Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins, back from the interfaith conference at the Vatican which he attended along with American anti-gay religious leaders including Rick Warren and Russell Moore, gave an interview reflecting on the experience to the National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez yesterday.

The Family Research Council president told Lopez that at the conference, “Apart from the pope, almost all of the standing ovations were received by American evangelicals.” When Lopez pressed him on whether the Religious Right should soften its stance on gay rights and marriage equality in order to build a movement going forward, Perkins disagreed.

“It is not that religious groups or groups in society are excluding particular individuals” from marriage, Perkins said, “it is that those who reject such complementarity [between men and women] are essentially excluding themselves from this divine and natural reality.”

He added that it's not insulting to imply that homosexuality is "unnatural" because "when it comes to marriage it is contrary to nature.”

Q: It seems difficult if not near impossible these days to talk about men and women and marriage without sounding like you’re excluding those who are attracted to the same sex. Is it in fact an impossible task?

A: I believe this is why the focus of the colloquium was on “The Complementarity of Man and Woman.” It is not that religious groups or groups in society are excluding particular individuals; it is that those who reject such complementarity are essentially excluding themselves from this divine and natural reality.

Q: When you talk about a natural order, isn’t there a danger of making it seem some are unnatural? That could seem the case with those with same-sex attraction and those who are not married.

A: When it comes to marriage it is contrary to nature.

Q: It still escapes a lot of people why same-sex marriage is a threat to any man and woman’s marriage or marriage itself. If marriage and family are in crisis, why not open it up to more?

A: The crisis in marriage has grown in proportion to the degree to which society has allowed it to deviate from what it was designed to be, a life-long monogamous relationship between one man and one woman.

On Election Day, voters in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voted to liberalize their marijuana laws, decriminalizing the possession or sale of the substance. But while Oregon and Alaska will be able to go ahead and start implementing their laws, D.C.’s more modest measure will first have to make it through a Republican Congress.

Once D.C.’s city council submits the measure to Congress, Congress will have 30 days to review it and during that time can pass a measure overriding it. Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland has vowed to use all of his political power to stop D.C.’s decriminalization measure from moving forward, including passing a spending bill rider barring the District from implementing its own law.

While D.C. will now be contending with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, it’s not clear how much support the GOP congressmen trying to stop the law will get from their colleagues. Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, for instance, has said that overriding D.C.’s law would violate the GOP’s “fundamental principles,” including “limited government” and “states’ rights.”

But other conservatives have no such compunction. In an email to members of his organization on Friday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins backed Harris’ effort to stop D.C. from implementing its decriminalization law by arguing that with a spending bill coming up, Harris “might finally have a way” to give the self-governed city with a population bigger than Vermont and Wyoming “the oversight it desperately needs” from congressional Republicans.

People in D.C. are still on a high after Election Day -- but a handful of congressmen are hoping that high isn’t permanent. As part of the District’s ballot, voters gave the thumbs up to a marijuana proposal that just made the lame-duck session a little more interesting. Under Initiative 71, locals would have the right to both possess pot (two ounces) and grow it at home.

Oregon and Alaska passed similar policies last Tuesday, but unlike the states’, D.C.’s measure is subject to Congress’s approval. And plenty of conservatives aren’t likely to give it. Before the District even planted the policy on last week’s ballot, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) was trying to put the brakes on the push from D.C. Now, with a major funding bill on the docket, Congressman Harris might finally have a way to give the city the oversight it desperately needs.

Yesterday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins once again called for President Obama’s impeachment, telling “Washington Watch” listeners that Obama deserves to be impeached for using executive action to relieve some immigrants of deportation.

“What the president is about to do on amnesty is essentially tell, using his authority as the chief executive, the president, to the executive branch, Homeland Security, immigration, not to enforce the law, which is a violation of his oath to uphold the law,” Perkins said. “I think there is already, but clearly with this, if he takes this approach on amnesty and immigration — if the president does not uphold the law then that’s an impeachable act. Now you don’t impeach somebody because you don’t like their policies, it’s when they fail to uphold or abide by the law.”

Perkins added that Obama’s imminent announcement on immigration policy will undermine the republic, arguing that the message of last week’s election was a rejection of Obama’s “lawlessness.”

Next week, American Religious Right leaders including the Southern Baptist Convention’s Russell Moore, pastor Rick Warren, Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles Chaput, and Latter-Day Saints official Henry Eyring will be joining opponents of LGBT equality from around the world at an interfaith conference on the “complementarity of man and woman in marriage” hosted by the Vatican.

The conference follows a synod at which Catholic bishops considered, but ultimately rejected, proposals to soften the church’s stances on homosexuality, as well as those who have been divorced.

Although he is not listed as a speaker, another prominent American opponent of LGBT equality will also be attending the conference. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said in an interview on Newsmax TV today that he plans to attend the conference in Rome and expects the Catholic Church to “make a very clear statement that pertains to marriage and what the Church views marriage to be” to provide “clarity” to the confusion coming out of the recent synod.

“I don’t see the Catholic Church making a great deviation” on the issue of homosexuality, Perkins said. “They can’t because the scripture is quite clear on the issue.”

He added that there has been “a lack of clarity” on the part of the Catholic Church that have “allowed interpretations to be made that are less than accurate.”

On his "Washington Watch" broadcast yesterday, Perkins said that he will be broadcasting live from the event next week.

The Religious Right has for the past two years joined with human rights groups in lifting up the case of Kenneth Bae, an American Christian missionary who was imprisoned in a North Korean work camp on charges of trying to overthrow the government.

Bae was released this weekend after the Obama administration sent national intelligence director James Clapper on a secret mission to retrieve him and a fellow American prisoner, Matthew Todd Miller. Upon his return to the United States, Bae thanked President Obama and the State Department for “working tirelessly” to secure his release.

You might expect that a group like the Family Research Council that has been championing Bae’s case would take a break from partisan bickering to celebrate the good news of Bae's freedom. But you would be wrong!

In his daily email yesterday, FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, reacted to Bae’s release by accusing the Obama administration of not caring enough about Christian political prisoners — like, for instance, Bae. Perkins wrote that the administration’s work to free Bae was “surprising” and went on to attack the president for his “absolute silence” on the imprisonment of American pastor Saeed Abedini in Iran:

Although the suffering left deep scars, Bae insists that he is “recovering.” He and Miller, who the communist government sentenced to hard labor for participating in what they called a “Christian conspiracy,” thanked the Obama administration for sending a “brief message” through his intelligence officials asking for Bae and Miller’s release. For the President, it was a surprising move given his absolute silence on Pastor Saeed Abedini, another American who languishes in a torturous existence at the hands of a ruthless Iranian government.

Meanwhile, here at home, his family’s pleas to the White House continue to fall on deaf ears. As we cheer Kenneth and Matthew’s release, our earnest prayers continue to lift up the millions of people -- like Pastor Abedini -- who are shackled for the true freedom of Jesus Christ.

In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry has repeatedly urged Iran to release Abedini and President Obama personally pressed for Abedini’s release in a phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last year.

• Gov. Bobby Jindal will reportedly be hosting a David Lane-organized prayer rally in Louisiana in January, much like Gov. Rick Perry did in Texas in 2011.
• Rick Joyner says "No President has been so resoundingly rebuked by the American people as was done with the Elections of 2014. The House now has its largest majority in history, and it is Republican." Neither of those claims are true.
• Tony Perkins claims that "as conservatives, we aren’t looking for businesses to take our side." Oh, really?
• James Robison is cautiously optimistic about the election results: "God has mercifully given us the opportunity to see our nation awaken and begin the healing process. The runaway train now known to be an out-of-control, excessive, secular progressive (basically socialistic) federal government has at least been slowed, but not yet brought under control."
• It is 2014 and the Republicans have finally elected a black woman to serve in the House of Representatives, so naturally Glenn Beck sees that as proof that Martin Luther King's dream has finally come true. Way to go Republicans! Oh, by the way, the first black woman to serve in Congress was a Democrat and she was elected in 1968.

On yesterday’s edition of “Washington Watch,” Tony Perkins returned to one of his favorite talking points about how gay rights are part of a population control conspiracy to extinguish the human race.

A listener called in to tell the Family Research Council president that he thinks the reason homosexuality is “promoted is because it doesn’t lead to reproduction and that’s why it’s promoted. There’s this anti-life agenda, there’s a total anti-human, anti-life, human beings are a virus, type of mentality.”

Perkins responded that the caller was “absolutely correct,” saying that he once wrote about how “climate change alarmists and those who are pushing population control” actually “promote homosexuality” because “there’s no procreation there.”

“They go crazy, they deny it but the evidence is there, it’s footnoted in my book.”

If Family Research Council President Tony Perkins is really convinced that anti-gay activists like himself will prevail in their fight against marriage equality, he may want to reconsider linking the cause to efforts to preserve prohibitions on the sale of alcoholic beverages.

During yesterday’s broadcast of Perkins’ radio show “Washington Watch,” a caller from Arkansas asked if he would discuss the upcoming vote in the state on a ballot issue which would do away with “dry” county laws.

Perkins told the caller that the Arkansas challenge to bans on alcohol sales was part of a larger left-wing plot against culturally conservative values, mentioning recent gay marriage victories as another source of liberal interference.

“A lot of things are best decided at the local level and it’s the same thing that we’re seeing with marriage where the states have taken these positions and now you’ve got these courts coming in, undermining the states, you’ve got the Obama administration trying to redefine [marriage],” Perkins lamented. “It’s an all-out attack on values.”

Conservative pastor Alan Robertson, the son of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, says he is pretty sure that America is looking more and more like Nazi Germany.

In an appearance yesterday on “Washington Watch,” Robertson spoke with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins about the Houston case in which a group of pastors sued the city to demand that it accept their petitions challenging a nondiscrimination ordinance, and in turn lawyers working for the city issued subpoenas — which have since been since withdrawn — for the communications of the pastors who led the petition drive.

“When I first heard about this and when you and I talked, I was just like, is this 2014 America or is this 1930s Germany that we’re living in? I mean, it was shocking and appalling,” Robertson said, warning that “our spiritual and religious liberties” are under attack.

He later told Perkins that “the Evil One” is coming after his family and others who are criticized for “telling the truth.”

Robertson and his father will both be participating in the FRC pre-election event “I Stand Sunday” later this week in Houston.