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08/09/2010
Video: Tony Perkins plays the 'nice' pundit on TV. Dig a little deeper to see what's really going on.
Honestly, it shocks us that Tony Perkins gets to keep his mainstream, buttoned-up, conservative pundit throne. Because let's get real here: We are talking about a man who has claimed in more than one sermon that gays are "held captive the enemy," who claimed that this nation's Commander in Chief is "willing to jeopardize our nation’s security to advance the agenda of the radical homosexual lobby," and whose organizational subordinate, Peter Sprigg, has pointedly stated that LGBT people should be either criminalized or exported! Tony and Company also recently booked a DADT "expert" who has claimed that only gays were savage enough for Hitler and that because of this, "homosexuals in the military gave us...six million dead Jews" (among many other outrageous claims). Those are some pretty jaw-dropping charges that unabashedly dehumanize LGBT people and their allies -- charges that have all gone down under Tony's watch/embrace. So if more people were paying attention to the overheated nonsense that comes forth daily from his Family Research Council stable, then perhaps both producers and viewers would be a little less willing to see him and FRC as a mere "from the right" voice/group.
But in our political world, Tony does still get bookings. As nothing more than a voice from the other side. In "agree to disagree" kinds of situations. On prominent shows like CBS' "Face The Nation," in fact:
It's simply outrageous that we LGBT folk still have to wake up and see our worth as human beings debated on a two-side forum with equal footing. David Boies has never accused gay people of having some sort of demonic enemy (presumably Satan) possessing their beings. Tony has! Yet we're still supposed to sit back and accept this lawyer vs. unapologetic condemner punditry as fair television discourse? In what other kind of political debate does this happen?!
But then again, David Boies pretty much served Tony his bootie for breakfast. So maybe we should stop worrying and learn to love the man who goes to various churches and paints us gay folk as possessed by an enemy, and who likens our employment nondiscrimination to the grim reaper's untimely arrival.