The New Yorker Exposes AFA's Bryan Fischer: Extreme, Ridgid, Bigot and From a Broken Home

I'm not a subscriber to The New Yorker, so I can only quote from an article abstract that focuses on AFA's anti-gay bigot in chief, Bryan Fischer, as well as a piece on Right Wing Watch.  But what's interesting is the picture that emerges of Fischer.  Like Maggie Gallagher (who engaged in what the GOP and Christian Right would describe as slut behavior and found herself pregnant and abandoned by her "boyfriend") and it seems all of the prominent "ex-gays for pay," Fischer seems to have come from a f*cked up family background and the man still suffers from psychological issues that he's never properly dealt with.  Instead he projects his anger and venom on others, Native Americans, gays, immigrants of all sorts and Hispanics being among his preferred targets.  In my opinion, the man is a mental case and it is telling that he's typical of the hate merchants of the self-professed Christianists.  Rather that ranting and spewing hate towards others, Fischer ought to be seeking a significant mental health intervention.  Here are highlights from The New Yorker abstract:

[E]vangelical radio talk-show host Bryan Fischer. .   .  .  who hosts “Focal Point,” a popular Christian radio talk show, is one of the country’s most vocal opponents of what he calls “the homosexual-rights movement.” As he puts it, “A rational culture that cares about its people will, in fact, discriminate against adultery, pedophilia, rape, bestiality, and, yes, homosexual behavior.” His goal is to make this view the official stance of the Republican Party. 

[The article] tells about Fischer’s upbringing. He attended Stanford University and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Fischer directed Biblical studies at Cole Community Church in Boise, Idaho for thirteen years. Discusses Fischer’s growing political activism and tells how he came to be affiliated with the A.F.A.

 

Right Wing Watch fills in these details that I cannot access until the current issue of is past current status.  Here are some telling details:

 

Readers who are already familiar with Fischer’s extremism will likely be much more interested in the details about how he came to be what he is today, starting with his upbringing and relationship with his parents:

Fischer’s political activism, however, began years before the advent of same-sex-marriage laws. In fact, his preoccupation with family dysfunction seems to have started with his own. Though Fischer loves to talk, he does not like to talk about his childhood, and spoke about it only grudgingly. He was born in Oklahoma City, in 1951, and his father, John, a descendant of German Mennonites, was a Conservative Baptist minister whose pacifism was so strict that he became a conscientious objector during the Second World War—a choice that makes Fischer uncomfortable. […]

 

Fischer didn’t volunteer anything about his mother, but, when pressed, said, “My parents divorced when I was about twenty. It just rocked my world.” His mother, who worked as an interior decorator at a furniture store, was “chronically late,” and the bus driver on her route to work would always hold the bus for her. Eventually, he said, “my mom fell for the bus driver,” deserting him, his father, and his younger sister. “I don’t want to go into it,” Fischer said. “But I saw the devastating impact it had on other people in my immediate family.” Asked how his father fared, Fischer turned away, then said, “He looked like an Auschwitz survivor. It was akin to that ordeal.”

 

Dennis Mansfield, a Christian conservative who was friends with Fischer for twenty years, said that Fischer also “had a deep-rooted disappointment in his father, for not being strong enough.”

Later, as a student at Stanford, Fischer gravitated to David Roper, a chaplain at the school, and began attending his evangelical church in Palo Alto. Fischer told Mayer that he was attracted by the “manliness” of the church: “It was the first time I’d been around a real muscular Christianity,” he told me. “It had a kind of strength and virility to it that would appeal to men.” Roper told Mayer he found this characterization “odd” and is no longer close to Fischer. In 1993, Fischer was crushed when Roper retired and endorsed a different successor. […]  

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.  .  .  .  .  “Somebody’s got to have the tie-breaking vote,” he explained to me. “According to God, that’s the husband and father.”

 

Four years later [in 2005], Fischer was kicked out on the street by his own congregation – again manliness was to blame:

“It was the gender issue again,” Fischer told me. “Because of my Scriptural convictions, I wasn’t able to budge. A female friend of the wife of an elder wanted a leadership role. I felt those roles should be reserved for men… . When I objected, they said, ‘You’re fired.’ It was very abrupt. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. It was very painful.”

 

The picture that is painted is that Fischer is not only and insufferable bigot but a total asshole to boot.  I'd also add that given the findings of the recent University of Rochester study on homophobes and their suppressed homosexuality, Fischer has all the hallmarks of a self-loathing closet case.  Not to mention attributes of someone in need of serious mental health care.  That Fischer stands as a major voice for the Christianists is indicative of how utterly f*cked up most of them are.