On Wednesday, the American Family Association (AFA) ousted Bryan Fischer as their Director of Issues Analysis. Fischer has been blogging and doing audio and video broadcasts for the AFA (or, if you will, on media outlets hosted by the AFA) for many years without any sign that Fischer was speaking out of turn, but when Congressional GOP and RNC members were suddenly on the hot seat because someone noticed the AFA was paying for a free Congressional junket to Israel, suddenly Fischer became persona non grata.
Or not. He was, in fact, ousted from his official AFA position (he claims he simply left https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9AtehdkCz4), but he still has his AFA-sponsored blogging and radio show continuing alive and well, albeit with the obligatory disclaimers noting that, no matter what it says up on the address bar of the browser, Fischer isn't speaking for the AFA. Really, truly. Cross their heart.
There's a certain measure of cover there, to be sure. The reasons they are (in newspaper parliance) "op-eds," is because they are not official editorial positions of the media outlet. The AFA would normally be commended for letting the folk it's giving a soap box to (or multiple soap boxes, in Fischer's case) freedom to exercise his rhetorical muscles.
But that dog only hunts so far. The AFA says it doesn't have an editorial board or reviewers of material it hosts, but they also don't let just anyone on. And if the AFA really disdains and denounces Fischer's ideas (now), they are under no obligation (that has been mentioned) to provide him with those soap boxes to stand on. If the AFA is not actively endorsing Fischer (et al.), they are tacitly accepting what he is writing as neither worthy of denunciation (except when backed into a corner like this) nor removal from their banner over it. Worse, since they say the only thing they ask for in the people they hist is "allegiance to the authority of Scripture and to traditional Christian values," they're willing to let Fischer's pronouncements stand as Scriptural and Christian, which is even more of a scandal.
That all said, the AFA has gone even further. One of the embarrassing points for the RNC was that the AFA has been labeled as a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Fischer and other right-wing pundits have long tried to ridicule the SPLC into irrelevance, but it seems the label stings enough that the AFA sent the SPLC a lengthy list of Bryan Fischer's more zany positions and how they explicitly repudiate them.
These include gems like how the First Amendment freedom of religion only applies to Christians, how Hitler and the Holocaust was all caused by gays, how the Native Americans deserved to be conquered and brutalized because they weren't Christian, how we need an Underground Railroad to help children being raised by gays to escape, how Muslims should not be allowed into this country unless they renounce their religion, how homosexuality should be illegal, etc.
It's a remarkable document, in several ways, but it still begs the question of why these reprehensible statements never drew any criticism from the AFA before, editorially or from others in its self-claimed "diversity" / "free speech zone" of media outlets. It also begs the questions about some dubious positions the AFA itself has taken in the past (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/has-afa-changed-its-position-sodomy-laws) and present (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/group-organizing-rnc-israel-trip-attacks-israels-atheist-jews).
Still, huzzah for these explicit denunciations. A shame it's then caveated by denying any responsibility for providing Fischer a platform. As I said, the AFA's "free speech zone" approach only goes so far as an excuse. If I let you stand in my back yard and shout racist comments at my black neighbors, it's a bit disingenuous for me to just shrug to my neighbor and say, "Hey, it's a free country, and he doesn't speak for me, so I'm just going to stay silent and let him do his thing, because, diversity!"
Either they think Fischer's comments are wrong-headed but tolerable discussion points that they are happy to give him a forum to put out there, or they are hiding behind disclaimers to avoid taking responsibility for such positions because they are embarrassing the GOP. Neither is a particularly Christ-like attitude.
American Family Association repudiates chief spokesman’s racist and anti-LGBT statements before hosting Israel trip for RNC members | Southern Poverty Law Center
In a letter to SPLC officials, the American Family Association (AFA) has disavowed a series of racist and bigoted statements made by its chief spokesman in recent years.
The chickens have come home to roost.