gays to heroin abusers, has directly compared laws against gay soldiers to those that apply to bank robbers, who once invoked a Biblical story about stabbing "sexually immoral" people with spears, saying we need this kind of action in modern day, who has spoken out against gays serving as public school teachers, has questioned why Medals of Honor are given to people who save lives (rather than take lives), who says that open service will "assign the United States to the scrap heap of history," and who has blamed gay activists for dead gay kids, saying that: "If we want to see fewer students commit suicide, we want fewer homosexual students." His words pretty much single-handedly landed the American Family Association on the Southern Poverty Law Center's hate groups list.