Tuesday, April 26, 2011

FRC's Tony Perkins gets stymied in attempt to criticize gay adoption

An item in a Family Research Council email, via President Tony Perkins, caught my eye because of how it was phrased:

Yesterday morning, I appeared on Fox News for a discussion (that turned into a debate) of the Arizona law with a homosexual adoptive father. His first comments were that law was driven by "religion" and by "animus" against homosexuals. It was downhill from there. Remember, this law is silent about homosexuals and treats them no differently than any other person wanting to adopt who isn't married. No qualified person is precluded from adopting, although a number of states have made rational arguments as to why homosexuals should be. It's stunning how adept homosexual activists have become at playing the "victim" -- even if it means using kids as pawns. Adoption is about children -- not childish activists.

Perkins was talking about a debate on Fox News which took place on Easter Sunday between him and Bernard Whitman of Faith in America about Arizona's new adoption law. This law gives preference to married heterosexual couples.

There is a reason why Perkins had such a negative view of the debate. To put it mildly, he stunk. Whitman stuck to his point that "religious-based bigotry" is behind the push to make it more difficult for same-sex couples to adopt children.

Meanwhile, Perkins was left stammering with the same inaccurate talking point about "decades of social science" claiming that children do best in a two-parent heterosexual household. Whitman countered that inaccuracy by mentioning the studies which say that same-sex households are good environments for children. Of course Whitman could have said that none of the studies Perkins referred to even looked at same-sex households, but it was better that he didn't.

By not doing this, Whitman made Perkins address the argument on his terms, i.e. making Perkins address the existence of same-sex households.

And Perkins did this by pathetically citing a vague Australian study claiming that same-sex households are a danger to children. I call it pathetic because Perkins didn't give an pertinent details as to when this study was published or who published it.

Perkins was finally reduced to trying to talk over Whitman.

Basically when faced against someone who knew what he was talking about and didn't back down in the face of his lies, Perkins came across as weak . . . very weak. But judge for yourself:



Hat tip to LezGetReal.



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3 comments:

Reed Boyer said...

I began to cringe at "joining us now for a fair and balanced debate" as that has become a euphemism for "here with carte blanche to muddy the waters."

Unknown said...

Tony didn't TRY to talk over Whitman, he DID talk over him, and was allowed to by the host of the program.

Fair and balanced indeed; utter and complete dog crap.

BlackTsunami said...

I disagree gerry. Whitman held his own and didn't allow perkins to boggart. The host was irrelevant because it was whitman's control all the way. Perkins stumbled through his points.