Family Research Council omits racist history of another Trump Administration selection

FRC's Tony Perkins

Apparently, the so-called Christian organization (but actually anti-lgbt hate group) the Family Research Council seems to be tasked with defending President-elect Donald Trump's bad choices for his administration to evangelicals.

First, the group defended Trump's choice of Steven Bannon as his chief White House strategist. Bannon has come under fire for his connection to the white supremacist "alt-right" movement during his tenure as head of the Breitbart News Network.

According to a link I am citing yet again from the Huffington Post:

At Breitbart, Bannon helped make the hardline populist website a go-to resource for white nationalists and the alt-right, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

 . . . Breitbart has propagated conspiracy theories, like Planned Parenthood having Nazi ties or Clinton aide Huma Abedin being a spy for Saudi Arabia. The website traffics in misogynist and racist stories; it frames women who push back against harassment or gender bias as weak and incompetent and portrays people of color and immigrants as inherently criminal.

The Family Research Council played down this information by pretty much ignoring it in the organization's praise of Bannon's selection. 

Part of FRC's statement as follows:

Calling him a symbol of the "ugly direction" Trump intends to take this country, radical groups from the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to George Soros's People for the American Way are calling on the president-elect to rescind the job offer. "It is a disaster," bemoaned Mark Potok of SPLC, one of the many extremists wringing their hands over the thought of Bannon on the White House staff. The coalition of detractors is a who's who of the liberal fringe, including everyone from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to the Anti-Defamation League. Anyone who draws the ire of those organizations must be a true conservative!

Earlier today, it was announced that Trump had selected Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as his pick for Attorney General. This has ignited another firestorm for the same reasons as Bannon.

 Sessions has an eyebrow-raising history of racist actions and comments including praising the Klan, attacking civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the ACLU as "un-American," and  using his office while a federal prosecutor in Alabama to target civil rights workers who were registering black elderly voters.

According to the Huffington Post:

The Senate rejected then-President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Sessions as a federal judge in 1986 after colleagues testified about racially offensive comments Sessions made as a U.S. Attorney in Alabama.

Attorneys who worked with Sessions alleged in the 1986 hearings that Sessions once referred to a black attorney as “boy,” suggested a white attorney was a traitor to his race for representing black clients, called the American Civil Liberties Union and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “un-American” for trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them,” and said that his only problem with the Ku Klux Klan was the extremist group’s marijuana use.

The article also said that several civil rights groups and Congressional leaders publicly oppose Sessions' nomination.

However,  as in the case of Bannon, the Family Research Council had nothing but praise for Sessions.  And, again as in the case of Bannon, FRC omitted addressing the racial controversy at hand. In a press release obtained by prominent lgbt bloggger Joe Jervis, FRC president Tony Perkins said the following:

After the eight-year scandal-factory of the Justice Department, the president-elect is making it clear that it’s a new day at DOJ with the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general. For the senator, the first to endorse Trump, the DOJ is hardly new territory. “My previous 15 years working in the Department of Justice were extraordinarily fulfilling. I love the Department, its people and its mission. I can think of no greater honor than to lead them,” he said.

FRC has worked with Senator Sessions on a number of issues and could not be happier to watch him usher in a new era at DOJ — one that cherishes the Constitution and its protection of our freedom from government oppression. If there’s one thing we know about Senator Sessions, it’s that he understands the importance of all of our God-given rights, respects the law, and will be a vital part of restoring our nation to greatness.

Someone should tell Perkins and FRC that pandering is exactly a good quality for any organization claiming to be Christian to have