Skip to main content
The Latest /
Far-right Extremism

Romney to Share Stage with Bryan Fischer; PFAW Urges Candidates to Denounce Bigotry

Contact:
Miranda Blue or Justin Greenberg
People For the American Way
Phone number:

At next week’s Values Voter Summit, Mitt Romney is scheduled to take the stage immediately before Bryan Fischer, an American Family Association (AFA) spokesman with a long and shocking record of bigotry against gays and lesbians, American Muslims, Native Americans and other minority groups. Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum are also scheduled to speak at the event, which is sponsored by the anti-gay Family Research Council, the AFA, and other Religious Right groups. PFAW is urging these candidates for our nation’s highest office to condemn bigotry.

At next week’s Values Voter Summit, Mitt Romney is scheduled to take the stage immediately before Bryan Fischer, an American Family Association

spokesman with a long and shocking record of bigotry against gays and lesbians, American Muslims, Native Americans and other minority groups. Rick

Perry, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum are also scheduled to speak at the event, which is sponsored by the anti-gay

Family Research Council, the AFA, and other Religious Right groups.

Last year, People For the American Way



called on



Romney and other prominent GOP leaders to denounce Fischer’s bigotry before appearing with him at the Values Voter Summit. This year, the event’s organizers kept

Fischer off the list of “confirmed speakers,” but listed his Oct. 8 speech on an event schedule posted yesterday, PFAW’s Right Wing Watch

reports.

  • He has written that African American welfare recipients “ rut like rabbits.”
  • Last year, Fischer



    insulted Medal of Honor winner



    Sal Giunta, who saved the lives of two fellow soldiers under heavy fire in Afghanistan, saying “we have feminized the Medal of Honor” because “we

    now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.”

People For the American Way president Michael Keegan

urged Romney and his fellow presidential candidates to denounce Fischer’s bigotry before appearing with him at the event.

“Bryan Fischer’s stunning record of public bigotry would make him a pariah in any sane political movement,” Keegan said. “But his long record of

hate speech doesn’t seem to bother the supposed ‘mainstream’ GOP politicians like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry who are sharing the stage with him at an

event sponsored by his employer. Candidates don’t have to agree with the views of everyone they appear with – but they should be wary of lending

legitimacy to those who peddle hate and fear of their fellow Americans.

“If Mitt Romney wants to appeal to mainstream audiences, he should publicly disassociate himself from Fischer’s bigotry before handing him

the podium.”

For more information on Bryan Fischer, see PFAW’s report,



The GOP’s Favorite Hate-Monger: How the Republican Party Came to Embrace Bryan Fischer



and the video



Four Minutes of Hate: The Naked Bigory of the AFA’s Bryan Fischer



.

###