Earlier this week, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins seemed oddly out of the loop about what LGBT organization Target is supporting with its new Pride t-shirts. The answer, of course, is the Family Equality Council, an organization committed to making sure all families are supported under the law. In an interview on CNN yesterday, Perkins seemed to indicate why he was unfamiliar with the equality organization’s work: he’s never been to the home of a married same-sex couple.

This is a situation the Equality Council seeks to rectify. Today, Executive Director Jennifer Chrisler has sent an official letter (PDF) to Perkins inviting him to join her and her family for dinner:

I would like to extend an open invitation for you and your family to visit my home and have dinner with my spouse and children with the full hope that you will witness the love that exists in our families. While I recognize it may not change your mind, I hope that it might soften your heart.  As Christians, I think we can both agree that ours is not to judge and that we must live by the golden rule. I open my table to you and invite you to get to know me and my family.

Even if nothing comes of the experience, at least you can say you spent time with our families and knew us and still deny us our equality.  But I know you will find that our families have much in common and share the same hopes and dreams for our children.

The invitation parallels Dan Savage’s recent acceptance of the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown’s debate challenge, in which Savage invited Brown to a private dinner in his home followed by a recorded debate.

Same-sex families have become a ubiquitous part of American culture, despite conservatives’ continued attempts to erase them from our laws, schools, and communities. These families are refusing to be invisible anymore, and how anti-gay leaders like Perkins and Brown respond will be quite telling. Will they continue to reject these families, proving that they are motivated entirely by animus? Or will they open themselves to learning about the lives they have committed themselves to demonizing?

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.

Last week, Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) told ThinkProgress that he opposes LGBT nondiscrimination protections, like those that would be afforded by the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, because he believes it should be legal to fire people for their sexual orientation. He explained that he believes being gay is a choice that is simply “behavior-related and preference-related.” Since then, Lankford has embarked on a press tour attacking ThinkProgress for misrepresenting him, choosing to ignore video that confirms his position was quoted and described accurately.

He continued that effort today in two radio interviews with anti-gay hate group leaders, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and American Family Association’s Tim Wildmon. Perkins described provisions like ENDA as “special protections” and Lankford maintained that employers should have the legal right to fire someone for their “sexual behavior”:

PERKINS: The idea there is they’re looking for special protections; your point is that everybody should be treated equally. No one should be fired or denied employment based upon their sexual orientation — in the ideal world we won’t even know about it, why would we even ask that question?

LANKFORD: Right. But neither should you have a situation where no one can fire you because of your behavior outside of the workplace. We also should not be in a situation where there are special protections extended to say ‘if I have a certain sexual behavior then you can no longer fire me, I’m a protected class and I can do whatever I want in the workplace.’ That’s not true either. So we are trying to be able to keep that balance. When you say you create special rights you also create special privileges and protections to say that they are untouchable in the workplace and they can have any kind of work conduct they choose to on that, that’s not correct.

Listen to it (via RightWingWatch):

Lankford seems to believe that policies like ENDA would create an invulnerability, preventing people who are gay or trans from ever being fired for any reason, as opposed to merely protecting them from anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination in the same way race, sex, and other dimensions of identity are already protected. But it’s also clear that despite Perkins’ claim that “everybody should be treated equally,” both he and Lankford are building a misleading pro-gay narrative around their distorted understanding of sexual orientation.

Lankford and Perkins both believe that sexual orientation is a choice, but more precisely, that it’s defined only by behavioral choices. Neither comprehends (or acknowledges) that sexual orientation is an innate identity that individuals experience regardless of how or if they act upon it. From this discussion, they make clear that they don’t have any problem with somebody saying they’re gay, but if they “act” on their identity — whether it’s starting a family with a same-sex partner, campaigning for marriage equality, or even attending a drag show at a gay club — then they’re in violation of moral principles and shouldn’t be protected. What they are essentially promoting is a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” mentality for the workplace, which they believe would be the same as being “treated equally,” not unlike what Rep. Steve King (R-IA) recently proposed.

Groups like FRC and AFA defend ex-gay therapy for a reason: it’s part of the foundation for all their anti-gay positions. Only if sexual orientation is voluntary can they justify the discrimination they promote, and they ignore over 35 years of science to believe just that.

Pastor Leonard Cohen protesting in Boston, March 11, 2004.

President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality this week is a significant milestone in the inevitable arc toward its universality. Though conservatives have expressed outrage, their comments also reflect how much public opinion has shifted in even the last decade.

Consider the four comparisons below. In the left column is how various social conservative spokespeople responded in November, 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. In the right-hand column, see how they (or their successors) responded this week to Obama’s announcement:

The players may not have changed much, but the rules have. There are certainly some conservatives whose anti-gay screeds continue to be explosive, but in general, it seems that changing public opinion has forced them to tame their rhetoric. Less than a decade ago, marriage equality threatened the survival of society, but now it’s just “disappointing” and “a mistake.” It won’t be long before even these timid responses alienate voters who understand that marriage equality is good for communities, good for families, and good for everybody everywhere.

Few elected Republicans have been willing to go on the record this week about President Obama’s support for marriage equality, which has created an opening for religious conservatives to speak out to media news outlets. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has made numerous appearances, including at least three on CNN over the past few days. GLAAD’s Herndon Graddick took CNN to task for ignoring the vitriol Perkins stands for as the leader of an anti-gay hate group:

But when Perkins gets interviewed, a responsible journalist needs to tell the audience exactly who Perkins is speaking for. Based on his own statements — Tony Perkins represents people who believe supporting LGBT equality is akin to being a terrorist. Who believe marriage equality is the same as bestiality. Who say that gay people are “vile,” “hateful,” “spiteful” “pawns of the enemy.” Tony Perkins does not represent people who oppose marriage equality. Tony Perkins represents those who oppose LGBT people — period.

If CNN wants that side represented in this discussion, then Perkins is absolutely the right man for the job. But they need to make it clear to the audience that that’s what he’s there for. And by not doing so, they have not told the whole story.

GLAAD created the Commentator Accountability Project for exactly this reason, to make sure that anti-gay voices are properly identified and contextualized when they’re amplified by the media. After several appearances in which Perkins’ views went unchallenged, he finally faced his comeuppance in an appearance on MSNBC’s Harball yesterday evening. Both Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and host Christ Matthews took Perkins to task for teaching his children that being gay is wrong and for preventing children in need from being adopted by same-sex couples. Watch it:

As North Carolinians headed to the polls to support Amendment 1, a measure that outlaws marriage equality, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in the state constitution, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins appeared on CNN to argue that people can become gay because of the “environment they’re raised in” and blamed their marriages on high heterosexual divorce rates.

“Further redefining marriage, the reason we have cohabitation at skyrocketing rates is because we have redefine marriage in a way through no fault divorce making it almost meaningless to many, but to the further step of redefining it completely and saying marriage is whatever you want to make it to be,” he said. “If you’re two people and you love each other, that’s all that counts.”

Asked how he would respond if one of his five children came out as gay, Perkins claimed, “I doubt that would happen with my children as we are teaching them the right ways that they are to interact as human beings, we’re not allowing them to be indoctrinated by the education system.” He added, “it is environment, it is environment…I do think that it’s a product or a happening of environment and events, things that they’re exposed to.” Watch it:

Perkins’ Family Research Council opposes any legal recognition of gay people or their relationships and has been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

NOM's Brian Brown

Opponents of marriage equality are not happy that Vice President Joe Biden expressed his support for marriage equality yesterday. They’ve taken to Twitter and other outlets today to mock the White House, accusing Biden of being off-message and reiterating their standard anti-gay talking points. Here’s a selection:

BRYAN FISCHER: President Obama is a homophobic bigot: won’t endorse gay marriage like the enlightened Joe Biden. http://ow.ly/aJYqJ

TONY PERKINS: Ok, Mr. Vice President, how about 3′s Company? Two Guys & a Girl? Sitcoms are the inspiration for this admin’s policies? I’m not laughing!

BRIAN BROWN: It’s always hard to know what Vice President Biden is doing whenever he speaks. He could be launching a trial balloon, or he could just be being Biden with his foot in his mouth again. Whether he realizes it or not, Biden is declaring war on  those 30 states in America that have adopted constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman… What Joe Biden wants—genderless marriage that kowtows to the demands of gay couples—cannot exist alongside traditional marriage.

Such aggrandizing rhetoric unsurprisingly distorts the entire conversation on the freedom to marry. For simply wanting all couples to have the “same exact rights,” Biden is “declaring war” and promoting polygamy? Hardly.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins took a break from bashing gay people to attack the media for maligning people who raise questions about President Obama’s birth certificate, saying those questions are “a legitimate issue.” In an exchange on the American Family Association radio highlighted by Right Wing Watch, Perkins says:

PERKINS: [The media] have attempted to marginalize anyone who challenges this administration on those principles and that driving ideology. You know, it goes back to what they did to those that questioned the issue of his birth certificate. Look, I don’t know about all that, but I will tell you this, it’s a legitimate issue from the standpoint of what the Constitution says.

And I think what we’ve done is we’ve done great harm to foundation of our government by marginalizing and attacking anyone who brings up a legitimate issue.

Watch it:

Perkins’ FRC and other conservative groups like it are supposedly about supporting family values, but as Perkins’ comments demonstrate, they’re increasingly about attacking the president and the left. Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association’s Director of Issues Analysis has also gone down the birther down road, as has Bob Vander Plaats, the head of Iowa’s The FAMiLY LEADER.

The birther conspiracy theory has had a bit of a resurgence lately, with several GOP candidates and even two sitting congressmen raising doubts about the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate in the last few months.

It’s unclear whether Mike and Ike are a married gay couple or merely business partners, but for now, they have split up, opting to pursue competing interests. The candy bearing their names has launched an ad campaign about the fictional invisible characters’ breakup, with Mike pursuing a career in music and Ike pursuing one in art. The Huffington Post chimed in that the two are heading for a “gay divorce” (language so far not found anywhere in the ad campaign), and now the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins is very concerned about the “fruity pair” and their “sexualizing candy”:

PERKINS: These days, you can’t get a sugar high without experiencing a cultural low. Hello, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. There’s trouble in candy land. After more than 70 years together, Mike & Ike are calling it quits. The duo is staging a gay divorce as part of a new ad campaign to draw in younger customers. In this society, even candy has an agenda! From Facebook to Tumblr, the fruity pair says, “The rumors are true. We just couldn’t agree on stuff anymore.” Starting this summer, the company will spend $15 million on billboards and TV commercials that poke fun at the breakup. It’s just another subtle example of society chipping away at the value of marriage. And I don’t know what’s more disturbing–that advertisers think divorce appeals to kids or that sexualizing candy will make people buy more. After a year-long build-up, the company will reveal if the couple reconciles. Until then, look for Mike & Ike to have a distinctly liberal flavor.

Listen to it (via Right Wing Watch):

Perkins’ overreaction is humorous, but also telling. This silly anecdote speaks to two important tactics that conservatives employ. First, they promote the idea that any portrayal of characters that are gay is negative and “sexual.” Plenty of fictional opposite-sex couples have clearly been in romantic relationships for decades (Mickey and Minnie, Kermit and Miss Piggy, etc.), but no one is concerned that they are somehow “sexualizing” children. Secondly, Perkins insinuates that anything gay is “liberal,” which is far from the truth. Sexual diversity cuts across all races, religions, and political ideologies, regardless of how hate group leaders like Perkins try to relegate the LGBT community into some uniform “cultural low” category.