Until yesterday, the most outrageous thing a religious right pundit has said about the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 came from Pat Robertson, who wondered if first officer Andreas Lubitz, the man who appears to have deliberately crashed the plane into the French Alps, was a radical Muslim. How do you get more offensive than that? Well, Bryan Fischer may have found a way to do it. On Tuesday’s edition of “Focal Point,” Fischer suggested that Lubitz may have been motivated to deliberately crash the plane into the Alps because–wait for it–he may have been gay.
On Tuesday morning, the International Business Times reported that Lubitz not only mined the Internet for information on suicide, but also looked at gay porn. He was also a target of jokes about his sexual orientation while working as a flight attendant at Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent. Fischer ate it up. He pointed out that “increased risk of suicidal ideation” is one of the health risks associated with homosexuality. While cautioning that he didn’t think it caused the crash, Fischer nonetheless thought it was interesting that “perhaps he was involved in homosexuality” and being treated for depression. He suggested that “perhaps that would explain why he crashed that plane.” People for the American Way got a clip.
There’s so much wrong with this that I really don’t know where to start. For one thing, while it is indeed true that LGBT youths and young adults have astronomically high rates of suicide attempts, it’s also true that those high rates are directly linked to passage of anti-gay legislation. So by that logic, Fischer and his friends are partially responsible for Lubitz’ death–a suggestion that makes about as much sense as even suggesting that Lubitz’ sexual orientation in any way contributed to his actions.
Moreover, Fischer seems to forget that airlines around the world don’t check for mental health when monitoring their pilots’ fitness to fly. Instead, they rely mostly on questionnaires filled out by the pilots themselves–on their honor. That’s incomprehensible considering that the most sacred trust in travel is that those responsible for getting you to your destination are in a condition to do so. Any analysis of Lubitz’ actions that doesn’t factor this in is, to put it in the most diplomatic term I can use, garbage.
Then again, Fischer was engaging in his two favorite hobbies–conspiracy theory and hatemongering. As we all know, such little details as facts never got in the way of either one of these right-wing pastimes.
