Bryan Fischer Fired

Remember Bryan Fischer? The Christian talk radio host has a long history of spouting crazy nonsense about the alleged oppression of American Christians. More recently, he pontificated on the demonic power behind the "gay agenda." For the last several years he has also served as the spokesman and director of issues analysis for the American Family Association, an advocacy group for Christian conservatives. However, yesterday the group announced that Fischer had been fired from his official position with the organization.

Rachel Maddow tonight broke news that the American Family Association has officially fired notorious evangelist Bryan Fischer after a controversy involving the RNC and Israel. Fischer is notorious for having some––well, let’s not sugarcoat it––crazy views on gays, “homofascists,” more crazy views on gays, and… yeah, basically a lot of gay stuff.

Fischer is so out there, he concocted some insane conspiracy theory last year that the only reason Shepard Smith wasn’t freaking out about Ebola is because he wants to support President Obama‘s big government gay agenda.

At issue this time is an RNC trip to Israel that was apparently being paid for by the American Family Association, of which Fischer is the director of issues analysis. Or, rather, he was. Until today. Maddow quoted AFA President Tim Wildmon as dismissing Fischer as “just a talk show host” who is no longer associated with the AFA.

When asked specifically what bothered him about Fischer, he cited “the soundbite quotes, you know, the Hitler and the homosexuality one… we reject that.”

Fischer's talk radio show will remain on the air, so he's not without a job. It seems that the American Family Association finally realized how nuts he sounds, though if they wanted to effectively distance themselves from him they should have done so years ago. Those soundbites that Wildmon mentioned are out on the Internet now, which means that they will be with us forever. Firing him now suggests the organization had no problems with the statements themselves, but rather the bad press they generated once they were more widely circulated.

Just once I would like to see a public Christian conservative who was sane and reasonable. It should be possible to hold socially conservative beliefs without degenerating into crazy talk and conspiracy theories about gays, liberals, and pretty much anybody else opposing your views. But from the clowns I see getting all the media attention, you would never know it.