When David Boies debated Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on Face The Nation, he pointed out that while “it’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions, appeal to people’s fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don’t exist or don`t say what you say they do, in a court of law, you`ve got to come in and you`ve got to support those opinions.” “And what we saw at trial is that it`s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature, or in debates, where they can`t be cross-examined, but when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross- examination, those opinions just melt away,” he said.
Unable to substantiate their grandiose claims about how same-sex marriage would undermine the institution or hate crimes legislation would silence Christians, conservatives have recently suffered a number of court setbacks. But that hasn’t stopped Perkins from perpetuating the notion that an expansion of rights to gay couples directly corresponds with a reduction in religious freedoms. Last night, for instance, during an appearance on TBN’s Praise The Lord, Perkins made the grand claim that should Judge Walker’s ruling stand, religious belief would be “banned in America”:
PERKINS: [Walker] says religious beliefs that says that homosexual marriage or homosexual relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships, harm gays and lesbians. Now, as a finding of fact, if that stands, that means that the government will have to use its power to mitigate that harm. What does that mean? We’re not talking about religious teachings, we’re not talking about religious broadcasting, we’re going much deeper than that. We’re talking about religious beliefs. If this case stands, this opinion, we’ll have gone in one generation from 1962 when the bible was banned in public schools, to religious beliefs being banned in America.
Watch it:
Naturally, these kinds of statements simply serve as fundraising pitches to the conservative right, but as we saw during the Prop 8 trial, the actual legal arguments against expanding marriage are not any more substantive. (H/T: Good As You)