On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana state legislator who has gone on to speak in front of the white supremacist group the Council of Conservative Citizens before he started the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council, and has been allowed over the past several Republican National Conventions to participate in writing the Republican Party Platform as a Platform Committee member from the Louisiana delegation. In our first look at this Fundamentalist whack-job, we noted how he wants Creationism and Christian science taught in schools, how he defended Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks, his attempts to buy David Duke’s mailing lists, his support of Uganda’s “kill the gays” law, blamed increases on military suicides on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and had warned that gay rights would lead to the complete extinction of the human race. So yeah, we thought he was rather a mental zealot already.
Our year two peek-in on Tony Perkins saw him continue his anti-gay ramblings, continuing support of “pray the gay” away efforts, while warning that a Holocaust of American Christians is imminent, that gay rights advocates are about to “start hauling out boxcars”, advised parents to pull their children out of public schools because of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, and claimed the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage would “trigger an uprising”. He talked about how the misconception many on the right-wing have that President Obama is actually a Muslim… is Obama’s own fault (Perkins has repeatedly gone Birther, unprovoked). Oh, and he said that President Obama was deliberately spreading the Ebola Virus in the United States and that he “despises our military” and wants to destroy it. Perkins said that overturning Citizens United would anger the Founding Fathers (who actually believed the exact opposite). Perkins talked about how ISIS and their Jihad are the “true Muslims practicing their faith”, that the Constitution does not apply to American Muslims, that a separation of church and state in the United States can only help ISIS, and that Dearborn Michigan has those Muslim “no go” zones (it doesn’t). In a crossover of his gay bigotry and Islamic hate, Perkins has also repeatedly stated that gay rights are “encourage ISIS”, and predicts that as a result of that tolerance towards gays, pastors will be “dragged out of churches kicking and screaming”. We also advise that someone give Tony Perkins a biology lesson, since he has theorized that gay marriage approval would lead to a “surge in the U.S. prison population”.
And, in our third review of hatemonger Tony Perkins, we talked about how he summarized the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling as “Obama shaking his fist in the face of God”, his warnings about how God’s judgment will fall upon America if Republicans fail to defund Planned Parenthood, and how he commented on Texas high school Ahmed Mohammed, being arrested for building a homemade clock by saying the teen “could blow up the White House.” (It still was’t a bomb.) Perkins also gave his thoughts on women serving in combat, and said their presence in America’s military is a result of “the emasculation of our culture”. Tony Perkins also took the very Christian point of view that refugee resettlement shows proof that “the president and the left hate America”. And defended the idea from presidential candidate Donald Trump to ban all Muslims from emigrating to the United States by saying, “Only 16 percent of Islam is religion” so it wouldn’t violate anyone’s freedom of religion. He also criticized the Obama administration for negotiating with Iran, saying “Reagan would never do that” (conveniently forgetting Reagan did that and it was Iran-Contra). Tony Perkins has insisted that Christians are being forced into “spiritual ghettos”, that Donald Trump would be “100 Percent” better for the LGBTQ community than Hillary Clinton as president (that’s not holding up well), and throwing a fit because a U.S. Navy ship was being named after Harvey Milk.
Tony Perkins praised Donald Trump for getting the backing of the Alt-Right (Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists) by saying, Trump gave “voice to a lot of people who feel like their voice has all but been snuffed out under this administration.” We noted his marked transphobia after Perkins’ assertion that it would be better to disband the United States military rather than allow it to have transgender service members serve in it, referring to them as a “cultural grenade”, and how he later complained about the Boy Scouts allowing transgender scouts in its ranks, saying that “American culture has been emasculated by the feminists and by the left,” to the detriment of western civilization. In a rather terrifying moment in May of 2017, Perkins assesses that Donald Trump is a “God-given opportunity to reshape America in His image.” (Pretty sure there’s nothing in the Bible about an orange prophet with a bad hairpiece and a mouth that looks like a butthole, Tony.) Tony Perkins continues to spew hate and bigotry while remaining a fixture of the Republican Party in baffling ways. He views the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as the beginning of a generational war on Christians, and in October of 2017, he actually blamed the increase in military sexual assault on… wait for it… straight men in the service being too threatened by gays and lesbians being allowed to serve along side them.
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Moving on… and this should come as no surprise… Tony Perkins is a motherf***ing hypocrite. It would be one thing if all we had to report was how he defended Roy Moore during his campaign for Senate even while for years Moore was noted as a homophobe, bigot, and general crazy person, but to dig in and defend him after he was outed as a serial pedophile?
But no, that’s not all. After spending almost a decade commenting about how Barack Obama wasn’t truly a Christian, and promoting the myth that he was some stealth-Jihad member or something, Tony Perkins decided that he couldn’t question the faith of Donald Trump, and awarded him a “mulligan” after it was revealed Trump had an affair with a porn star after his wife had given birth to their son. That isn’t a one-off, either, because when Perkins was cornered about his double standard, he dug in and insisted he and other Evangelical Christians would not be confronting Trump over his affair with Stormy Daniels (to say nothing of the multiple other women who Trump had affairs with, and signed hush agreements with).
By June of 2019, this fanatic was participating in “National Day of Prayer” events to get as many Evangelicals together and use their deepest supposedly-holy influence to pray for Donald Trump to resist the evil Deep State. No, really, the website for the event had that written on it. In September of 2018, Perkins reacts to Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony at the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh to be a Supreme Court Justice by claiming he was being “railroaded because of the constitutionalism he stands for”. In 2019, he sendt out a letter through the Family Research Council asking his followers to sign an online pledge to commit to “pray against impeachment” on behalf of Donald Trump, and began panicking over events where drag queens are reading to children by yelling, “That’s my child, I bought them into the world. get your hands off!” and that fathers should go to the events and “flip some tables” because it’s that easy to threaten Tony Perkins’ masculinity. On May 30th, 2019, Perkins blamed Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky for why Clinton could not have had Osama bin Laden killed prior to 9/11, which was, of course, completely out of touch with reality.
And, the past year has continued to show us that Tony Perkins is a lunatic:
- September 27th, 2019: Tony Perkins reverses course on his opinion about impeachment after all he’s said about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, now that it looks like a Republican president might be justifiably impeached, saying the process “does irreversible damage to our system”.
- January 10th, 2020: Perkins defends Donald Trump for having Iranian General Qassem Soleimani assassinated via airstrike, saying that the killing was “biblically justified”. Y’know, just like Jesus would have wanted.
- January 31st, 2020: Tony Perkins calls on the U.S. Senate to not allow witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
- May 1st, 2020: Perkins, upon hearing the public call for a push for mail-in voting due to the Covid-19 pandemic, begins spreading conspiracy theories regarding voter fraud, and claiming 28 million mail-in ballots were stolen or lost since 2012. (It is, of course, bulls***.)
- June 25th, 2020: Tony Perkins, upon seeing statues of Confederate leaders and other colonizers who committed atrocities against America’s indigenous people’s torn down around the country, starts claiming that people moving to have them removed “seek the destruction of our country”.
And again, for whatever reason, this homophobic, theocratic douchebag with ties to genocidal maniacs and White Supremacists was allowed to help write the Republican Party Platform in 2016. We again would like to thank the website Right Wing Watch for helping us keep tabs on the ugliest moments to come from Tony Perkins and his Family Research Council from the past twelve months.
Again, we cannot state how insane it is that a man with ties to multiple hate groups, who runs his own, and is now embracing the Alt-Right media wing of the GOP is allowed to help write the GOP Party Platform every four years. The Republican Party not only lets Tony Perkins help shape their policy behind the scenes, they treat him as a strong endorsement and voice from their Evangelical wing. In reality, he’s a festering boil they should have lanced over a decade ago.