Christian conservative Bryan Fischer
has compared an Indiana pizzeria owner who vowed not to cater gay
weddings to Anne Frank, a Jewish victim of the Holocaust.
Frank and her family went into hiding
to escape the Nazis in 1942. She died three years later in a
concentration camp, probably of typhus.
Fischer ranted against the criticism
and threats Crystal O'Connor of Memories Pizza received after footage
aired of her comments. In several interviews, she said that she and
her father were in hiding but that they planned to reopen their pizza
shop. A GoFundMe.com campaign raised more than $842,000 in three
days to help the family.
(Related: Indiana
pizzeria that vowed not to cater gay weddings: God “has blessed us
for standing up.”)
Fischer told his listeners that the god
that gay activists worship had driven them to “trap a good-hearted
American family in their home, like Anne Frank, in fear of their
lives simply for what they believe.”
“Think about what you see in the
homosexual community and what it tells you about the god that they
must worship,” Fischer said. “Whether they recognize it or not,
whether they know it or not, but the god that they worship is
vengeful, he is vitriolic, he is venomous, he is hateful, he drives
his followers to trap a good-hearted American family in their home,
like Anne Frank, in fear of their lives simply for what they
believe.”
“So if you turn out to be like the
god that you worship, what kind of god must homosexual activists
serve?” he asked.
Writing at Right Wing Watch, Kyle
Mantyla responded: “Bryan Fischer is a lot things, but
self-aware is not one of them.”