I feel like Jeff brought up good points to refute Fischer's comment, and I thank him for the detailed facts and his point of view, but he missed the elephant in the room. Here's how my post would have read:
I was a bit surprised to see this today via TPM:
Bryan Fischer, the “Director of Issues Analysis” for the conservative Christian group the American Family Association, was unhappy yesterday that President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier for saving lives. This, Fischer wrote on his blog, shows that the Medal of Honor has been “feminized” because “we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.”
Bryan Fischer is so off-base that it’s pathetic. I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt because this statement shows that he has a severe disdain for women in the military, and probably women altogether.
By saying the medal has been "feminized," Fischer meant that it has been given out for less worthy causes since Obama became president. Obviously, Fischer believes that women are less respectable soldiers (to say the least). I would give him a bit of credit if he said that the award had been feminized because it was given to more women (and that was a bad thing)- at least then he would be correct, although obviously a bigot.
But Fischer indicates no changes in the process of awarding the medal that remotely relates to femininity or stereotypes about femininity. I believe he intends to point to the idea that men go out and kill while women stay home. This idea is grossly out of date, and I believe offensive to men as well as women. Do men really want to be identified as a gender that goes out of their way to kill people (and if they don't, they are feminine)?
So Bryan Fischer is an ignoramus, for sure. But I care much more about the fact that he is a misogynist.
