Tony Perkins, theocratic bigot extraordinaire, comparies gay pride to adultery, drunkenness

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's hard to keep track of the anti-gay bigotry that is so widespread on the right, and throughout the Republican Party, but, thankfully, sites like Right Wing Watch do their best to document the various actions and utterings by conservatives.

Conservatives like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council -- or "Family" "Research" "Council," a leading theocratic organization with a great deal of influence on the right -- a conservative who appears all over the media spewing his bigotry with a facade of civility, a conservative who, like so many others of his ilk, hates gays and thinks they're destroying America.

We know what to expect from Perkins, but it's important to keep tracking his bigotry, if only to be able to point to it when refuting their various arguments against gay rights. (For example, Perkins and others try to make the case that opposition to same-sex marriage is really about religious freedom. To the extent that that's true, it's just about the freedom to institutionalize bigotry.) Last week, for example, came this:

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council filled in for Sandy Rios on her morning talk show last week on the American Family Association’s radio network and had to respond to a caller named J.R. who said that anti-gay activists like Perkins were promoting misconceptions about gays and lesbians while ignoring societal ills. Perkins tried to explain that equality for gays and lesbians has damaging consequences for society, warning that gay rights will end religious freedom and twist public accommodations laws.

He insisted that the Religious Right isn't overlooking issues like alcoholism and adultery since there aren't people advocating for "Adultery Pride Month" or "Drunkenness Pride Month" in the same way many recognize June as LGBT Pride Month. Later, another caller agreed with his assessment equating homosexuals with adulterers and alcoholics, and Perkins noted that "when it comes to drunkenness, we have laws that are trying to protect the rest of society."

Specifically, he said this:

The month of June is Gay Pride Month. Now, I have not yet seen where they have declared Adultery Pride Month, I have not seen where they have declared the Drunkenness Pride Month. Here's the issue, J.R. it's not a matter of whether or not someone can do what they want to do with their lives, God gave Adam and Eve a choice, but that's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about redefining the rest of culture and making others both embrace, celebrate and subsidize. We're talking about changing the laws that will influence what our children are taught in schools, it's already happening in those states that have legalized same-sex marriage or had it forced upon them by the courts.

See how he twists it around and tries to make it about freedom, as if same-sex marriage is part of some totalitarian plot? That in itself is ridiculous -- this is about rights, and of course anyone is still free to be a bigot and belong to a church that promotes bigotry, and it's not like legalizing same-sex marriage somehow interferes with "traditional" marriage, whatever the fearmongering from Perkins and his ilk about how gay rights will turn everyone gay, or something like that, whatever bullshit it is.

No, what's really going on here is bigotry. Perkins objects that children will be taught... what? That gays and lesbians are human beings with rights? Is he worried that children will... what? Choose the gay? Please. He's an idiot.

And when he comparies gay pride -- the self-respecting pride of a diverse community that throughout history, including recent history, including in the present as well, has suffered terribly at the hands of theocrats and other bigots -- to adultery and drunkenness, he's just exposing himself for what he truly is.

A man of ignorance and hate. Like so many on the right.

(image: The Daily Show's Perkins Cam)