‘Gay Gestapo Stormtroopers Have Become Our New Slave Masters’ Says Religious Right Pundit

Bryan Fischer is furious that Colorado baker Jack Phillips has been ordered — twice, now — to respect the laws of the state in which he applied for and was granted a license to do business.

In “THE GAY GESTAPO BRINGS BACK SLAVERY,” Fischer, the Director Of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association, writing at Barb Wire, claims, “someone forgot to tell the Stormtroopers in the homosexual movement about the civil war, the civil rights movement, and freedom of both will and conscience.”

When a man is forced, under threat of being sent to jail, to do work that he would not do unless he was compelled to do it, he is no longer a free man but a slave.

…

The leaders of the Gay Gestapo have become our new slave masters. They can now send us to the hole if we refuse the massa’s demands.

First, of course, Fischer is lying. Phillips at most will have to pay a fine — one not even assessed despite this case being several years old. There is no possibility of Phillips being jailed for his refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.

And Fischer’s comparison between fighting against actual slavery in the American Civil War — a four-year, three-week and six-day all out bloodbath that claimed the lives of well-over 600,000 people on both sides — and a Christian baker who has been ordered to not discriminate against LGBT people, which means obeying the law of the state in which he chooses to live and do business — is staggeringly insensitive, offensive, and just plain wrong. So too is comparing gay people to Hitler’s Gestapo. Gay people aren’t responsible for countless murders or acts of terror, organized or otherwise.

“Not only is Phillips being reduced to slavery, he is now the victim of tyranny as well since he is being compelled by the government to violate his own conscience,” Fischer adds.

Slavery? Hardly.

Is Jack Phillips, the Christian Baker who has twice lost his case in front of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, now a slave? Is he being whipped and beaten? Is he being forced to work for no pay? Has he seen his family destroyed, raped, and sold off to other slave owners? Has he been denied a trial? Is he able to vote? Is he able to pay taxes? Is he able to own property? Is he able to worship (not discriminate in his business dealings, but actually worship) as he chooses?

Slavery? Hardly.

Tyranny? Hardly.

If that were tyranny, then so would be any American paying taxes for an illegal war, say, Iraq, with which they disagreed. If that were tyranny, then so would be any American paying higher taxes because organizations like Fischer’s, the American Family Association — a certified anti-gay hate group —  are tax exempt. If that were tyranny, then so would be any American paying higher taxes because religious institutions, like Christian and Catholic churches, and many of the folks who are employed by them, are tax-exempt.

Tyranny? Hardly.

In fact, Americans are forced to fork over an estimated $71 billion more than they should have to, because religious institutions are tax-exempt.

“So meet our new overlords, the new owners of the American plantation, the gay mafia,” Fischer writes. “All hail Big Gay, our new slave masters.”

Hardly.