Tony Perkins appeared on Fox News Sunday thinking he could spread his anti-gay marriage hate to a friendly audience, but his claims were decimated and debunked by one of America’s top conservative attorneys and the Fox News host.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins just had a very bad visit on “Fox News Sunday.” His center seat apparently was the designated hot seat. On the left was former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, one of the two attorneys who sought the demise of Prop 8 by bringing it all the way to the Supreme Court, then went on to win marriage equality in Virginia. On the right was Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. 

Perkins might have expected a grand old time where he could spew his packaged talking points about poor persecuted Christian wedding cake vendors and victimized parents forced to find their children learning that gay people aren’t the monsters their parents portray. 

But he was wrong.

Perkins tried to tell Olson his comparison of court decisions on same-sex marriage to court decisions on interracial marriage were wrong.

“Apples and oranges,” Perkins insisted, “because we’re talking about an arbitrary boundary created by man between the races. That doesn’t exist in nature. There is a boundary between people of the same sex getting married. They can’t procreate. They can’t — there’s nothing in nature to say that’s normal.”

Except, of course, the hundreds of species in which homosexuality have been widely documented.

Perkins’ career as an anti-gay activist is so rabid under his leadership the Southern Poverty Law Center was forced to designate the Family Research Council as a certified anti-gay hate group. 

So it’s not surprising he would claim on Fox News that the U.S. Supreme Court’s explanation of the purpose of marriage is wrong.

“I’d like to ask Ted [Olson],” Perkins says, “what’s the purpose of marriage?”

“The purpose of marriage is what the Supreme Court has said 14 times,” Olson replies. “It’s a fundamental right that involves privacy, association, liberty, and being with the person you love and forming a part of the community and being treated equally with the rest of society.”

“That’s not true,” is Perkins’ retort.

And there was more:

PERKINS: Well, we know from the social science that children do best with a mom and a dad. That’s why our policies in this country have preferred marriage and given benefits to it.

But let me — if love is the factor, what boundaries are there?

OLSON: You want the sky to fall because two people living next door to you —

PERKINS: No, I —

OLSON: What court after court after court has said, that allowing people of the same sex to marry the person that they love, to be part of the community and to be treated equally, does no damage to heterosexual marriage.

(CROSSTALK)

OLSON: And court after court after court has said children living in a same-sex relationship do as well or better than people in other communities.

PERKINS: The court doesn’t study this social —

OLSON: The court heard evidence.

PERKINS: Let me ask you, what are the boundaries, though? If it’s just love, what are the boundaries? Where can we go with marriage?

WALLACE: What are you suggesting? That they’re going to be polygamy. That people will be marrying their pets?

(CROSSTALK)

PERKINS: No, I didn’t say that. If we remove the natural established boundaries for marriage, the union of a man and woman, we have removed those boundaries, those guardrails.

There’s no arbitrary boundary —

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: What about the argument that Ted Olson makes, which is, all right, you and your wife live happily in this house, there’s a same-sex couple living here. What’s the damage to you?

PERKINS: Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the wedding vendors that have been put out of business. Let’s talk —

WALLACE: I’m not talking about that. That’s a different issue.

PERKINS: No, it’s —

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: It’s a different issue. I’m asking you, what’s the impact on you and your family to have these people living next door?

PERKINS: Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about my children all of a sudden, in school are taught values and morals that contradict what I teach as a parent at home. That’s happening already across the country in those states that have recognized and forced same-sex marriage on the states.

Let’s talk about the business place, let’s about Aaron and Melissa Klein, a bakery in Oregon, forced out of business, forced to pay $150,000 in fines, simply because they didn’t want to participate in a same-sex marriage.

WALLACE: We’re gong to get to that in a second. But your argument as to whether somehow this damages the Perkins to have another couple next door?

OLSON: Well, everyone who has ever talked about this says there’s no heterosexual couple that is going to decide to get divorced or not to get married or not to raise children just because another couple next to them is treated equally and with respect and decency under our Constitution. That is why we have courts.

The same argument Mr. Perkins was making was made with respect to interracial marriages in 1967 — 30 some states at one point prohibited interracial marriages.

And talk about the color of the skin? People were making the same arguments. Marriage is wrong between people of different races. We have to stop that.

When the Supreme Court finally acted, 16 states were still prohibiting interracial marriages.

As far as the marriage vendors, the people in the flower business or in the — in the cake business or whatever it happens to be, we have a civil rights law that say if you’re going to engage in commerce, you’re not going to discriminate against people on the basis of their religion, sex or race. That’s a simple solution to the problem. Massachusetts —

PERKINS: Driving them out of business?

OLSON: Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage 10 years ago. Nobody has been put out of marriage —

(CROSSTALK)

OLSON: It’s a canard.

PERKINS: It’s not.

Clearly, if “traditional marriage” advocates have lost Fox News, same-sex marriage has won.

And for the record, Perkins is, to be kind, twisting facts.

First, the “wedding vendors that have been put out of business,” claim is false. No wedding vendor — say, cake baker or event space owner — who has refused to do business with a same-sex couple has been “put out of business.” They may have been fined for violating civil rights laws, they may have even voluntarily chosen to move their business online or close up shop, but that was their decision, not the state’s or any same-sex couple’s.

Next, Perkins needs to stop fibbing about the Massachusetts adoption agency. The fact is Catholic Charities, despite the vote of its board, opted to stop doing business in Massachusetts rather than allow gay people or same-sex couples to adopt the children in their care. It was their choice, they were not, “driven out of business.”

Finally, those “studies” Perkins like to bring up were of heterosexual couples raising children compared to heterosexual single parents raising children. Same-sex parents weren’t part of the equation. 

Watch:

 

Image via YouTube
Transcript via Fox News
Hat tip and video: David Edwards at Raw Story