Fred Karger, the openly gay GOP
presidential candidate, appeared Thursday on the AFA-sponsored radio
show of Bryan Fischer.
Karger will end his campaign on June
27th, the day after the Utah primary, and return to
advocating for gay rights, in particular equal marriage rights in his
home state of California.
Fischer, whose anti-gay rants are
credited with forcing Richard Grenell to step
down as a spokesman for presumed GOP presidential nominee Mitt
Romney, baited Karger during his radio appearance, but Karger kept
his cool.
“But Fred, the Republican Party
platform is officially pro-family,” Fischer said. “It supports
the federal marriage amendment, marriage as [the] union of one man,
one woman. There's an official statement in there that we believe
children need to be raised by a mom and a dad.”
“I would throw out about 50 pages of”
of the Party Platform, Karger responded, “to a nice short, concise
6 or 7 pages that welcomes people. I think that's an offense to so
many people. … We should be as a minority party opening our doors
to everyone who agrees with the basic principles of the Republican
Party: smaller government, balancing the federal budget,
entrepreneurship, personal empowerment, strong national defense,
tough on law and order.”
Fischer also touted the recent study
by Mark Regnerus which reported negative outcomes for the kids of gay
parents. But by the author's own admission, only 2 of the
study's 3,000 subjects reported having parents in a gay relationship
for their entire childhood. About half of the parents categorized
by Regnerus as gay had once been in a heterosexual marriage.
“I think the average person looking
at this saying, 'I am not sure that it's a smart thing to put kids in
same-sex households, maybe they really do belong, like the Republican
Party officially says, in a home where they are raised by a mom and a
dad who are married to each other,'” Fischer said.
“I just would argue that's a bogus
study, it's been discredited in many circles. And you know how
studies work. You can come up with a lot of different numbers and
things. But I know personally and have met thousands of couples who
are desperate for children.”
“There's a certain amount of
emotional poverty in the life of a child who doesn't have both a mom
and a dad feeding into their lives,” Fisher argued. (The video is
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