After the passage of the dreadful North Carolina Amendment One this Tuesday, CNN's Piers Morgan brought in the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins to discuss it. Why we can't seem to have a discussion in our corporate media on the topic of gay marriage or gay rights without someone giving this bigot some air time is beyond me, but if they're going to do it, they should be pointing out that his group has been designated as a hate group and why.
The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as “the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,” but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
To make the case that the LGBT community is a threat to American society, FRC employs a number of “policy experts” whose “research” has allowed FRC to be extremely active politically in shaping public debate. Its research fellows and leaders often testify before Congress and appear in the mainstream media. It also works at the grassroots level, conducting outreach to pastors in an effort to “transform the culture.” [...]
The FRC also strongly promotes the “ex-gay” movement as a way to combat LGBT civil rights measures, though professional organizations have repeatedly called so-called “reparative therapy” (which seeks to turn gays and lesbians into heterosexuals) into question and issued statements that don’t support it. For instance, the American Psychological Association issued a report in 2009 reviewing studies of “ex-gay” therapy. The report found that, “contrary to the claims of practitioners and advocates, recent research studies do not provide evidence of sexual orientation change as the research methods are inadequate to determine the effectiveness of these interventions,” according to Dr. Judith Glassgold, the lead author.
There's a lot more in their report and all of it ought to be hung around their necks for all to be made aware of any time someone from Perkins' organization comes on the air. Transcript below the fold where Perkins was again spreading the dangerous lie that people can choose their sexuality or that it's a result of the environment they've been brought up in.
PIERS MORGAN: Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council. He's opposed to gay marriage and he joins me now.
Mr. Perkins, tell me why are you so implacably opposed to two loving people getting married?
TONY PERKINS, PRESIDENT, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL: Well, Piers, it's not just me, but North Carolina, as it looks like 60 percent of the voters there are poised to adopt the state amendment. That will make 30 states that have adopted amendments that preserve the state of marriage as being between the union of one man and one woman.
MORGAN: Why do you personally care so much? I mean the example I throw you is, if you look at heterosexual marriage, look at Kim Kardashian's marriage, which lasted, what was it, 72 hours? Isn't it ridiculous? Day like I remember.
When you look at a marriage of 72 days, look at a marriage that lasts that long, where clearly the respect for the sanctity of marriage is absurd.
PERKINS: Yes.
MORGAN: And then you have a gay couple who've been together 20 years, who love each other, who actually really want to get married and who want to observe and respect the sanctity of marriage, isn't it better for society that we let people who are in the second category take precedence over those in the first category? You treat it as a celebrity bag extension?
PERKINS: You know, Piers, I think that's a really question and I think a lot of people will ask that question of themselves, because quite frankly, marriage from -- among heterosexuals has not been good, when we see a divorce rate around 50 percent. Of course my beginnings in public policy as an elected official was to do just that, to strengthen marriage, I authored the nation's first covenant marriage law. I've been working on marriage law for over 15 years.
And the reason it's important, Piers, quite frankly is because public policy shapes the culture. And when we're talking about -- what we're talking about here is not shaping policy or creating policy based upon an individual here or an individual there, but what the social science tells us is best for society as a whole. And it's very clear that children --
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Let me -- let me ask you about the social -- let me ask you about the social science aspect.
How much more damage can a gay couple do if they're married to the damage they can do to civilization if they're unmarried?
PERKINS: Yes, again, Piers, you're asking great questions because I think those are the questions that are going through people's minds. I think what we have to do, though, is look at the --
MORGAN: Yes, but I'm asking you because you're so opposed to it.
PERKINS: But I'm -- and I'm going answer.
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Answer the question. Rather than telling me how great all my questions are, answer some of them.
PERKINS: Well, no -- I am if you'll give me just a second. We've got 40 years of public -- of social science research based upon public policy change. No fault divorce was a public policy adoption, and what that created was a spike in divorce which is leveled off in the early '90s and then created cohabitation. That was the result of a public policy adoption no fault divorce. We can't think that we can tinker with the definition of marriage and say, it's no longer between a man and a woman which 5,000 years of human history has shown.
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Right, but just -- but just to --
PERKINS: I'm going to effect even further. It's going to -- it's going to results in more children growing up without moms and dad.
MORGAN: You personally -- I hear you. Yes, but not really answer. Just to press you on the question, what more damage could a gay couple do to civilization --
PERKINS: It's the gay --
MORGAN: -- and society if they're married.
PERKINS: It's the policy, Piers. It's the policy.
MORGAN: To if they're just living together.
PERKINS: Further redefining marriage, the reason we have cohabitation at skyrocketing rates is because we have redefine marriage in a way through no fault divorce making it almost meaningless to many, but to the further step of redefining it completely and saying marriage is whatever you want to make it to be. If you're two people and you love each other, that's all that counts.
The reason society has recognized marriage with certain benefits is because marriage between a man and a woman that creates children or raise his children, in most cases that benefits society. That's why society --
MORGAN: You have -- Mr. Perkins, you have -- (CROSSTALK)
PERKINS: -- automatic benefits of marriage.
MORGAN: You have five kids, right?
PERKINS: Yes, I do.
MORGAN: What would you do if one of them came home and said, dad, I'm gay?
PERKINS: Well, we would have a conversation about it. I doubt that would happen with my children as we are teaching them the right ways that they are to interact as human beings, we're not allowing them to be indoctrinated by the education system.
MORGAN: So you -- so you would imagine it would be -- right. So just to clarify, you would imagine it would be a personal choice they would suddenly make, they would wake up one day and decide they were going to be gay.
PERKINS: No, I didn't say that. I think it's -- I wouldn't say --
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: You implied it because you said it was -- you said that they have been brought up in a way that meant -- it was unlikely they would be gay.
PERKINS: That's right. The environment. The environment in which I'm raised --
MORGAN: My argument to you -- my argument to you as somebody who supports gay marriage, is being gay is not a choice? Being gay is not something you suddenly wake up and decide to be. So one of your children could be gay. It's not only a question of the way you brought them up. It's just --
(CROSSTALK)
PERKINS: Yes, it is, it is environment, it is environment, Piers. I would agree with you that I don't believe most people choose to be homosexual, lesbian, gay or whatever you want to call it. I don't believe that's a choice they wake up one morning and make. I don't think that it's genetic, I don't think = the evidence is there to support that. I do think that it's a product or a happening of environment and events, things that they're exposed to.
So I don't think it's a choice. I don't think somebody who wakes up and says I want to be this way. I think in most cases it's the result of the environment.
MORGAN: OK, well, Tony Perkins, we will agree to disagree. Thank you very much.
