Bryan Fischer has called for an
“underground railroad” to “deliver innocent children from
same-sex households.”
“Why we need an Underground Railroad
to deliver innocent children from same-sex households,” Fischer
tweeted on Tuesday along with a link to a post from Robert Oscar
Lopez in which he praises his lesbian mother but blames her and her
partner for his social issues.
In a second message, Fischer described
Kenneth Miller as the “head” of the supposed underground
railroad.
Miller is the Mennonite minister on
trial for helping Lisa Miller flee to Nicaragua with her daughter
Isabella to evade a Vermont court order giving her former partner,
Janet Jenkins, visitation rights to Isabella.
(Related: Pastor
arrested for aiding ex-gay mom Lisa Miller.)
On his AFA-sponsored radio show Focal
Point, Fischer told listeners that “we are going to need this
kind of underground railroad to protect parents and the right of
parents to raise their own children because you are going to get more
and more of these cases where custody is going to be awarded [to a
gay former partner].” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
But while Fischer's comments are
getting a lot of traction, he is not the first to use the term.
In comments to Reuters,
Gay Buseck, legal director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders
(GLAD), the legal group which helped Jenkins in her custody battle,
made a similar reference.
“I think she's in the equivalent of
the underground railroad with the religious people … who see the
gay rights agenda overwhelming their religious rights,” Buseck
said, referring to Lisa Miller.