Fred Clark over at Slacktivist lays the righteous smackdown on the Liar Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and it’s a beautiful thing.
Perkins appeared on Meet the Press opposite David Boies in the wake of the Prop 8 decision a week or so ago. Boies made absolute mincemeat of Perkins’ claims on camera:
“It’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions — appeal to people’s fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don’t exist or don’t say what you say they do. In a court of law you’ve got to come in and you’ve got to support those opinions. You’ve got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature or in debates where they can’t be cross-examined.
“But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence. There weren’t any of those studies. There weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science.
“… A witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court, you can’t do that. And that’s what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.”
And that’s where Fred starts going to town:
In response, the Liar Tony Perkins, unable to support his assertions because they were not true, simply reasserted them. To any reasonable observer, this was not credible and the Liar Tony Perkins was exposed, yet again, as the Liar Tony Perkins.
But reasonable observers are not the Liar Tony Perkins’ target audience. “You can fool some of the people all of the time …” Abraham Lincoln said, and the Liar Tony Perkins never stuck around to hear the rest. He had found his calling.
Go read the whole thing.
I hadn’t a clue who Tony Perkins, Andrew Schlafly, and Terry Jones (Dove World Outreach) were until I saw them showcased here or by other liberal friends elsewhere online. I suspect 99.99% of Americans have absolutely no interest whatsoever in who these people are or what they believe. Perhaps this is just cultivated ignorance, but to be fair, many of us are too preoccupied with keeping our homes out of foreclosure and our small businesses out of bankruptcy to fixate on the silly ass Schlaflys of the world.
They are unimportant, nearly powerless, and perhaps more than anything, lethally dull. I think it appropriate to treat these types with the same level of attention and regard as what one might afford a child walking down the street banging a garbage can lid with a stick. Pay them more heed than that and I have to question your motives.
We have the myopic, bitter, angry left to thank for relentlessly, deliberately dredging up irrelevant freak shows like these and giving them a chance to sell their hate on the air. Of course, this is no accident. The whole point is to hunt down and highlight fringe wackos (that damn near NOBODY has ever heard of or agrees with) and hold them up as fair and reasonable examples of anybody and everybody who disagrees with the progressive agenda.
It’s a shell game- a childish substitute for candid, intellectually honest debate. Hold up a freak, beat it with a stick, and declare a bold moral victory. Hey, if we’re going to beat a freak with a stick, let’s at least make it Keynes.
Wow. You could scarcely be more wrong. My guess is way more than 0.01% of America cares deeply that they, or their gay friends and relatives, be afforded the right to marry. I know I do. Are you so bereft of human kindness that you don’t?
Yes, yes, yes, some folks are having hard times. But you know what? That’s not the only issue in this country right now, and it’s shortsighted and silly to ignore the fact that a plurality of Californians voted to deny their gay neighbors the right to marry. Exposing that bigotry for what it is remains a good idea, because the GOP side of that argument is well funded and widely supported by people who can’t think beyond the end of their nose.
Unimportant and powerless? Bullshit. It’s not a shell game when people like Schlafly and Perkins have actual influence among their bigoted flocks (a good chunk of the GOP base, I remind you), and when those flocks push brutally discriminatory agendas like California’s prop 8. Perkins was apparently the best voice the homophobic world could come up with, and he got owned on national TV. That’s fucking beautiful.
The ability to generate millions of dollars for a fucking scare issue (“dem gays gonna ruin marriage!”) is serious. That kind of bullshit requires that thinking, rational people smack them the fuck down. Yes, by all means, let’s try to fix the economy, but while we’re doing that we don’t need to allow the idiot right to whip their masses into frenzies about Them Gays.
I’m not seeing where my suggestion that Tony Perkins richly deserves to be aggressively ignored indicates that I think gays ought not have the right to marry. I am saying that to soundly thrash him in a short-form Sunday morning television show carries the same weight of victory as beating up a blind 5 year old boy. I would think that the proponents of gay marriage, and gay rights in general, would have the strategic sophistication to invest their energies elsewhere.
Kicking around rhetorically ineffective unfortunates like Perkins seems an empty exercise. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though- something about his comportment tells me that he’ll turn up in an airport bathroom with his hand in the cookie jar soon enough.
Ok, I misinterpreted your point — but in re: the idea that gay rights activists should invest elsewhere, my other points still stand. Boies and Olsen (strange bedfellows indeed) both went on the rounds of shows to illustrate how bankrupt the pro-Prop 8 position was, and I’m glad they did. That’s a key part of the battle for marriage equality, and a necessary outgrowth of their victory in court.