Mitt Romney, Republican presidential
candidate, on Saturday denounced the “poisonous language” of
Bryan Fischer, but refused to call him out by name.
“We should remember that decency and
civility are values too,” Romney told attendees of the 2011 Values
Voter Summit in Washington D.C. “One of the speakers who'll follow
me today has crossed that line, I think. Poisonous language doesn't
advance our cause. It's never softened a single heart or changed a
single mind.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)
Romney had been called on by the
progressive group People for the American Way to denounce the
anti-gay rhetoric of Fischer, whose radio program is hosted by the
American Family Association (AFA), a sponsor of Values Voter Summit.
“Mitt Romney clearly realized that
his presidential campaign couldn't ignore the bigotry of Bryan
Fischer and the American Family Association,” said Michael Keegan,
President of People for the American Way. “I'm glad that he saw
fit to put at least a small distance between himself and the hate
speech regularly pushed by Fischer, even if he couldn't bring himself
to call Fischer out by name. Since he began running for President,
Mitt Romney has bent over backwards in a desperate attempt to make
himself palatable to the extreme right. At least we've seen that
there are some things he's willing to speak out against, no matter
how tepid his condemnation may be. It's disappointing that none of
the other candidates have been willing to go even that far.”
In remarks to media watchdog
ThinkProgress.org, Fischer said he found Romney's remarks “tasteless
and tawdry.”
“I think he allowed the New York
Times, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the People for the
American Way, he allowed them to dictate the content of his speech at
the Values Voter Summit,” he said. “And right there, people
ought to be concerned about that.”
On his radio show, Focal Point, Fischer
has previously called for a
nationwide ban on gay sex, insisted the
Nazi Party was run by “homosexual thugs,” and on World AIDS
Day, he suggested allowing
AIDS to run rampant, since, he argued, the disease mostly affects
gay and bisexual men.