AFA’s Bryan Fischer Recycles a Few of His Favorite Lies

Most people know the well-worn maxim that defines insanity as repeating the same action over and over again, while expecting a different result.

What should one call it when the chief spokesman for a preeminent ultra-conservative “pro-family” organization publishes a collection of falsehoods which are soundly debunked, who then responds by repeating the disproved allegations, only to have them thrashed again – and then, 11 months later, republishes the exact same nonsense, unchanged and unmitigated?

We call it proof that Bryan Fischer, director of issues analysis for the American Family Association (AFA), has lost meaningful contact with the world around him.

Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, was in AFA’s home town of Tupelo, Miss., Monday to present an SPLC investigative report about Fischer. Due largely to Fischer’s relentless gushing of hateful and insulting speech against LGBT people (also here), Muslims (also here, here and here), blacks, immigrants, Native Americans (also here) and others, the SPLC lists AFA as a hate group.

Apparently irked by Potok’s scheduled presentation, Fischer posted a blog suggesting that the SPLC itself should be classified as a hate group, because the “10 Myths” about LGBT people SPLC wrote about in the November 2010 edition of its Intelligence Report magazine were in fact, 10 truths.

They aren’t. We made that clear in a Dec. 2, 2010, article pointing out that Fischer built his rejoinder on discredited, misrepresented and outdated research. Undaunted, Fischer published another post, restating the same arguments and using the same discredited research, and going further: This time, he mischaracterized what our original “10 Myths” article said. So we called him out again in a Dec. 20 post, pointing out how Fischer was attempting to use a new batch of lies to justify his earlier crop.

Silly us, thinking that laying out the truth should settle the matter. Imagine our surprise Monday when, like the cinema demon that just won’t die, Fischer’s long-disproven anti-gay rant surfaced again. Bryan Fischer evidently believes that all it takes to fool his followers is for him to successfully fool himself into believing that demonstrable lies can masquerade as the truth.