Christian hate group leader says that LGBT+ rights have ruined July 4. Not, you know, slavery and the theft of indigenous land
Tony Perkins, leader of the anti-LGBT+ hate group Family Research Council. (tperkins/ Twitter)
A right-wing anti-LGBT+ Christian hate group has blamed queer people for ruining July 4 and putting the US constitution in “jeopardy”.
July 4 celebrates the Declaration of Independence of the United States, but is seen as problematic for many reasons.
When the Declaration was signed in 1776, most Black Americans were enslaved. The document also refers to Indigenous people as “savages”.
This year’s July 4 was met with protests in many locations, most notably at the Black Hills, a sacred land to the Lakota Sioux taken by the US, where Donald Trump gave a controversial speech at Mount Rushmore.
Despite all this, Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council – designated an anti-LGBT+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center – has blamed LGBT+ rights for ruining the holiday in an email to his followers.
Adding to the long list of bizarre things religious conservatives have blamed on LGBT+ people, Perkins wrote: “Without allegiance to the rule of law, we become a nation where those in power can do what they want without accountability.
“And in this 244th year of our independence, I fear we are on the brink of that happening.”
Perkins the brought up last month’s historic Supreme Court ruling on LGBT+ rights to explain why he thinks America is on the “brink” of destroying democracy and society as we know it.
Perkins said: “America has never been a perfect nation and never will be. But with all our problems, we have made tremendous progress in securing the God-given rights we too often take for granted.
“But the exercise of those rights will be increasingly diminished and put in jeopardy if Congress refuses to safeguard them and, instead, allows the Supreme Court to rule however its justices prefer, regardless of the text of the Constitution and the law itself.”
Christian hate group leader Tony Perkins has also blamed LGBT+ people for paedophilia and “recruiting” children.
Tony Perkins, a former police officer, has repeatedly claimed that LGBT+ people are more likely to be paedophiles.
In 2010, he wrote on the Family Research Council website: “While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
Perkins also said that the life-saving “It Gets Better” campaign was “aimed at persuading kids that although they’ll face struggles and perhaps bullying for ‘coming out’ as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better…It’s disgusting.
“And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle.”
