America should outlaw blasphemy and profanity says AFA's Bryan Fischer

Move over, Pakistan. America needs anti-blasphemy and profanity laws too! So says Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for the right-wing American Family Association and host of its talk radio show, Focal Point. You have to love Fischer, a particularly shrill and angry voice in a field where shrill and angry is the primary stock in trade. I sure do. No one else with a national radio audience shines quite as bright a light on the totalitarian ideologies at the heart of the religious right than he does. One week (March 25, 2011) he's saying that Muslims have no First Amendment rights and on another (this week) he wants to deny the same rights to everybody... just like they do in Islamic countries like Pakistan.

 

In his latest broadcast, Fischer says there's no reason America can't make the use of blasphemy and profanity illegal. For justification, he says "we just had an NBA player that was fined $50,000 for using the F-word, a homosexual slur, in addressing a fan" and also offers MSNBC's Ed Schultz, whose vulgar references to another talk radio host got him suspended for a week without pay.

 

"...So don't tell me, do not tell me, that we cannot enforce laws against profanity; laws against blasphemy; laws against misusing the Lord's name. If we can punish somebody for using the F-word, then we can punish somebody for taking the name of God in vain. [If] we can punish somebody for using a vile term to refer to another woman, we can punish somebody for using the Lord's name in vain. Do not, do not, do not tell me that we cannot do that."

 

Well Mr. Fischer, I know you do not want me to tell you we cannot do that but really, we can't... at least not without violating Americans' rights under the First Amendment. And while you've already demonstrating your willingness to do that, most Americans (hopefully) are not.

 

The examples you use for why we can impose blasphemy and profanity laws are ridiculous. Neither case involved government. Both people involved were willing signatories to personal contracts with private corporations; in Ed Schultz's case, MSNBC; with the basketball player (Joakim Noah), it was the NBA. For someone who chants the conservative mantra of "small government" so religiously, you sure seem willing to extend its power wherever you imagine your own ox is being gored. So many others hire spin doctors to help hide their theocratic agendas behind false masks of endorsing freedom... but not you, Mr. Fischer. Your hypocrisy is as blatant and easy to find as manure on hot pavement. You make my job of exposing it easy. That's why I love you.

 

You can find a video of Bryan Fischer's broadcast in the left column of this page.