The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has been railing against the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Mix It Up at Lunch” day, where students are encouraged to simply connect with someone new at lunch on October 30. Fischer told the New York Times that the day “punishes Christian students” who don’t approve of homosexuality, and he doubled down on those comments in a CNN interview this morning, comparing the day to Halloween candy that has been laced with cyanide:

FISCHER: Parents need to understand that this is about pressuring public schools and students in public schools to accept homosexuality as a normal healthy alternative to heterosexuality. You know, it’s interesting to me that they’re doing this October 30, the day before Halloween, and what this problem is, it’s like poisoned Halloween candy. Somebody takes a candy bar, injects it with cyanide, the label looks fine, it looks innocuous, it looks fine — it’s not until you internalize it that you realize how toxic it is. And we want parents to be aware that any program that comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center is going to be toxic to their student’s moral health.

CNN anchor Carol Costello challenged Fischer’s ideas, reminding viewers that he has claimed that the Nazis recruited gay stormtroopers because they were more ruthless. Watch the full interview (via Equality Matters):

At the end of the interview, Costello cut him off, pointing out he was spewing untruths. She concluded the segment by saying, “Thanks for sharing your views, I guess.” Fischer claimed on Twitter that she “interrupted me more than Alan Colmes, which I heretofore thought was humanly impossible.”

Mix It Up Day, a national school day where students are encouraged to sit with kids at lunch that they don’t usually, seems like an innocuous way to try to reduce bullying by introducing kids to new classmates. But leave it to Bryan Fischer, the public face of the anti-gay American Family Association, to find a secret gay plan in the works.

Fischer, whose organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (which sponsors Mix It Up Day), told the New York Times that the anti-bullying effort was, like all anti-bullying legislation, “just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda:”

No one is in favor of anyone getting bullied for any reason, but these anti-bullying policies become a mechanism for punishing Christian students who believe that homosexual behavior is not something that should be normalized.

Even setting aside that Mix It Up literature doesn’t explicitly mention LGBT students or that Fischer’s proposed solution of keeping students at home will only result in kids not learning, Fischer’s analysis of the situation is hopelessly contradictory. Bullying is, by definition, an attempt to mark LGBT students as “not normal” and hence exclude them from mainstream school life. Saying that students should be free to marginalize their peers whenever they exhibit behavior deemed to be “homosexual” is demanding license for bullying, full-stop. That’s why rules proposed by organizations like Fischer’s ostensibly aimed to protect religious students read like codes legalizing bullying.

Fischer has a long history of demonizing LGBT youth and families: he has called adoption by LGBT parents “a form of sexual abuse” and has urged the creation of an “Underground Railroad” to kidnap children away from LGBT households.

Bryan Fischer, director of Issues Analysis at the American Family Association and right wing radio host said Thursday on his radio show that the U.S. Constitution and the “homosexual agenda” cannot coexist. As such, he argued, the only way to preserve liberty, freedom, and the First Amendment was to defeat the “forces of homosexual activism.”

Right Wing Watch notes that Fischer told listeners:

We in America are gonna have to choose between the homosexual agenda and liberty, because we cannot have both. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and freedom. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and the Constitution, because we cannot have both. We have to choose between the homosexual agenda and the First Amendment, because we cannot have both. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m telling you, we have got to understand we cannot give an inch, we cannot give one centimeter, we cannot give one millimeter to the forces of homosexual activism. We cannot accommodate, we can’t compromise, we can’t find middle ground, they cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be compromised with, they cannot be dialogued with, they can only be defeated.

Watch the video:

It is comments like this the demonstrate exactly why the American Family Association has been designated an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Amazingly, in recent years, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and even Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have all done interviews with Fischer despite his shocking history of similarly hateful and dishonest comments.

Values Voters Summit Confirmed and Invited Speakers

Several prominent social justice groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, and National Council of La Raza, have sent a letter discouraging public officials from participating in the Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit this weekend. Among the confirmed speakers are vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Ann Romney, among many other prominent Republican lawmakers and conservative voices.

The letter highlights FRC’s anti-gay smears, as well as that of affiliate American Family Association, both groups the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed “hate groups:

The FRC is far outside of the mainstream. It has engaged in repeated, groundless demonization — portraying LGBT people as sick, vile, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation. One of its officials has gone so far as to say homosexuality should be criminalized. [...]

We urge you to decline the FRC’s invitation and not share the stage with and lend your credibility to an organization that spreads demonizing falsehoods about other people.

The letter may not deter any of these speakers, but it does hold them accountable for their affiliation. The speakers’ rhetoric will likely cater to the social conservative base, but their mere presence at the conference will speak volumes to the general public.

Bryan Fischer, voice of the AFA.

The National Organization for Marriage set a bad precedent blaming the label of “hate groups” for the shooting that took place Wednesday at the Family Research Council. Now, Bryan Fischer has taken exploitation of this tragedy to a whole new level in a statement written on behalf of the American Family Association. Fischer characterized the organization’s condemnation of homosexuality as “love,” which could only be perceived as “hate” by those who “hate the truth.” In addition to irresponsibly speculating about the shooter’s motives, Fischer outright blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the tragedy:

But the SPLC, by their own hateful and malicious rhetoric against FRC and AFA, has essentially claimed responsibility for this shooting, and they too should be held to account in the court of public opinion.

SPLC claims it only lists organizations as “hate groups” if they engage in the “propagation of known falsehoods” about homosexuality. But the SPLC website itself lists numerous falsehoods about homosexuality. For instance, the SPLC says, without a single shred of proof, that homosexuals are born that way, that it is impossible to leave the gay lifestyle, and that homosexuals are not at elevated risks of depression, anxiety and substance abuse disorders.

Like FRC, AFA is classified as a hate group, and Fischer provided a prime example of the harmful lies that warrant such a designation. In spite of his claim that there is not “a single shred of proof,” decades of psychological research have demonstrated that nobody’s sexual orientation is chosen, nor can any sexual orientation be changed. More importantly, when people come out as gay, lesbian, bi, or trans, the best way to support those individuals’ mental health is to affirm their identities. Study after study after study has shown that it is stigma, bullying, rejection, and condemnation — the “values” these groups promote — that cause the heightened risks of depression and substance abuse. Fischer doesn’t actually care about the well-being of LGBT people; he works to maintain hetero-supremacy in society by reinforcing the very fraudulent ideas that harm LGBT people. It’s exactly such known falsehoods that inform SPLC’s “hate group” designations.

AFA and NOM have made it explicitly clear that they intend to politically exploit the tragedy of a shooting to somehow excuse the harmful rhetoric they spew daily. There seem to be no bounds to the lengths they will go to condemn people just for being gay.

Pastor Kenneth Miller faces up to three years in jail.

Kenneth Miller, a Mennonite pastor, has been found guilty of abetting international kidnapping of the child of a same-sex couple. The girl’s one mother, Lisa Miller (no relation), had declared herself ex-gay, refused to honor the custody agreement with her former partner Janet Jenkins, and ultimately fled with their daughter, Isabella, to Nicaragua, where she is still considered a fugitive. The pastor’s lawyers claimed he didn’t know Lisa Miller was defying court orders, but the fact that he disguised Miller and her daughter and made sure the flights they took didn’t touch American soil demonstrated he knew exactly what he was doing. The investigation and trial also revealed numerous ties to leadership within Liberty University and its Liberty Counsel, who defended Miller when she sought to block Jenkins from seeing Isabella.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association has fervently defended Lisa Miller, claiming that there needs to be an “Underground Railroad” to protect children by kidnapping them away from same-sex couples. When courts honor the parental rights of same-sex couples, as they did in Jenkins’ case, Fischer calls this “judicial kidnapping,” suggesting that those opposed to same-sex adoption can and should function outside the law. Upon Kenneth Miller’s guilty ruling yesterday, Fischer tweeted that he was a “Conductor of Underground Railroad” who was protecting a child from an “abusive lesbian environment” and suggested that he too should flee the country rather than face his judicial consequences:

FISCHER: Conductor of Underground Railroad to protect child from abusive lesbian environment found guilty. [Link]

RIGHTWINGWATCH: So Kenneth Miller should probably flee the country as well, right @BryanJFischer since he was just obeying God’s law?

FISCHER: @RightWingWatch Maybe Harriett Tubman can show him the way.

A spokesman for the Religious Right, who has proven he can influence the Republican presidential campaign, is encouraging his daily radio listeners to break the law and kidnap the children of same-sex couples — and feel righteous about doing so. It’s never been more clear that these conservative “family” groups (most of which have been identified as hate groups) do not care about the welfare of children at all, but will demonize and destroy the lives of LGBT people by any means necessary.

Lisa Miller, Janet Jenkins, and Isabella before their separation.

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer took to Twitter again today to double down on his claims that an “underground railroad” is necessary to kidnap children away from same-sex parents. Referring again to the case of Lisa Miller, who kidnapped her daughter away to Nicaragua to prevent her former same-sex partner from gaining custody, Fischer argued that court rulings that recognize same-sex unions constitute “judicial kidnapping”:

No kidnapping involved in Lisa Miller case. She left the US to keep her natural, biological daughter FROM BEING KIDNAPPPED. In Lisa Miller case, I’m advocating AGAINST JUDICIAL KIDNAPPING, in favor of keeping daughter with her own mother. In Lisa Miller case, lesbian who wanted sole custody of the daughter had NO legal or biological relationship to the girl. If any kidnapping involved in Lisa Miller case, it’s judges stealing a child from her mother and giving her to a stranger.

First of all — and unsurprisingly — Fischer has the facts wrong. While it’s true that Miller was her daughter’s biological mother, her former partner, Janet Jenkins, was also legally her mother. Isabella grew up calling Jenkins “Mama” and Miller “Mommy.” Jenkins and Miller had their civil union dissolved in 2004, and Vermont’s Family Court granted Jenkins visitation rights. Miller moved to Virginia, which did not recognize Vermont’s civil unions, and used the court to block Jenkins from visiting for two years. Ultimately, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Vermont still had jurisdiction, reinstating visitation rights for Jenkins. When Miller again started blocking Jenkins’ visits, a Vermont judge held her in contempt, prompting her to flee with Isabella to Central America, apparently through a covert network of Mennonites. ”Mama” was hardly a “stranger” in the eyes of the law, despite Miller’s best attempts to alienate Isabella from her.

Worse than simply being wrong on the facts, Fischer is arguing for complete anarchy. Judges granting custody to legally recognized guardians is the courts acting in the best interest of children. To call that “judicial kidnapping” is to suggest that the entire legal system be disregarded when it recognizes same-sex relationships. Fischer is essentially encouraging conservative Christians to become anti-gay vigilantes, kidnapping the children of same-sex couples to enforce their own perverted sense of justice outside the legal system.

Despite how extreme Fischer’s positions are, there is actually precedent for this particular mindset. The Manhattan Declaration, drafted in 2009 by former National Organization for Marriage chairman Robert George and the late prison evangelist Chuck Colson, encourages Christians to violate the law if that’s what it takes to uphold their anti-gay (or anti-choice) values. Fischer is apparently ready to follow through on that “call of Christian conscience.”

Office Depot has partnered with Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation to offer a line of products with anti-bullying messages like “Be Brave,” “Be Accepting,” and “Be Yourself.” Boasting, “We supply bravery,” Office Depot will donate proceeds from the gift cards, bracelets, pens, and post-it notes back to the foundation. Claiming the paper supply store is “pushing the homosexual agenda in public schools,” the anti-gay American Family Association is calling on Office Depot to “leave our kids alone“:

Office Depot is guaranteeing $1 million to help indoctrinate your children that they are born “gay.”

This week, Office Depot announced it is teaming up with recording artist Lady Gaga to push the homosexual agenda in public schools by encouraging our children to believe “gay” people are “Born This Way.” [...]

The truth is, there is zero credible evidence that people are born “gay.” Homosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole.

Office Depot is attempting to attract children to it by the deceiving title “Empowering Youth”. That is horribly irresponsible and will ultimately lead children to a higher chance of becoming victims to alcohol and drug abuse, depression and even suicide.

AFA’s blatant fear-mongering employs its regular conflation of “being gay” and “being stigmatized for being gay.” The reason that LGBT young people face higher rates of depression and drug abuse has repeatedly been shown to be because of family rejection, bullying, and unwelcoming conservative attitudes. By spreading such dangerous untruths about the inherent unchangeable quality of sexual orientations, AFA is reinforcing the very harms against children it claims to care about.