Watch: Tony Perkins Just Can’t Answer Megyn Kelly’s Questions About Religious Liberty

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly offered several examples to Tony Perkins that were just like the Kim Davis story, and he couldn’t come up with an answer for any of them.

Megyn Kelly Tuesday night hosted Tony Perkins to discuss the release from jail of Kim Davis, and of course to promote his new book, No Fear, which purportedly tells horrific stories about Christians, like the Rowan County clerk, being “persecuted” for their beliefs.

Kelly, an astute interviewer who often asks the right questions but lets her subjects dance around without giving actual answers, did just that with Perkins, while promoting his book.

Ultimately, Perkins could not come up with a single, justified, actual answer for her questions. 

Here’s the transcript via Right Wing Watch:

Kelly: You know the argument on the other side though. What if somebody goes in there and says, my sincerely held religious beliefs and now we’re back in 1952 say, blacks and whites shouldn’t get married. And therefore, I don’t care that the Supreme Court said it’s legal, I object and therefore, no.

Perkins: Well, it’s much different. You have a long standing orthodox view about marriage in the Bible. The issue of interracial marriage is very difficult to point to in scripture. Are there some that hold that view? Yes. But it is —

Kelly: What about Muslims? What about Muslims who say, a Muslim man may not marry a Christian woman and therefore you applying to me on the Muslim clerck? I’m not giving you that marriage license.

Perkins: If — are you saying if there is a Muslim and clerk that —

Kelly: The Muslim clerk says, I want a religious accommodation — how many accommodations can we grant?

Perkins: Right. In this particular case. What you have are the voters of this district, of this region of the country that elected her as the clerk. If they don’t like what she is doing they can kick her out. It is not up to some unelected judge to impose his views on her and hold her in contempt of basically whatever he wants.

Kelly: And she may yet be if somehow she interferes with future licenses to be issued by the deputies although it doesn’t sound like she is going to do that if they changed the issue.

Perkins: Well, here is all she wants. All she wants is to have her name off the license. She is not saying nobody in my office can issue this. She’s saying, I just don’t want my name —

Perkins of course is totally wrong that the “issue of interracial marriage is very difficult to point to in scripture.” As Kelly said, in the ’50s and ’60s, that was the argument social conservatives and the religious right used. 

Note that when Kelly offers the very legitimate hypothetical of a Muslim clerk, Perkins turns the conversation back to Kim Davis and can’t answer.

Carlos Maza at Media Matters today offers a report detailing just how much Fox News is working to promote Perkins’ book. He writes that Megyn Kelly “has hosted the hate group leader more frequently on her show than any other Fox News program has, regularly giving his anti-gay extremism a veneer of mainstream credibility.” 

Here’s the Media Matters video:

 

Image: Screenshot via Fox News