Family Research Council's Tony Perkins thinks that protecting gay marriage means persecution

Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council love portraying themselves as victims of persecution.

By now you've heard that the United States Senate advanced the Respect for Marriage Act, hopefully assuring its passage. The Act is supposed to give married gay couples a bit more protection should the Supreme Court try to overturn the Obergefell decision, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion on whether or not this bill adequately protects same-sex couples should it become law. But I want to focus on the negative response lodged by  Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council. Maybe I'm being petty here. FRC and Perkins are still in shock about last week's midterms in which Democrats managed to keep the Senate. They are definitely caught off guard by the Respect for Marriage Act. 

But not too off guard not to play the victim. Perkins posted a hysterically nonsensical piece claiming that this Act would mean the persecution of Christians. Ironically, he cited examples of alleged persecution from foreign countries. But he still managed to play the drama queen rather well with passages like such:

“We’ve all heard of people being cancelled, thrown off social media, even fired from jobs … But how many years before a Christian minister [who speaks] on marriage and sexual orientation is reported [to] a government anti-terrorism program?” For Reverend Dr. Bernard Randall, that time has already come. The chaplain of a Church of England School was suspended, fired for gross misconduct, and reported to child protective services simply for restating what the Church of England believes. If his story sounds like a distant outlier, it’s not. Randall’s nightmare will be every Christian’s nightmare if our Senate passes the Respect for Marriage Act. 

 “I was doing my job as per the job description,” Randall told a roomful of religious liberty advocates this July. Yet for being a Christian in a Christian school, he was painted “as a potential violent extremist [who] might draw others into violent extremism.” This, despite the U.K. Human Rights Act that declares, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Article 9, 1998). How long is it going to take for this to happen in the United States, he asked? “Is it under Biden? Is it under a second term of Biden-Harris?” 

 If congressional Democrats get their way, it happens now.

 

Oh please. To paraphrase the words of Thelma Ritter from All About Eve:

"What a story. Everything but the hounds snapping at his rear end."

 Folks like Perkins are always claiming that there will be negative repercussions if LGBTQ people get any type of support. It's always something with them

In the 70s, they claimed that if gays got rights,  they would "sexually recruit" kids.

In the 80s, it was all about fear tactics undermining the fight against AIDS and HIV.

Then there was "gays want special rights" claim

After that came "we have to protect marriage from gays."

And of course there was "giving LGBTQ people rights will put the rights of Christians in danger. We need to protect religious liberty."

Now it's "we have to protect women and girls in locker rooms, bathrooms,  and in sports competitions from trans women and girls who are actually predators with an unfair advantage in sports."

And in the midst of this latest argument,  they've reverted back to the "we have to protect children from them" lie by combining hysterias to create a type of "Anita Bryant on steroids" narrative  that LGBTQ people want to sexually groom kids in schools and then subject them to dangerous "surgeries" in an attempt to change their gender.

People like Perkins have dragged the LGBTQ community through all of these lies because of  one thing. They have a religious belief that being an LGBTQ is a sin. The only reason why they've manufactured all of these bogus reasons against LGBTQ people throughout the decades is because they cannot admit to themselves that they have no right to force the rest of us to conform to their religious beliefs

It's perfectly fine for them to believe that LGBTQ people are living in sin. The problem lies with how they attempt to assert this belief in the creation of public policy. Laws in this country should never be made based upon the belief that certain people are living in sin and therefore deserve no legal protections.  That's why they've manufactured other "reasons" why LGBTQ rights should be undermined. 

In reality Perkins seems to think that not making people live their lives in accordance to his religious beliefs is persecution.

If Perkins wants to know what persecution actually is, he should have a talk with the families of trans kids who had to flee Texas when its governor declared war on them for simply being supportive and affirming of their kids.

Or the teachers who were fired because demagogues used the power of social media to falsely claim that they are "sexually grooming" children.

Or various children's hospitals across America having to deal with bomb threats because the same demagogues are trying to undermine trans kids receiving basic healthcare.

Or trans kids in various states having to defend their right to receive healthcare in the face of idiots spreading lies and lawmakers believing the lies instead of doing their damn jobs to protect these kids.

That is persecution. 

What Perkins is actually mourning is the death of his privilege. And he really should get over it because the privilege shouldn't have been his to begin with.