Leading Social Conservative Blames Secret Service Scandal On Repeal Of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
I don’t really expect Family Research Center head Tony Perkins to be logical when he is pushing his agenda, but this is perhaps the most insane piece of nonsense I’ve read in a long time:
Mefferd: You know one issue that I think has not gotten as much attention as it deserves to get is the homosexuality issue. A lot of people have talked about Mitt Romney and what he did with the gay marriage issue and so forth in Massachusetts, but even Politico and the New York Times have talked a lot about the increasing number of top Republicans who are donating to pro-gay causes, the extent to which the GOP doesn’t want to fight on this issue anymore. But we as Christians can’t stand stop fighting on this issue, Tony, so what do we do when we’re faced with a race where maybe we feel like the candidates are way too similar on this and both of them are wrong?
Perkins: Yeah, you know that’s a great point. Just for a moment step back and look at the implications of this, over the weekend we saw the news of the President’s Secret Service detail in Colombia and the issue of them hiring prostitutes and now the White House is outraged about that. Actually in a meeting this morning my staff asked, ‘why should the President be upset’? It was actually legal; it was legal there to do that, so why should we be upset? Well, the fact is we intuitively know it’s wrong, there’s a moral law against that.
The same is true for what the President has done to the military enforcing open homosexuality in our military. You can change the law but you can’t change the moral law that’s behind it. You can change the positive law, the law that is created by man, but you can’t change the moral law, it’s wrong. So what you have is you have a total breakdown and you can’t pick and choose. Morality is not a smorgasbord; you can’t pick what you want. I think you’re absolutely right, this is a fundamental issue going forward because if we say ‘let them do what we want,’ what’s next? You cannot maintain moral order if you are willing to allow a few things to slide.
I hear that gays in the military are also the reason that those guys from the GSA wasted all that money in Vegas.
I’m shocked that this is not satire.
Tony Perkins should consider working for Stephen Colbert.
What an idiot.
Makes perfect sense.
Yeah, the wrongest part the idiot who refused to pay.
So, the military is “enforcing” homosexuality now? That’s hot.
Well, at the risk of defending Perkins — FYI, I’m an atheist and I don’t care whether gays and lesbians serve openly in the military — but the headline and the last graf of this blog post are so completely disconnected from what Perkins actually said it’s surreal. Perkins never blamed the Secret Service scandal on the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark.
Read that colloquy again.
Perkins made an analogy between what he believes is one moral imperative — that Secret Service agents should not partake in the charms of prostitutes even though under local law it’s legal to solicit and to be solicited — and what he believes is a separate moral imperative, i.e., that in his mind gays and lesbians should not serve in the military, regardless of a civil government’s law to the contrary.
It’s an analogy. It’s not a direct, literal comparison. It’s not a statement of cause and effect. 1+1 does not = 7.
I can add this to the list of other things that we have been found guilty of causing by court of Tony Perkins.
Santourm accused us of causing the economic meltdown.
Bob Vander Platts blames gay marriage in Iowa for his father’s heart attack.
Brian Fisher blames us for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party
Maggie Gallager blames us for the decline of family values and for her college boyfriend leaving her to raise her son as a single mother.
Retired General John Shaheen blamed us for the Srebrencia massacure
We have even been blamed for global warming by bloggers at Christwire… of course they also don’t believe in global warming so I’m not sure how that works out.
I can’t for the life of me figure out how I can fit all that into my schedule. Here I was just trying to figure out when I was going to get time to mow the lawn and do some dishes.
@Vast Variety: I agree with the entirety of your post but FYI, Christwire is satire. They had me fooled at first too and I was disappointed when I learned that a Kansas man and some his friends were actually mocking the fundies. It was a lot funnier when I thought they were serious!
@KansasMom: DOH… I’ve been had.
@Tsar Nicholas: The issue here is that the reason for the outrage is that there was a serious potential breach of presidential security, not that morals were transgressed.
@Russell: Both Tsar Nicholas and Russell are correct. While Perkins totally misses the actual reason why the WH is upset, he doesn’t blame the scandal on DADT. He blames everything on a perceived decline in morals.
Ah, moral decline. Morals have set a record for declining in every single generation since the cave men. There must have been one hell of a lot of morals to begin with.
@michael reynolds:
*grunt* Ugg’s hair too long. Show no respect for elders. *grunt*
@Tsar Nicholas: Wow. I read the headline and I thought “there are public figures out there just as blinded by ideology and ignorance as Tsar Nick and Jenos, and just as willing to make any claim, no matter how blindingly stupid, as long as it can hurt the other team.” And then you proved it for me. Thanks!
@Vast Variety: It’s much easier being Jewish. We just have a vast international conspiracy to administer.
If “the gays” were behind the GSA party, it would have been a hell of a lot bigger, everyone would have known about it the next day and cost a fraction of the price. Just sayin.
Why am I not surprised that Tsar Nicholas is actually defending Tony Perkins…to compare a prostitution scandal to homosexual civil rights is disgusting and quite incorrect…the morality of our country has indeed declined, especially when we have so many sanctimonious prigs running around judging so many others and telling everyone else how they should live…someone needs to remove that enormous plank from Tony Perkin’s eye…
WR and AIP – you guys didn’t actually read what Tsar Nicholas said. Or you didn’t understand. He didn’t “defend” Tony Perkins or that point-of-view. What he said, correctly, is that Perkins did not blame DADT on the Secret Service scandal. He just didn’t. He certainly compared the two situations, but he didn’t blame one on the other. Reading for comprehension.
@Franklin: If we have to understand what we are reading now, how are we going to support our groundless opposition to the positions of our opponents? You’re just being unrerasonable. You can’t expect us to know what we believe and think about what other people are saying at the same time, too much effort!
The title of this blog entry is highly misleading. I hate agreeing with Nick about anything, but it takes a strong misreading of what Perkins said to come up with “blaming” the prostitution scandal on the repeal DADT. His last sentence quoted here is the essence of his argument and it is highly misleading to infer a causative relationship between DADT and the prostitution scandal.
My reading comprehension is just fine, thank you…
Perkins did indeed try to make a connection between the repeal of DADT and this prostitution scandal…that is reprehensible…
@An Interested Party:
Perkins is, in most of our opinions, reprehensible. And, yes, he did make that connection.
But when it comes to Doug’s accusation that he directly “blamed” DADT for it, I’m with Tsar, he just didn’t. Not in the same way that Pat Robertson blamed Katrina on teh Gayz.
As a bunch of people have said here, call Perkins out on being a homophone and a reactionary twit. But call him out on the facts as they stand. Otherwise you’re playing as hard and loose with the facts as he is.
@mattb:
Yes, I’ll admit I got caught up in the hooker-homosexuality connection…a pity Tsar Nicholas didn’t criticize that stupid analogy along with Doug’s falsehood…
@Franklin: I read it. They’re both instances of the slippery slope towards hell — the same crap peddled by innumerable moral authorities who finish their press statement and then rape the altar boy or do meth with the gay whore.
@mattb: “, call Perkins out on being a homophone ”
So what is it he sounds like?
This just in, DADT responsible for fall of the Roman Empire.
@WR:
Sigh… ok, I need to check my tablet’s auto-speller. 🙁
I think being a homophone has more to do with the mouthpiece.
We have to consider the possibility that Perkins is no Homophobe but just a shrewd business man who know what fills the collection plate.
As we all know, it wouldn’t be the first time.