Tony Perkins is again attacking gays, screaming “religious liberty,” and slamming ENDA — this time cherry-picking polls to do so. But when it comes to gun control, Perkins sings a different tune.
Tony Perkins, it will come as no surprise, is one of America’s greatest hypocrites. Ignore the fact for the moment that before he became the head of the Family Research Council (FRC) it was not listed among the Southern Poverty Law Center’s anti-gay hate groups, and ignore the fact for the moment that when Perkins was managing a Louisiana political campaign he paid $82,500 for the use of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s mailing list — yet Perkins claims to be a moral leader. Heck, he even signs his fundraising emails by quoting Bible verses.
Perkins earlier this year spent months railing against Congress’ attempts to expand background checks for gun purchases — legislation that 92 percent of Americans supported.
“This idea of background checks is very concerning given the fact that … the United States military has been increasingly showing hostility toward evangelicals and Catholics as being somehow threats to national security and people that need to be watched,” Perkins claimed:
“Well, what does that have to do with gun control? Well, what happens if all a sudden you are identified as an evangelical, Bible-believing fundamentalist and the government decides you’ve got to be put on a watch list?”
“Part of the provisions of this background check is kind of a system where if a caution comes up when they put your name in, you don’t get a chance to buy a gun.”
Fear-mongering Perkins neglected to mention that the bill Congress ultimately killed had extremely strong language that made anyone keeping a list of gun purchasers a felony — far stronger protections for gun rights advocates than are currently on the books.
So imagine my surprise when Perkins late yesterday in his daily anti-gay fundraising email slammed ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would protect LGBT people from being fired merely for being LGBT — a basic right that the vast majority of Americans not only support but believe already exists –Â by using a poll.
“In a stunningly lopsided poll, U.S. voters universally supported the rights of companies like Masterpiece Cakes, Arlene’s Flowers, Elane Photography, and others who turned down ‘wedding’ business from same-sex couples — and are now paying for it (usually literally),” Perkins writes in his fear-mongering fundraiser:
“In a sharply divided country where Americans rarely agree on anything — let alone social issues — Rasmussen Reports found a shocking amount of consensus on the question of businesses’ rights in the marriage debate. ‘If a Christian wedding photographer who has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage is asked to work a same-sex wedding ceremony, 85% of Americans believe he has the right to say no.’ Only 8% disagree. That’s as unanimous as it gets in the polling community.”
Actually, the expanded background checks poll — which 92 percent of Americans support — is “as unanimous as it gets in the polling community.”
But Perkins didn’t want his followers to know about that. And yes, he has close ties to the NRA.
Tony Perkins can’t be fired for being Christian — yet just last week he said he wants an ENDA for Christians.
“If anyone needs workplace protections these days, it’s conservative Christians,†Perkins perversely proclaimed. “Under ENDA, their nightmares will only intensify.â€
While you’re here, read a bit more of Perkins’ disgusting attack on gay people — ordinary Americans struggling like everyone else, oftentimes worse, because we can be fired in dozens of states just for being LGBT.
“When religious liberty collides with same-sex ‘marriage,’ something has to give,” Perkins writes in the opening of his email yesterday. “And usually, that ‘something’ is Christians’ rights.”
In this mad dash to redefine marriage in America, many in society are so focused on giving homosexuals their way that they aren’t stopping to see who gets tramples underfoot. The real victims, who include children, religious business owners, and employees across the country, have been lost in a convenient storyline of inequality and discrimination.
While the media spills oceans of ink on the perceived injustice toward same-sex couples, very few reporters are telling the stories of Christians being hauled into court, before human rights commissions, and even their own employers for subscribing to a view on marriage that — until last year — President Barack Obama shared! In the meantime, wedding vendors from Washington State to New Jersey are trapped in the middle, wondering why their rights are suddenly less important than homosexuals’. When did it become acceptable to sacrifice the freedoms of conscience and free exercise of religion on the same-sex “wedding” altar?
When did the Founding Fathers say the Bible should be used as a cudgel against your enemies?
Let’s be very clear here. The repeated claims by the religious right, that same-sex marriage laws are a threat to Christian business owners is a lie. In all these cases, it’s not same-sex marriage legislation that is at issue, rather it is the states’ often decades-old anti-discrimination laws — the same ones that protect Christians from discrimination — under which supposedly “Christian” business owners find themselves in trouble.
Perkins’ arguments were the same ones used by Bible-wielding Christians opposed to equal rights for Blacks and interracial couples.
Given Perkins’ ties to the KKK, that’s something of which he should be intimately aware.