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Watch: Top Anti-Gay Bigot’s Marriage Fibs Decimated By Conservative Lawyer-And Fox News Anchor

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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

 

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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2 days ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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News

CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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