Tony Perkins blames President Obama for campus sexual assault crisis in bizarre rant

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what's really driving the sexual abuse on college campuses"

Published January 23, 2014 9:27PM (EST)

                      (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
(Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

President Obama announced Wednesday that his administration has launched a federal task force to combat sexual assault on college campuses, telling the network of student activists who brought this issue to national attention, "I've got your back."

In addition to demanding greater accountability from police and campus administrators, the president called on young men to help end sexual violence against women. "We've got to keep teaching young men in particular to show women the respect they deserve and to recognize sexual violence and be outraged by it, and to do their part to stop it from happening in the first place," the president said.

Later that day, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins blamed the campus sexual assault crisis on ... Obama.

In a Wednesday newsletter, Perkins said that rampant sexual assault has nothing to do with the indifferent of law enforcement or a culture of male sexual entitlement, but is actually a product of Obama's "own views." (In a message about who is responsible for rape on campus, Perkins -- oddly though not surprisingly -- never mentions rapists once.)

An excerpt of the bizarre rant:

While the pro-life movement protested the violence against the unborn and women, President Obama focused on a different kind of assault. Turning a blind eye to the marchers outside, the White House tried to change the subject from abortion to college sexual assault. Insisting that the country doesn't pay enough attention to the problem, the President signed a special memorandum today, creating a task force to combat an epidemic that his own views have helped create! In the report from his White House Council on Women and Girls, the administration insists that the incidence of rape "is highest at college, fueled by drinking and drug use that can incapacitate victims."

But instead of putting the blame for this very real crisis where it belongs, the White House points the finger at "police bias" and a "lack of training to investigate and prosecute sex crimes." With all due respect, the people who need training are the leaders who head up this council. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what's really driving the sexual abuse on college campuses. (And it isn't the failure local law enforcement).

Abuse is never okay. But America's kids are growing up in an oversexualized culture, fed in part by Hollywood -- but also by the radical Left. In the debate over contraception, it wasn't the police department that embraced the hook-up culture and crusaded for free birth control . It wasn't the police department that urged more than 50 universities to open their campuses to co-ed dorm rooms. It wasn't the police who blamed sexual assault on drinking and drug use -- and then proceeded to encourage ObamaCare Happy Hours and even endorse the decriminalization of marijuana. "I smoked pot as a kid," the President told reporters last weekend, "and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."

h/t Right Wing Watch

 


By Katie McDonough

Katie McDonough is Salon's politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.

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