So gays caused the Holocaust…

Love. Her.

CNN’s Carol Costello picked up on the issue we wrote about the other day, of religious right groups trying to kill anti-bullying programs in schools because, they say, anti-bullying programs are secret programs to recruit kids into “the gay lifestyle.”

Uh huh.

“Hitler recruited around him homosexuals”

Bryan Fischer of the officially-designated hate group, American Family Association, did the interview with the Costello. Fischer is perhaps best known for promoting the idea that gays were behind the Holocaust. Fischer’s radio show is a frequent stop for GOP leaders and political candidates. Costello was aware of Fischer’s odd views on Hitler, and read Fischer’s quote back to him:

“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.”

Did Fischer repudiate the quote? Oh no. He defended it.

Thanks for sharing your views, I guess.

Fischer then went on a tear about the Southern Poverty Law Center – he’s upset that the SPLC recently designated a number of extreme religious right groups as official “hate groups.” Here’s the end of the interview, after she reads the Hitler quote – it’s priceless.

CNN’s COSTELLO: I would think most historians would take issue with that. But what I’m saying to you is that, by many people’s standards, would be hate speech. AFA’s FISCHER: Well, but the reality is, it’s the Southern Poverty Law Center. They’re out to destroy the AFA and the FRC (Family Research Council), that makes them the bullying group, that makes them the hate group. They’re the ones that want to silence any view that would criticize the normalization of homosexual behavior. And we know from the CDC, and from the FDA, not part of the vast rightwing conspiracy… COSTELLO: Well… FISCHER: …that homosexual behavior has the same health risks… COSTELLO: …okay… FISCHER: …associated with it… COSTELLO: That, that’s just not true. I’m gonna end this interview now, sir, I’m sorry, because that’s just not true. Mr. Fischer, um, thanks for sharing your views. I guess.

Love. Love. Love. Her.