#2841: Dan Fisher

Dan Fisher is a former Republican member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives (representing District 60 from 2012 to 2016), a pastor and a notoriously insane religious fundamentalist; Fisher is also on the leadership team of the Oklahoma City Tea Party and serves on the boards of groups like Vision America and the hardcore fundie creationist organization Reclaiming America for Christ. He also ran for governor in 2018 on a platform of abolishing abortion (explicitly by ignoring all legal issues) and asserting state sovereignty (his positions were backed up by some curious analogies). As a state representative, Fisher was most notable for his bizarre war against teaching US history courses in public schools.

 

Unsurprisingly, Fisher is no fan of LGBT rights. He is, for instance, affiliated with the fundie extremist anti-gay umbrella organization Gone Too Far (together with people like Scott Lively, E. W. Jackson, Peter LaBarbera, Paul Blair and Brian Camenker), and his general views on the issues can be discerned from his presentation at a 2019 Gone Too Far press conference: After focusing an unnerving amount on anal sex and pedophilia, Fisher stated that if “Congress attempts to label as a civil right that which has been understood by generations as immoral [like interracial marriage?], it would not only be reversing centuries of western Judeo-Christian thought, but would be in essence, as Pastor Broden said, actually rendering historic, orthodox Christianity illegal.” He was predictably short on the details of what he thought would be made illegal.

 

Fisher is also worried about what he sees as a “direct correlation” between what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah and what is happening in America today, and therefore blamed LGBT activists in the US today for putting us on a trajectory that will likely end with angel rape (“When you read the story in Genesis about Lot and the angels who came to visit him, these men are wanting to rape these angels … That just shows you the kind of violent sexuality that this produces”).

 

Diagnosis: Insane fundie madman, and although writing about Fisher feels like a bit of a blast from the past, these people are still plentiful, and they often find themselves in positions of power.