While a divided nation last Tuesday finally rallied around one bright shining moment of patriotic glory — President Obama’s awarding of the Medal of Honor to Afghan hero Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta — a popular right-wing Christian commentator sharply split opinions even within his own camp. He blasted the award as ‘feminized’ because it honors Giunta for saving his comrades rather than killing the enemy.

The Army’s official citation details how Giunta ‘exposed himself to withering enemy fire’ during a daring effort to engage the enemy and extract his wounded comrades from an ambush. But Bryan Fischer, a columnist for the American Family Association who has often provoked headlines and consternation with his commentaries, read the narrative as hardly the sort of thing American soldiers were once known for.

President Obama awards Medal of Honor to Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta’When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements,’ wrote Fischer, director of issue analysis for the AFA, a longtime lobby on the Christian […]