Salon.com > Tony Perkins

Boy Scouts: Still wrong on LGBT rights

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:55:00 +0000

It's not really progress – or even compromise – if your gentle, glacial-paced attempts at moving into the 21st century reek of condescension and open up a whole big can of outright bigotry. So let's try this again, shall we, Boy Scouts?

The famously LGBT-averse organization has in recent months been taking awkward steps toward becoming more inclusive, thanks to a series of high-profile challenges and increasing pleas for greater tolerance within its ranks. In January, it announced it was "potentially discussing" changing its restrictions on gay members. Then, last month, it unveiled a new survey it's sending to its members that will feel them out on a few scenarios that "could happen if the Boy Scouts keeps or changes its policy" – scenarios that bear no small resemblance to recent high-profile stories involving gay Scouts and adult leaders who've been shut out because of their orientation. It was a peculiar move – one that had the appearance of progress but the suggestion that equality toward those oddly classified "open homosexuals" is something that can be dictated by the tastes of an organization's members.

Tony Perkins: Stop donating to the GOP!

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is urging activists to stop donating money to the GOP, escalating the ongoing war between social conservatives and the mainline Republican Party.

"Until the RNC and the other national Republican organizations grow a backbone and start defending core principles, don’t send them a dime of your hard-earned money," Perkins said in the email to supporters obtained by CNN. "If you want to invest in the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who reflect your values and organizations you trust-like FRC Action."

The Republican National Committee is this week meting in California, where the Christian right hopes it will adopt a resolution affirming their opposition to marriage equality. Perkins and a dozen other social conservative leaders wrote a strongly worded letter to committee members yesterday warning that if they do not adopt the resolution, it "will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents'" support for GOP candidates.

FRC: Functioning societies “punish” premarital sex

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Pat Fagan, a senior fellow at the social conservative Family Research Council, is still troubled by a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a ban on giving contraceptives to single people, because it essentially gave "young people have the right to engage in sex outside of marriage," and "functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever."

Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch reports:

[Fagan] appeared alongside Tony Perkins, the head of FRC, on Washington Watch yesterday to discuss his article which claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court.”

Christian fundamentalists freak out over yoga in the military

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:52:00 +0000

With a temporary ceasefire declared in the war over Christmas, fundamentalist Christian conservatives are looking for other places that religion may be under attack — and one radical thinks that that place may be the military.

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian think tank that has been classified as a hate group, has flipped out over a “wacky” new initiative being tested in U.S. military training programs. No, it’s not the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — it’s yoga and meditation classes.

A new Mind Fitness Training program being tested in the U.S. military has integrated yoga, breathing classes and meditation alongside other more traditional training regimes to keep soldiers calm and mentally fit and to reduce depression and use of alcohol and drugs. To Perkins, however, this new initiative is a stand-in for one’s personal relationship with God.

Christian right leader lauds homophobic Ugandan dictator

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:46:00 +0000

In the past week the Family Research Council has been busy praising Uganda’s commitment to Christian faith and “national repentance” -- even as the Ugandan Parliament once again takes up a bill that would legally mandate the persecution of LGBT people. The bill appears to be part and parcel of dictator Yoweri Museveni’s “repentance” program, and its reappearance before the legislature has drawn no criticism from FRC or the other Christian right groups allied with the dictator. If anything, it seems to be drawing tacit, artfully-phrased praise.

Dan Savage to Tony Perkins: Sure, sue me

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Things have been escalating between Dan Savage and Tony Perkins, ever since Savage appeared at Winona State University and said that “every dead gay kid is a victory for the Family Research Council."

In response to those remarks, Perkins went on Mike Huckabee's radio show and said that "we are pursuing everything possible to deal with him because he is out of control."

Perkins continued:

"And the truth of the matter is, let's just be very, very truthful, and that's what we deal in is the truth, that even if society embraced homosexuality, there would never be that sense of self-fulfillment because it's outside the way God created man and woman. And that's the bottom line. They cannot erase that, even if they get every law on the books changed, it will never change that."

Far right: Our speech is freer!

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:22:00 +0000

A month ago, when an armed man attacked the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., conservatives blamed the fact that the organization had been labeled a “hate group” for inciting the attack. Never mind that the hate group label was intended to condemn the sort of violence that the Family Research Council’s extreme homophobic vitriol encourages. Tony Perkins, head of the FRC, said that groups that labeled his organization a hate group should be “held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.”

But now, when an offensive anti-Islam film promoted by a right-wing Christian preacher is clearly to blame for violent riots spreading thought the Middle East and appeared to have played a role in the death of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, the far right in America is defending extremist rhetoric against Islam and attacking the Obama administration for condemning the inflammatory film. Blind to the diplomatic urgency of quelling violence, let alone their own hypocrisy, conservatives joined Mitt Romney in accusing the president of not standing up for free speech.

Guard shot at Family Research Council

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:08:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — A security guard for a conservative Christian lobbying group has been shot in the arm in the Chinatown neighborhood of the District of Columbia.

A police spokeswoman says the shooting happened Wednesday morning in the 800 block of G Street, at the headquarters of the Family Research Council. Police say one person has been taken into custody. The FBI is also responding.

The Family Research Council says in a statement that the guard was employed by the organization. Tony Perkins, the group's president, says: "Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today."

The guard was conscious and breathing after the shooting.

The Family Research Council says it advocates "faith, family and freedom in public policy and public opinion."

The anti-hate ad MSNBC won’t run

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:41:00 +0000

For the longest time, many of us have been raising hell over the fact that MSNBC hosts hate-group leader Tony Perkins (the Family Research Council) as authoritative voice without asking him about his organization’s history of lying in order to demonize the LGBT community.

Well now Faithful America has come out with an awesome ad which best speaks to the point. Only MSNBC rejected this ad. Therefore, I guess it’s up to us to spread its message:

My guess is that Perkins will whine about how supposedly the left is trying to silence him and other people of faith. In actuality, I don’t want him silenced. I want there to be a conversation about the entire issue.

And the first place we should start is with the charges in the ad.

PLEASE spread it around. Let’s make this thing very viral!

Deadbeat dad Joe Walsh rewarded for “support of the family”

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:07:00 +0000

Joe Walsh has earned a 100% "True Blue" rating from the Family Research Council, the evangelical lobbying organization and hideous advocate of assorted bigotries. Not Joe Walsh the Eagle, but Joe Walsh the "Tea Party" freshman congressman who, not coincidentally, owes more than $100,000 in back child support that he refuses to pay.

FRC lauds Walsh for his "unwavering support of the family," by which they don't mean his family, because obviously his support for them has been known to waver. But supporting one's actual children is less important, to Tony Perkins and his organization, than Walsh's steadfast belief that the government's sole responsibility is to ensure that life is as difficult and miserable as possible for women and gay people.