This is beautiful. As David Badash points out, Chris Matthews seems to have “evolved” on the subject of Tony Perkins’ extremism. This interview springboards from a recent, stupid statement from Tony Perkins suggesting that his own children wouldn’t likely ever be gay, due to the fact that Tony Perkins knows better than everyone else how to raise his children. Barney Frank retorts that it’s really not fair for Tony Perkins to put himself up on a pedestal above Dick and Lynne Cheney in the parenting department.
Perkins’ statement is silly on its face. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be so many gay adults with horror stories about their fundamentalist upbringings, and there wouldn’t be so many gay teens struggling with depression and suicidal tendencies because of the lack of support from their “Christian” families. Tony, you very well may have a gay child, and due to your beliefs, the only thing we can predict is that if you do, your child will grow up with a grievous sense of self-hatred, and it will be your fault and, I assume, your wife’s fault. Sorry.
The great thing, though, about this video, is that Chris Matthews acts as a journalist the entire time, pushing back and correcting Tony’s hateful crap. David Badash also points out that, at the end, Tony Perkins’ lies get downright disgusting, as he claims that there isn’t a surplus of children who need loving homes in this country. Wow, Tony. For somebody whose organization spends so much time screaming about blastocysts, one would think you’d give a damn about actual, breathing kids without parents. But you don’t. You care about your bigotry and your influence.
Repugnant.
It’s beautiful watching Tony squirm as he looks dumber and dumber over the course of fifteen minutes.
Besides having a gay son or daughter, the chances of at least one of these is very good over time:
* nephew or niece
* neighbor kid
* grandkid
* kids’ classmate or teammate
Unless, of course, uber-Christian helicopter parenting is required of his kids and everyone they come into contact with.
Your headline had me so hopeful. I wanted to see Rep. Frank literally rip Perkins apart. A fitting end to such a long and distinguished career. He’s been restrained all these years!
Great guests for Chris Matthews.
Meaningless for dialogue.
Perkins asks Matthews the right question: “What is the purpose of marriage?”
All the conversation without defining that will take us nowhere.
Really, how can there be dialogue with someone who has devoted his life to hurting and restricting the rights of others?
Please. Like Perkins is interested in dialogue. You can’t be serious. He runs a hate group and once bought David Duke’s mailing list. Need I say more?
RainbowPhoenix–I think there have been many on both sides who have dialogued well–and folk on both sides also get weary and feel like it is impossible; that the only solution to conflict is to defeat the ‘other.’
If you look around your life can you see people with whom you disagree–and yet you both have found a way to gracefully love and dignify each other? In the end–aren’t we really often much closer to each other than we think?
I agree dialogue will not always happen. But if we don’t seek it; if we don’t resist the temptation to turn our neighbors into “strange others”; then we sacrifice our own souls. One can hold to their highest principles and love their neighbor. This is tolerance.
I agree it was bad dialogue. Matthews is a great show for having two or three monologues being delivered at the same time.
No Really, the other side has never dialogued well. Their entire argument is that I am inferior and need to be legally designated as such. Dialogue is impossible in some circumstances and that is one of them.
My existance and worth as a human being is not subject to debate. To argue otherwise is inherently unloving and an effort to deny a person’s dignity. If you can look a person in the eye and tell them that they are inferior and need to be treated as such, than the gulf between you is insurmountable and the onus is on you to fix that. It is not on the person you are doing everything in your power to hurt.
We spend our lives seeking out dialogue. We learn very quickly who is open to it and who is not. A person who insists that I need to be treated as an inferior is not open to dialogue. Describing people as they are is not turning them into “strange others”. It is retaliation for being turned into a “strange other”. We are not “sacrificing our souls” by defending ourselves. If your highest principle is that your neighbor is an inferior and needs to be treated as such, than you are not loving them. You are incapable of even understanding love if that is the case. And before you jump to the usual bigot’s reply, telling someone to mind their own damn business is not being intolerant or treating them as an inferior.
Anyone who argues against another person’s inherent worth should not be tolerated. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs a therapist for their self-esteem issues.
Every brutalized person deserves their humanity and dignity–and deserves the freedom to create that.
And I think there has almost always been debate about how one recovers that humanity; especially as it relates to how one responds to the ‘brute.’
I personally think there is not one response; that there needs to be varied responses held in tension.
Please accept my comments as personal commentary. I have no doubt that you are where you need to be in your journey. I appreciate you taking the time to comment back–I do receive it. It is hard to show “listening” in a comment section–but I am listening to you. I presume I have more to learn than to speak–and hence most often just read on this site. For some reason my fingers decided to chat today.
I trust the remainder of this day is good for you and those around you whom you care for.
We saw that last night. It was nice to see Perkins finally get taken to the mat rather than merely be given a pulpit to spew his nonsense. Of course Perkins still spewed utter BS but at least he was challenged on it.
“Tony Perkins’ lies get downright disgusting, as he claims that there isn’t a surplus of children who need loving homes in this country.”
Of course there aren’t, because people have to go out of the country to get infants to adopt. Older children, particularly those with disabilities or emotional problems, don’t count as adoptable children to the fundaloons. Only precious little babies do. Preferably white ones.
This isn’t about me Really. This is about people like Perkins who you are trying to portray as innocent victims that people are trying to “silence” just because they “differ”.
We are not talking about people “recovering humanity”. We are talking about the people who deny that humanity, who you are trying to portray is just “differing”.
I’ll believe you’re really “listening” when you knock off the victim-blaming and stop trying to portray the aggressors as the innocent victims.
“Tony Perkins’ lies get downright disgusting, as he claims that there isn’t a surplus of children who need loving homes in this country.” Wow, that IS disgusting. I just looked it up at an adoption organization (adoptuskids.org) in their myths section; they say that there are 107,000 kids in U.S. foster care waiting to be adopted. I think I’m believing them over Tony Perkins.
Militant anti-gay activist Perkins is an embarrassment to us real Christians. I wonder how conservatives Phylis Schlafley, Dick Cheney, Randell Terry and ex-California Senator Pete Knight would feel about being told they did not raise their children correctly?
The one thing missing is the failure to correct this lie that studies show that children do better with a mom and dad. Those studies compare single-parents to two parents; they do not compare two gay parents to two heterosexual parents.
It’s not hard, when you can get a word in, to take down any of the anti gay’s rhetoric. There’s is an ideology, trying to be enforced by gov’t in a country that cannot enforce religious belief.
When they can’t tear down actual gay people, they go for the “it’s been a long, LONG, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG tradition!” As if it’s never been changed nor should be.
There are many traditions of marriage, fortunately, that have changed for the BETTER, ESPECIALLY with regards to gender.
Marriage itself have evolved in ways that benefit more and more people.
Tony Perkins is not only in denial of THAT, he’s in denial of marriage discrimination on the basis of disparate classes, mixed religion, no marriage for soldiers, or people with disparate physical ability. To say nothing of mixed race, arranged marriages and…marriage between slaves.
Gays and lesbians are denied on the basis more of orientation, not just gender.
But as marriage has now evolved to such an egalitarian level, gender IS unnecessary because the partners are no longer of disparate social levels in the marriage.
Which would now also include those of ambiguous gender, who exist also.
As long as the anti gay keep trying to define gay people as inferior, then they’ll keep trying to defend that assumption.
And in the meantime, marriage isn’t protected from divorce, poverty, addiction, domestic violence or adultery. No matter how much you discriminate against gay people, it won’t help straight people be less failures in their own relationships.
Indeed, one could argue that it was the redefinition of divorce that made marriage less stable.
DUH.
Romney is sooooo obvious, of course he is going to come out TODAY and say he supports gay adoption after O’Bama came out supporting gay marriage a few days ago, last week you can bet it was 180 opposite. He sees the tide changing just like O’Bama does.
The flip flopping jello spine strikes again.
While I did enjoy the verbal vivisection session (God, I am SO gonna miss Barney Frank after he retires), I am more than a bit fed up with our news outlets still insisting on giving face time to “the other side” in the name of some phony concept of journalistic “balance” or “fairness.” Would they do the same thing with an African-American debating a Klansman over whether Black people are indeed inferior to White people? Of course not; the very notion is not only ridculous, but offensive in the extreme not only to African-Americans but to anyone with a conscience. So why is it still okay to give “equal time” to the gay haters?
@Scott
The trick is – they DID give equal time to that type of thing when the debate was still viable, in that there were still enough out racists to matter. Only after the Klan and the other extremist groups became a side show did they stop giving time to them. The same will happen here.
Kind thoughts,
Reyn
@RainbowPhoenix – I read your first comment and I have to say you are only half right. I lived the first 20 years of my life as a faithful gay-hating Christian warrior determined to wipe the Big Scary Demon of Sodomy from the Face of the Earth!
But because people challenged my unwavering belief that gay people were somehow made inferior by making “the choice” to be gay, I was forced by compassion and logic to completely reverse my belief.
Justifying hate is so laborious on the mind when it is constantly challenged. We need to see more people like Perkins on teevee. Its the easiest and quickest way to discredit them over and over. Bringing gay people into these discussions is the best way to get even rabid hatemongers like Perkins to try and deny the extreme beliefs that they have. Its easy to condemn someone to hell or blame them for the “destruction of traditional marriage” when you arent looking at them in the face.