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| Ken Blackwell |
According to People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch:
Family Research Council senior fellow Ken Blackwell yesterday linked the Isla Vista mass killings to marriage equality laws, which he claimed are destroying the culture. Speaking with FRC president Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch,” Blackwell blamed the shooting on “the crumbling of the moral foundation of the country” and “the attack on natural marriage and the family.”
“When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing,” Blackwell said, arguing that people who are “blaming the Second Amendment” are “avoiding talking about what is at the root cause of the problem.”
In the face of this controversy, FRC has chosen to ignore Right Wing Watch, and the with the help of a site called TruthRevolt, attack a second party who reported the story, Media Matters. The following is from an email sent by FRC president Tony Perkins as a part of his Washington Update:
If you can't beat 'em, smear 'em. That seems to be Media Matters's far-Left M.O. for intimidating people who make compelling cases for conservatism. Its latest target? FRC's Ken Blackwell. In an interview last week, Ken talked about the latest shooting spree at the University of California and pointed back to the "crumbling of the moral foundation of the country" as a contributing factor to the recent spate of violence. Media Matters, a pet project of multi-billionaire George Soros, went on the attack -- accusing Ken of blaming same-sex "marriage" for the murders.
TruthRevolt immediately fired back at the wild distortion. "Blackwell never mentions same-sex marriage. Not once. His discussion... revolves around the generalized breakdown and destruction of sexual values. Blackwell's main point is with the hyper-sexualized, porn-obsessed society that we live in, Elliot Rodger's perception of what a relationship between a man and a woman comes from the "development of human sexuality in our culture."
I don't know what the heck TruthRevolt is supposed to be, but both it and the Family Research Council are attempting to pull a fast one. Let's look at what Blackwell actually said (and this exact quote is from Truth Revolt. The audio is from Right Wing Watch):
Transcript:
When you see there's a crumbling of the moral foundation of the country, you see the attack on the -- on natural marriage and the family that has been a part of the, not only the moral foundation and the upbringing of our children but the teaching of sexual roles and the development of human sexuality in our culture. When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing and that is a flood of these disturbed people in our society that are causing great, great pain. And as opposed to dealing with the foundational problems, we look for ways of blaming the Second Amendment, or blaming knives or blaming cars when they are used. At the end of the day, you have just underscored the problem. This is a convenient way of avoiding talking about what's at the root cause.
So yes, Blackwell was talking about marriage equality or "same sex marriage," even though he didn't mention it by name. And he was blaming it in part for the mass killings. To say otherwise when one has access to the original audio and the transcript is a bold-faced lie.
And to claim that Blackwell wasn't talking about marriage equality in his comments is an even bigger bold-faced lie if you just happened to have been there when he made the statement, isn't that right, Mr. Perkins.
You see, the other person on the audio with Blackwell was in fact Tony Perkins, i.e. the same person who is now claiming that Blackwell was not blaming marriage equality for the Isla Vista mass killings. And one has to ask why would Perkins cite a second party (i.e. TruthRevolt) in a sad attempt to absolve Blackwell when he was present at the time of Blackwell's statement?
I can't say much for his honesty, but Perkins deserves some type of special recognition to lie this brazenly.
Political opportunist Ken Blackwell has certainly gone to the dogs since his days as a Cincinnati Ohio city council member. I met him in an evening class of "Transcendental Meditation" and he seemed like a reasonable guy, probably with some tension issues like most of the class members looking for New Age non-medical symptom relief (I went for muscular back pain). I wonder how his Christianist buddies would like his history of New Age dabbling. ;)
ReplyDeleteWho did they blame back when Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the tower overlooking the university of Texas at Austin back before gays had any rights?
ReplyDeleteSurely the married former eagle scout, did not just crack, or as Kinky Friedman theorized "There was a rumor he had a tumor."