Decrepit Old Fool

I get regular emails from something called the American Family Association.  They exist to tell me what a family is, and the right way I should think about families.  For instance, (well primarily, actually) two gay people with a child is not a family.  They also defend important family values like bullying gays in school and boycotting businesses that support gay rights.  And how universal health care would be just awful for families, and in any case against God’s will. And side-issues like Superman comic books that are not flag-and-family waving enough.  And lately, killing people – apparently violence is a family value too because it helps us sleep better at night:

“We have feminized the Medal of Honor.
According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one ….  That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.
So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?”

Ahh, the Culture Of Life.  Don’t you just love the smell of napalm in the morning?  I know I sleep better knowing that villagers in some mountainous hell-hole on the other side of the world are being killed by my taxpayer dollars.  He said this about the most recent award, which was for a soldier named Salvatore Giunta, who ran through enemy fire to rescue a comrade. The soldier was on 60 Minutes the other day; you can click through and watch for yourself.

Now you may be thinking; just what are Sargent Giunta’s balls made of?  I’m thinking, maybe “chrome-vanadium tool steel” or “tungsten carbide”.  In any case I have no doubts about his courage, which (despite the balls metaphor) is a human property not confined to the masculine side of the fence.  And yet he was modest about it, disclaiming any special action, as if everybody would leave cover and run though bullets.  As I watched, I kept thinking; “I’d pay real money to watch Bryan Fischer in that situation”.

Anyway, ***Dave has a running series entitled; “Bryan Fischer is a Dolt”, in which I think he uses he uses “Dolt” as surrogate for much stronger language.  He may be writing this series because 1) ***Dave lives in Colorado, where he is constantly exposed to the allergens that are the AFA and Focus On The Family, and 2) because he is a Christian and is getting a little tired of, um, Dolts spreading ignorant, hateful Doltism in the name of his Savior.  So this is kind of a hobby for him and he has elevated it to an art form.  None of the profanity or blasphemy that Fischer uses as an excuse to ignore his critics, but don’t mistake such gentility for lack of brutal efficiency.

His latest such public service is: ” Bryan Fischer is a Dolt: feminized heroism edition“.  He carefully read not only Fischer’s infamous “feminizing” column but also his response to criticisms about it.  Then he researched the Medal Of Honor, its history, and its meaning.  And then he dismantled the Dolt’s doltishness into the little pathetic pieces of, um, garbage from which it was made.  The short version is; the Medal Of Honor isn’t about killing, particularly, and it never has been.  And despite Fischer’s claims that Jesus would want us to KILL our enemies as brutally as possible, well, that doesn’t really hold up either.  In the sense of being not true, and fantastically twisted, pretty much.  And I wish I could make every AFA member read it.  Out loud.  On live camera.

Personally though, I find Fischer’s email newsletter quite valuable as a sort of helpful shopping guide – just not in the way he intends.  How else would I know that Mcdonalds and Home Depot have been making strides toward recognizing GLBT people as, you know, actual people?  I even use AFA’s email utility to contact the companies involved and thank them for their progressive action.  And I need a piece of test equipment that Home Depot sells, so that’s helpful too.  In any case I won’t be unsubscribing.