American Family Association

Bryan Fischer was out sick yesterday, so the American Family Association's news director, Fred Jackson, filled in as guest host on Fischer's "Focal Point" radio program where he interviewed the ACRU's Robert Knight about the protests that have erupted after two separate grand juries failed to indict police officers for killing unarmed black men.

Knight declared that the activists who have protested these decisions are "trying desperately to start a race war" and blamed President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for fanning the flames by supposedly suggesting that all police officers are racist.

"They really need to be take to the woodshed for this," Knight said, which prompted Jackson to declare that those who are demanding that these police officers face trial for their actions are really calling for them to be lynched.

"Somebody was saying this morning, 'we ought to have public trials,'" Jackson said. "What do you mean by a public trial? That sounds a whole lot like lynching to me":

Bryan Fischer spent a good portion of his radio program today voicing his opposition to "amnesty" and any effort to pass immigration reform legislation, at one point going off on an incoherent tangent to complain about the phrase "a nation of immigrants."

The phrase is generally used to make the point that most American citizens today are descendants of ancestors who immigrated to America in previous generations, but Fischer apparently doesn't understand that. 

"Eighty-five to 87% of the people that live in the United States were born here," Fischer argued. "You know what that makes us? That makes us native Americans. We are Americans by birth."

Things then became even more confusing when Fischer began to argue that the Native Americans who inhabited this land when the settlers arrived where themselves immigrants from Eurasia.

"It means that Native American tribes are immigrants too!" Fischer proclaimed. "If we're a nation of immigrants, to use their expression, that has to apply to the Indian Nations that were here when European settlers arrived. Everybody here is an immigrant. Everybody here is a descendant of those who immigrated to these shores."

Ummm, yes. That is exactly what the phrase "a nation of immigrants" means.

Recently, a pro-Confederacy group in Mississippi launched an effort to get a measure on the ballot in 2016 that, if passed, will establish a "Confederate Heritage Month" in the state, as well as designate English as the official state language. Among the provisions contained in the measure are requirements that whenever an American flag is displayed on a public building, a state flag of the same size must also be displayed and "whenever the pledge of allegiance to the national flag is recited, the state flag salute shall be recited immediately thereafter." On top of that, "whenever the national anthem is played in a public venue or at a public event in Mississippi, either 'Dixie' or 'Go, Mississippi' shall be played immediately thereafter."

Perhaps the most controversial provision of the measure is the requirement that Christianity be recognized as the official state religion, which is just the sort of thing one would expect the Mississippi-based American Family Association to embrace and support. After all, the AFA's leading spokesman, Bryan Fischer, has repeatedly said that the Constitution was not designed to protect any religion other than Christianity and that states have every right to establish an official religion.

But, amazingly, Fischer and the AFA are not supporting the effort:

Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, told CP that he questioned the need for Initiative 46.

"I'm not clear who is behind this initiative or exactly what problems they're trying to solve," said Fischer of the AFA.

"I will be surprised if the organizers are able to get the number of signatures they need since most Mississippians aren't going to see the need for it. Mississippians like the state just fine as it is."

Fischer added that many "of the provisions in the initiative would be more appropriately handled at the state legislative level if they are to be handled at all."

"Constitutional remedies should be reserved for issues of primary importance. The issue of school mascots, for instance, doesn't rise to that level," said Fischer.

"Our main concern here at AFA is for religious liberty to be preserved in Mississippi, and we believe that our state constitution and the recently passed religious freedom restoration act provide adequate protection for religious freedom here in the Magnolia State."

On his radio broadcast yesterday, noted constitutional scholar Bryan Fischer made the absurd argument that Ferguson, Missouri, police office Darren Wilson cannot face federal charges in the shooting death of Michael Brown after a grand jury failed to indict him, on the grounds that such charges would violate the Constitution's protections against "double jeopardy."

Citing the Fifth Amendment's language that no person shall "be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb," Fischer laughably claimed that meant that Wilson can never be prosecuted for possible crimes related to Michael Brown's killing.

"He was just put in jeopardy of life or limb," Fischer argued. "No indictment was returned. He cannot be subject to the process a second time."

Unfortunately for Fischer, this clause only applies to individuals who have faced trial, as it is designed to protect people from being tried multiple times for the same crime. Wilson, of course, was never "put in jeopardy of life or limb" since he never faced a trial for his actions precisely because the grand jury failed to return an indictment.

American Family Association news director Fred Jackson spoke today about a St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown, declaring that Brown had a “mentality of entitlement” and ultimately paid the price for his alleged role in the theft of cigars from a convenience store earlier that day. Apparently stealing cigars comes with the penalty of death!

Jackson made the comments while guest-hosting American Family Radio’s “Sandy Rios in the Morning”:

We have to get back to the reality, there are moral truths and when people break those moral truths and decide to violate them, there are consequences. On that day, August 9th in Ferguson, Missouri, when Michael Brown went into that convenient store and stole that box of cigars, he was making a moral decision. Now no one knows what was in Michael Brown’s head that day but one could speculate that he believed he was above being told he should not steal, he was above getting any consequences for his actions. He went on to assault police officer Darren Wilson. He believed, Michael Brown, apparently, that he was allowed to do that. It is that mentality of entitlement, that mentality that says ‘you have your truth, I have mine,’ that I believe is at the core of this.

Later in the program, Jackson said Brown disobeyed the absolute truths laid out by God and had to face the consequences for his actions because “God says there will be consequences.” He added that Brown’s death was also the result of “the breakdown of the family.”

What we’ve been talking about this morning: the existence of absolute truth, and that is what’s under attack today. Absolute truth is defined by scripture, the Bible, God’s word, that’s how it’s defined and when you violate that, there are consequences. Now you may get away with it for a while, for a period, but God says there will be consequences. Both our callers, I think, addressing the crux of the problem here this morning is the family, is the breakdown of the family. When you do not have a dad figure around there is not someone there in authority to demonstrate there are consequences to violating the rules. If you don’t have that presence in the family, you’re going to have problems.

On his Friday radio broadcast, Bryan Fischer said that conservatives need to keep talking about impeaching President Obama over his executve action on immigration in order to bring about the "social change" necessary to make it acceptable, just like gay activists did with the issue of homosexuality.

"I'll give you a perverse example," Fischer said. "The homosexual lobby, they said we want to overhaul straight America. We want to turn them into thinking this is not aberrant sexual deviant behavior. We want them to think this is wonderful. How do we do that? Well, number one, we just use the word 'homosexual' over and over and over again. We just keep talking about homosexual, homosexual, homosexual, homosexual. We get people accustomed to it. We get them used to it, so we get past the shock factor of what the word homosexual actually means. They say don't let them think about what homosexuals actually do, that will gross them out, just use the word homosexual over and over and over again and eventually people will get used to it. It will become normal, it will become part of kind of the lingo."

"Well that's exactly, I believe, in a positive sense, what we need to do with impeachment," he said. "Let's just keep talking about impeachment all the time. Let's make it a normal part of the political discourse to consider impeachment":

Discussing President Obama’s likely executive action on immigration with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios today, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez suggested that the president wants to swap freedom-loving Americans with government-worshiping Latinos as part of his plan to weed out liberty from the country.

After Rios read an excerpt from a Federation for American Immigration Reform report claiming that an executive action would “open up federal and state benefits to individuals that are illegal immigrants,” Gonzalez said “Obama’s calculus” is to use undocumented immigrants to breed support for “big government.”

(Noncitizens under the Obama administration’s current deferred action program — which would be expanded under the proposed executive action — are not eligible for any federal benefits and do not have a path to citizenship and voting rights.)

“The reason he wants to do this is because he believes that these people, when they become voters, will support Big Government,” Gonzalez said. “For them to be assimilated into the ‘new America’ that the president and the progressives around him are trying to create, they need to be acclimated right away to being on government services, to liking government services, to think of the government as being a benevolent dispenser of goodies.”

He added that Obama plans to undermine the country’s “experiment in human freedom and prosperity” by replacing native-born Americans with immigrants who want a bigger government: “In order to change it, they need to create a people that like and look upon government as benevolent and a provider.”

Rios agreed, saying that Latino immigrants are “accustomed to government sort of being the ruler, they’re not used to self-rule or self-decisions.” She insisted that the “poison pill” of government will weaken Latino families just as she believes it damaged the black community.

Last week, the American Family Association kicked off the “War on Christmas” season with the release of its annual “Naughty or Nice” list rating major retailers on whether their holiday advertising uses the word “Christmas.”

Today, the AFA announced the company that it would be picking on especially this Christmas season, urging members to abide by a “limited one-month boycott” of the pet supply store PetSmart because of “the company’s censorship of the word ‘Christmas.’”

AFA is calling for a limited one-month boycott of PetSmart over the company's censorship of the word "Christmas."

For years, PetSmart has refused to use the word Christmas on its website, in television commercials, newspaper ads and in-store promotions, despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.

Sign the Boycott PetSmart Pledge Now!

Want proof? Go to www.PetSmart.com and type "Christmas" in the search bar. As of today, the website brings up zero results, although the company’s website is clearly marketing to "Christmas" shoppers.

At PetSmart, you'll find a "Holiday Shop," a "holiday" wish list and plenty of "holiday" items, but you won't find "Christmas."

Ironically, PetSmart had no problem with saying Halloween though. They promoted their "Halloween Shop" very heavily for weeks in October. So why are they so afraid of Christmas?

PetSmart is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple. Yet the company wants all the people who celebrate Christmas to do their shopping at its stores.

Until PetSmart proves it recognizes Christmas by using it in their newspaper, radio and television advertising or in-store signage, the boycott will be promoted throughout this Christmas season.

AFA has successfully influenced almost all of the nation's largest retailers to embrace the use of Christmas in their advertising. But at PetSmart, it's "Bah, Humbug!"

While appearing on Jerry Newcombe's "Vocal Point" radio program last week, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer doubled down on his assertion that the prayers of anti-gay activists at the recent "I Stand Sunday" event caused God to help Republican candidates win their races for elected office in the last election.

"A good part of that evening, the pastors and the people in that congregation and all those across the country got down on their faces before God to repent of our sins, to seek God's favor over this land because of the threat to religious liberty," Fischer said. "And on Tuesday, we saw these resounding election results and I have to think there was a connection. When God's people got on their faces in repentance in faith over the issue of religious liberty, how threatened it is in our land, how important it is, I think God heard those prayers and I believe he quickened the campaigns of those who are willing to stand for religious liberty and Tuesday, I think, was part of the fruit of those prayers and that repentance":