Tony Perkins

On CNN today, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins continued his anti-marriage-equality tour of cable news shows and repeated many of his often debunked claims about the dangers same-sex couples pose to religious liberty, public education, and the institution of marriage.

But when pressed by host Brooke Baldwin about real same-sex couples, he struggled to explain away his unjustifiable fears.

BALDWIN: Have you ever been to the home of a married same-sex couple?

PERKINS: I have not been to the home of a same-sex married couple, no.

BALDWIN: If you were ever to do so, and you’re sitting across from them over dinner, how would you convince them that their life together — either two men, two women — hurts straight couples? What do you tell them?

PERKINS: Well first, Brooke, we don’t make public policy based on what’s good for me and my family, or you and your family, or one couple.

BALDWIN: I’m just asking, on a personal level…

PERKINS: We’re engaged here, in a discussion about public policy and what’s best for the nation. Not annecdotes or what one couple likes.

BADLWIN: But this is issue–it is personal. It is personal as well.

PERKINS: But that’s not how we make public policy. Certainly, there are some same-sex couples that are probably great parents. But that’s not what the overwhelming amount of social science shows us.

Watch the video:

It is noteworthy that Perkins — who opposes allowing same-sex couples to adopt at all — acknowledges that some same-sex couples that are probably great parents. Advocates for LGBT equality push for adoption policies that focus on what is in the best interest of the child — only placing children in need of loving homes with qualified parents. Perkins thinks that even same-sex couples who are great parents should be legally prevented from opening their homes to children in need of a family.

Perkins, like other anti-gay activists, misleads viewers on what the “overwhelming amount of social sciences” actually shows. Several studies have shown that children benefit from having a two-parent family, compared to those raised by just one parent. But those studies have not shown that children raised by two same-sex parents are any worse off that those raised by opposite-sex couples.

Perkins is right — this is about social science. And social science makes it clear that children would be far better off in a home with two loving parents, regardless of whether they are two men, two women, or one of each.

A Biola Queer Underground flier that was distributed around the university's campus

Biola’s student handbook states that “sexual relationships are designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between husband and wife,” and students are required to sign a contract affirming their agreement with this stance. However, members of Biola Queer Underground take issue with the conservative theological stance that LGBT sexual orientations are incompatible with Christian belief. A statement on their website reads:

We want to bring to light the presence of the LGBTQ community at Biola. Despite what some may assume, there are Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Queers at Biola. We are Biola’s students, alumni, employees, and fellow followers of Christ. We want to be treated with equality and respected as another facet of Biola’s diversity.

Although Biola University removed the group’s fliers, the underground group’s emergence did prompt the university president to release a new, detailed policy on “human sexuality” that university officials say has been in the works for the past year and a half. The new policy denies that Biola needs to “modernize” its biblical approach to the LGBT community and calls same-sex relationships “illegitimate moral options for the confessing Christian.” Members of Biola Queer Underground expressed disappointment in the administration’s response:

Biola claims to want a dialogue. However, unless LGBTQ students who don’t view homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful are allowed to speak openly without threat, this conversation will continue to be one–sided. Without inviting Christians speakers who have a different view of homosexuality, fruitful dialogue will not happen.In the past, your monologues on homosexuality have not been good or fair to us. We understand your interpretation of scripture; please hear ours.

In light of last month’s study from GLAAD and the University of Missoui Center on Religion & the Professions — which found that pro-LGBT people of faith are the “missing voices” from the mainstream media, leading to an entirely one-sided view of religion as inherently anti-gay — the students at Biola University are modeling an important way forward. When members of traditionally socially conservative environments speak out on these issues, it helps to shift the conversation in the right direction.

Today, the Obama campaign launched a new effort to rally lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters for the President’s reelection. The “LGBT Americans for Obama” website features blog posts, pride merchandise, and upcoming LGBT-related campaign events. On a conference call this morning, outgoing HRC president Joe Solmonese highlighted Obama’s accomplishments and his hopes for the future:

SOLMONESE: I think that collective understanding of where we’re going is how we’re really going to shape the agenda for the next administration. Obviously, we have landmark issues that we need to continue to address, continue to move on, like the repeal of DOMA, like the passage of a fully inclusive ENDA.

So, that’s the kind of ongoing conversation that we’ll have. I think one of the things that we all recognize, and I think the president recognizes this, and we saw this during the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ is that the makeup of Congress is going to have a lot to do with that. And that is why those fights and the fight that we do everything we can to take back an LGBT-friendly House of Representatives are going to have a lot to do with how that agenda gets shaped. And hold what we have in the Senate, and hopefully add to those numbers.

Despite that brief mention of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the call avoided discussing the President’s refusal to sign an executive order that would protect LGBT employees of federal contractors from discrimination. Still, in the wake of Obama’s recent endorsement of marriage equality, the campaign has incredible momentum to energize LGBT voters. Accompanying the launch is a video touting Obama’s support on LGBT issues, narrated by Glee‘s Jane Lynch:

The anti-gay North Carolina pastor Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church has been facing backlash over his recent sermon in which he said the US should pen in “all the lesbians and queers” with an electrified fence and wait for them to “die out.”

But it turns out Worley has been saying offensive things about gay people for decades.

Jeremy Hooper dug up this bit of hate from Worley in 1978, in which Worley says that “40 years ago” gay people would have been hung “from a white oak tree”:

WORLEY: I’m God’s preacher. I just believe the book. Living in a day when, you know what, it saddens my heart to think that homosexuals can go around, bless God, and get the applause of a lot of people. Lesbians and all the rest of it? Bless God, forty years ago they’d have hung ‘em, bless God, from a white oak tree, wouldn’t they? Amen.

Listen to it:

A coalition of national groups, led by the American Jewish Committee and Religious Freedom Education Project, have released new “guidelines” for public schools that attempt to walk the line between combating bullying and protecting religious speech.  The guidelines themselves are not particularly specific, but they seem to suggest that religious rhetoric should not be curtailed in anyway, regardless of how damaging or disruptive it might be to those who “disagree” with it:

With respect to sexual orientation and behavior, one student’s call for legalization of same-sex marriage may be perceived by another student as a challenge to his or her deeply held religious beliefs. Conversely, one  student’s expression of his or her religious convictions concerning what he or she  regards as sinful sexual behavior will be perceived by another student as suggesting that gay and lesbian students have no place in the school. A student may wear a T-shirt proclaiming “Straight Pride” to counter another student’s “Gay Pride” T-shirt, or vice versa.[...]

When confronting one student’s claim that another student’s speech conveying an idea is harassment and bullying, school officials should consider, time and circumstances permitting, explaining on an age appropriate basis, that disagreement about an idea is not necessarily a personal attack; that some students’ faiths may require them to express their views publicly; that students have a right to disagree with the view of other students or the school and to express that disagreement; and that the most effective response to an idea one disagrees with is often to express a contrary idea, not censorship. Suppression of speech should be the last, not first, resort.

The rhetoric in this document is troubling, because it ignores the current context for how prevalent anti-gay bullying currently is in schools, and how particularly damaging research has shown it to be. Rather, these guidelines suggest that “disagreements” are a two-way street — that a religious condemnation of homosexuality is equivalent in effect to a student’s opposing position defending gay people. This is absurd and completely ignores how vulnerable young people in the throws of coming out can be to such anti-gay viewpoints.

As documented in The Good News Club, conservative Christians are proactively encouraging anti-gay evangelism within schools. It’s unsurprising that among the endorsers of these guidelines are Christian Educators Association International, the Christian Legal Society, and the National Association of Evangelicals. Noticeably absent was GLSEN or any group that advocates for the LGBT community. These organizations are within their right to defend religious expression, but to minimize the impact of anti-gay bullying by conflating “condemnation” with “disagreement” is dangerously disingenuous. The key to reducing anti-gay bullying is training about LGBT issues, not openly humoring religious reproach while ignoring the harm it causes.