Category: Warren Throckmorton

On Monday, I wrote about the corrosive effect of the culture war on the real business of Christianity. In that post, I wrote

On the other hand, my great concern is that culture warring lulls people into feeling that that the cause justifies the considerable offense that comes with vilifying those the church yearns to reach.

As if to volunteer to be Exhibit A, Bryan Fischer helps define “vilifying” for us. On his American Family Radio program this week, Fischer, who erroneously believes the New Testament teaches criminalization of homosexuality) made the tired and discredited link between homosexuality and the WWII Nazis. He did not do this as an attempt at a lesson in history but as a part of his opposition to gays serving openly in the military. He did not simply comment on his moral opposition to homosexuality, teaching his view of the matter from the Bible. He vilified an entire group of people based on distortions of fact and the behavior of a few. Listen for yourself, transcript to follow:

So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn’t the Germans, didn’t the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.

When Fischer says that Hitler could not find straights to be savage enough, he goes beyond even Scott Lively’s imagination. This is one clear example of what I meant by vilifying.

He followed up his radio performance with a column defending his views by quoting books by Lothar Machtan and of course, Scott Lively. Machtan speculates that Hitler was homosexual, although other historians have explored this possibility and most of them are skeptical. I explored the matter in this post and you can get a more objective look at the matter via the documentary Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis. I have a clip here dealing with Machtan’s book on the question of Hitler’s sexuality:

Note that the historians other than Machtan point out that there is no proof, no eye witness account. When Fischer confidently says that Hitler was an active homosexual, he misleads his numerically substantial audience. And he does so make a far more sinister point which he makes explicit in a column out today. In that article, he extensively quotes Lively’s book The Pink Swastika and echoes Lively when he writes:

Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.

Regarding the specific claims of the Pink Swastika, I did a series of posts with the help of historian J.D. Wyneken. We found that The Pink Swastika took some historical facts, threw in a lot of wild speculation and simply overlooked disconfirming facts to create a false picture – one which Bryan Fischer summarized over this last week to support his culture war position.

Here are related posts in that series:

May 28 – Scott Lively wants off SPLC hate group list

May 31 – Eliminating homosexuality: Modern Uganda and Nazi Germany

June 3 – Before The Pink Swastika

June 4 – Kevin Abrams: The other side of The Pink Swastika

June 8 – A historian’s analysis of The Pink Swastika, part 1

June 9 – A historian’s analysis of The Pink Swastika, part 2

June 11 – American Nazi movement and homosexuality: How pink is their swastika?

June 15 – Nazi movement rallies against gays in Springfield, MO (See this one regarding Fischer’s association of American Nazis with homosexuality)

June 17 – Does homosexuality lead to fascism?

June 23 – The Pink Swastika and Friedrich Nietzsche

June 29 – The Pink Swastika and The Hidden Holocaust?

July 6 – The Pink Swastika and Hate 2 Hope (See this one regarding Fischer’s association of American Nazis with homosexuality)

Factoid: Fischer is a confirmed speaker at the Values Voter Summit.

The government of Uganda has made a commitment to Germany not to pass any additional penalties on homosexuality. The promise comes in exchange for a German aid. Here is the Earthtimes article referencing a letter from the Ugandan government.

Posted : Fri, 28 May 2010 11:57:27 GMT

Berlin – Uganda has reassured Germany it does not support a bid by one parliamentarian to outlaw homosexual acts, in order to win an extension of existing aid payments, German officials said Friday.

The German development aid ministry said in Berlin it had cleared pledges totalling 120 million euros (148 million dollars) to Uganda over the next three years.

That aid would be conditional on Uganda not passing any legislation imposing new penalties on homosexual acts.

Gay groups protested round the globe last year when a Ugandan legislator, David Bahati, proposed an anti-homosexual bill, calling for life imprisonment for homosexual acts and death for homosexual rape of children.

Uganda’s parliament has studied the bill but not passed it.

Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa sent a written assurance to Hans-Juergen Beerfeltz, state secretary at the German Aid Ministry, saying that the government in Kampala does not support Bahati’s legislation.

“We regard this letter as a positive signal and will continue to insist that the bill does not become law,” said Beerfeltz. He spoke after Ugandan and German officials conferred Wednesday and Thursday on the aid pledges.

The money will be used to fight poverty, stop water wastage and reduce carbon emissions. German Aid Minister Dirk Niebel earlier said he would halt aid to Uganda if the bill were passed.

If accurate, this report seems to be the clearest signal yet that the Ugandan government is now opposed to the Bahati bill. Sam Kutesa was one of the early voices in opposition and this makes it official policy.

The American College of Pediatricians is the small breakaway group from the larger American Academy of Pediatrics. The ACP maintains the FactsAboutYouth website which I have critiqued here and which is the subject of this Minnesota City Pages article. Gary Remafedi is the main subject of the article, although it mentions Francis Collins letter as well as the concerns I expressed in my post on the subject.

In short, the article revives the request from Remafedi to alter the way the ACP reports his work:

The ACP argues that schools shouldn’t support gay teens because they’re probably just confused. “Most adolescents who experience same-sex attraction…no longer experience such attractions at age 25,” the letter says, citing a 1992 study by Remafedi.

Except that’s not what Remafedi’s research suggested at all. His work showed that kids who are confused about their sexuality eventually sort it out—meaning many of them accept being gay.

“What was so troubling was that these were fellow doctors, fellow pediatricians,” Remafedi says. “They knew better, and they have the same ethical responsibilities to their patients that I do, but they deliberately distorted my research for malicious purposes.”

On their website, the ACP has answered their critics. In letters to Francis Collins and Remafedi, the ACP justifies their work. The ACP also mentions my critique but did not respond to it. They say here that I did not contact them. I did not contact the headquarters but I did contact some of the committee members with various concerns. Their rebuttals are not persuasive to me.

In a related development, the ACP has removed George Rekers from their website and psychosocial committee. According to Rachel Maddow’s blog, the move was because Rekers won’t answer their contacts and not because they are distancing themselves from his actions. The ACP added NARTH luminary Neil Whitehead to the committee.

Mariana van Zeller posted some extended footage of interviews conducted for the documentary, Missionaries of Hate. Here is her description of this interview with David Bahati:

An exclusive, extended interview with David Bahati, the Ugandan member of parliament who introduced the anti-gay bill calling for use of the death penalty. Correspondent Mariana van Zeller asks Bahati about his reaction to President Obama’s and Rev. Rick Warren’s condemnation of the bill, how he would respond if had a gay family member, and his belief that Uganda may have been chosen by God to fight this “spiritual battle.”

I was struck by Bahati’s confidence that American evangelicals secretly agree with his bill and his approach. He expresses the view that the opposition here is not genuine because American evangelicals are telling him privately to continue with his approach.

I want to know, who are these evangelicals? Who is lying? He is saying clearly that some people who are publicly opposing the bill are secretly telling them they favor it. It is jarring for a man to invoke God while at the same time say that his supporters in America are lying to the public. Fess up, name names, who is playing to the crowds?

After the premiere of Missionaries of Hate tonight, Mariana van Zeller has posted several additional extended interviews. Here is a little over 6 minutes of Scott Lively discussing his role in Uganda, the reason why the Anti-Homosexuality Bill should be passed and his view of American evangelicals.

Lively has said that it is racist to claim that Americans were responsible for the anti-gay bill and yet he claims credit for starting the “pro-family movement” in Uganda because they did not know what to do. Brace yourself, everything is said with a straight face.

Read my interview with Mariana van Zeller here.