Tony Perkins-Lying Even More
We’re going to give Tony Perkins our Daily Douche award two days in a row. On Sunday, he appeared on the usually friendly Faux News Sunday to discuss the evils of marriage equality. Unfortunately, Ms. Perkins brought her pen knife intellect to a gun fight with a constitutional law heavy weight, Ted Olson, a Republican lawyer and gay marriage advocate. Hilarity ensues.
Heck, Perkins even got taken the wood shed by Fox News’ host Chris Wallace. Perkins starts with his usual, think of the children meme with “Marriage is not to affirm adults, it’s for the protection of children, and if love is the only factor, where do you draw the boundaries?”
Perkins continued to harp on the “natural established boundaries for marriage.”
“What are you suggesting? That there’s going to by polygamy, that people are going to be marrying their aunt, their pets?” Wallace asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Perkins responded, again bringing up “boundaries.”
“Alright, you and your wife live happily in this house.There’s a same-sex couple living here. What’s the damage to you?” Wallace then asked.
Perkins replied by bringing up wedding vendors put out of business by refusing to serve gay couples.
“It’s a different issue,” Wallace retorted. Watch the Video below:
http://youtu.be/OKAuOeEdjPo
And if that weren’t enough, Perkins tried to use the tired old study about children doing better with a “mother and a father” study. What they never bother to clarify was that this study was done years ago before there were significant numbers of children being raised by gay parents, and the study actually compares two-parent families with single parent families, and makes no kind of distinctions about gender. Naturally, when the study was done, it didn’t include same sex couples at all. We now better, and unfortunately for Ms Perkins, the award winning site Politifact looked in Perkins’ claim, and gave it a “FALSE.”
The American Psychological Association produced a comprehensive review of studies going back three decades. The most relevant section focuses on research that compares the children of lesbian or gay parents. The studies looked at children in terms of their school performance, their relations with their peers, intelligence, self-esteem and a number of other variables. According to this review, “the belief that children of lesbian and gay parents suffer deficits in personal development has no empirical foundation.”
Perkins said that based on social science, we know “that children do best with a mom and a dad.” The research cited on the website of Perkins’ group, the Family Research Council, does not provide any support. It relies on books rather than peer-reviewed research, it quotes selectively or mischaracterizes from the work it cites, or at best, challenges the quality of the methodology behind findings that go against its position. In contrast, we found recent peer-reviewed social science research that finds that at the very least, children of lesbian parents do as well as other children.
We rate Perkins’ claim False.
Sorry ’bout your luck their Tony. No more free passes on Faux News either. What is this world coming to.
