Rick Perry promotes Christian bigotry

“The Response” Promises Toxic Mix of Racism and Bigotry

By Gale Courey ToensingA mix of racism and bigotry against American Indians, Palestinians, Muslims, Jews, gay people and others is the backdrop to a mass rally billed as “A National Day of Prayer” that will take place in Texas the first weekend in August.

Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry initiated the event, which is named “The Response: A Call to Pray” on its website. The event, featuring some of the most prominent figures of the Christian Right, will take place all day on August 6 at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, which seats 71,500 people.Other than violating the Constitutional separation of church and state, what's wrong with this? Well, the event's sponsor is none other than Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (AFA):“The Response” has generated a squall of controversy, much of it centered around Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Analysis for Government and Public Policy. Fischer is perhaps best known for warning the people of America that President Obama “wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords.” But it was Fischer’s article “Native Americans Morally Disqualified Themselves from the Land” published last winter that has generated the harshest criticism for its blatant racism against the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island.

The article was removed from the AFA website but is archived as Text of Fischer’s Racist Screed on Newspaper Rock. In it, Fischer claims that “the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality of native (sic) Americans” made them “morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil.” He draws an analogy between the Indigenous Peoples of this country and the “Amorites, or Canaanite peoples”--the ancestors of today’s Palestinians--who “practiced one moral abomination after another, whether it was incest, adultery, sexually immorality, homosexuality, bestiality or child sacrifice, and God finally said ‘Enough’”--and gave the land to the ancient Israelites.Nor is Fischer the only Christian bigot participating in "The Response":Other participants at The Response include C. Peter Wagner, a Colorado evangelist, who advocates placing the government and media under Christian control, as well as burning the statues of Catholic saints; John Hagee, who has called the Roman Catholic Church the “Whore of Babylon,” and said that God used Hitler to have the Jews resettle Israel; and Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri, who described Oprah Winfrey as a “pastor” of the “Harlot Babylon” that will be a precursor to the coming of the Antichrist.

Right Wing Watch reported on July 25 that Perry has tried to distance himself from the many extreme activists he is working with to put on The Response. “But Perry is open about his ties to advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism, an ideology which demands that fundamentalist Christians take total control over all aspects of society,’ the report says. Dominionism advocate Jim Garlow is directing National Church Mobilization for The Response and other Dominionist endorsers include Cindy Jacobs and David Barton. Even the American Family Association now promotes Seven Mountains Dominionism.Comment:  Fischer rails against the "superstition, savagery and sexual immorality" of anyone who isn't like him: a white male conservative Christian. Other white male conservative Christian take up the attacks against the poor and minorities and you get the Republican Tea Party trying to bankrupt the nation. In its most extreme form, you get the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, right-wing militias, Tim McVeigh, Jared Loughner, and Anders Breivik killing the "bad people" and those who support them.

For more on the subject, see Mocking the Hatemongers' Denial, Conservative Hatemongers Deny Responsibility, and A History of Conservative Hate Speech.