This is Tony Perkins. If you’re not familiar with him, this is not the Tony Perkins who played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. This Tony Perkins is much, much scarier. This Tony Perkins makes blood spiraling down a bathtub drain look like a cup of cherry Kool-Aid spilled at a Girl Scout fundraiser.
This Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council, the political offshoot of Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s main organization.
James Dobson is a Christian. So is Tony Perkins. So is everyone who works for and/or supports either of their massive organizations.
Tony Perkins carries “a tremendous burden to reclaim the culture for Christ.” That’s what it says about him on the FRC website. So it must be true.
Oh, and that little kerfuffle you might have heard about last winter, when the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the Family Research Council as a hate group, because it’s that virulently anti-gay? According to Perkins, that was nothing more than “the left’s smear campaign of conservatives.”
It’s all just part of Tony’s burden.
Being a polilobbyist (to coin a phrase: it means half-politician, half-lobbyist, and aren’t they all anymore?), Tony’s other burden is money. Tony wants lots and lots of money. And he knows that nothing makes a certain kind of person reach for his or her wallet faster than the fear that there are actually gay and lesbian people in the world.
Hence, this recent fundraising letter sent by Tony to Family Research Council supporters:
Sigh.
So, I just came back from five days spent at this place, where my wife and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Upon our return home I found a few emails alerting me to the letter above. So I thought I’d write a little something about it. After all, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Center are still to so many the public face of Christianity. And that’s a travesty that I, a normal, non-insane Christian, am inclined to help combat.
But as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t write a decent piece about this letter. No clever angle for the story came to me; no witty perspective, no engaging spin. It’s like at some level I just didn’t care about Tony Perkins and his pathetic letter. I got as far as what’s written here above the letter, and no further. After that I just ran out of writing juice.
I chalked it up to some sort of anniversary hangover. After all, I am still on the week off I’m spending with my wife. I dunno. But I can tell when I’m just not going to be able to write a story, and this was one of those times. So I let it go.
And I spent a wonderful day at home with my wife.
And just now, as I was heading off to bed, it occurred to me why I couldn’t figure out how to write this story. It’s because my feelings about it are absolute. There’s zero traction in it for me. It’s like trying to run on ice. No grip.
Every single time I think of Tony Perkins and this letter, nothing more interesting or edifying comes to my mind than a block of feelings that, broken down, runs about like this:
This animal. This cretin. This travesty. This demon. This parasite. This blight. This twisted purveyor of evil. This insidious enemy of everything for which Christ stood. This sickening mule. This heartless charlatan. This shameless huckster. This vile opportunist. This creator of human suffering. This trafficker in pain. This braying bully. This puffing affront to decency.
This preening, flag-waving goon.
This grinning, slavering creature who, in exchange for money, induces children to commit suicide.
This odorous, rotten chum pretending he’s nourishment.
This lover of hate.
If you’re a Christian who actually understands and cares about Christ, please tell anyone who will listen that Tony Perkins is to Christianity what a slimy, chewing worm is to a perfectly wonderful apple.
So. There’s that bit of venting.
For the next week or so I’ll make a point of sincerely including Tony Perkins in my morning prayers. Consider joining me in that, if you will. For surely no heart in the world more than Tony Perkins’ could benefit from the delivery into the fiery pit of its toxicity and rage the uplifting, healing message that it gets better.
If he couldn’t hear it from Dan Savage, maybe he’ll hear it from God himself.
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See also, from yesterday, The Complete, God-Centered View of Gay and Lesbian People (in 65 Words)
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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Gotta wonder how anyone so full of Satan can be so sure he’s doing H’Shem’s work. Sort of expect his head to swivel around as green stuff spews from his guts. Poor Wretch. Hope our prayers soften his heart to the suffering, torture and death he’s been party to.
I don’t want revenge on him. I would like folks to realize he’s not a Christian in any sense of the word.
Thank you, John, for reminding me that even someone as hate-filled as Tony Perkins is not beyond God’s redeeming grace. I will follow your example and pray for him, as well as those his words and actions brutalize.
I think someone should analyze this guy’s signature. Isn’t it a little curious that his first name is in script but the entire last name is printed in all caps? What does that mean?
Anyway, as a professional name-caller who enjoys labeling these people as the filth that they are, I can’t even begin to spew anything like John did here, so I won’t.
I’ll tell you what, it’s really hard sometimes to embrace your enemy when guys like this are the enemy.
Tony Perkins needs a good ass pounding. I’m sure he’s just a big homo anyway.
Jesus told us that we will be judged with the same measure we use to judge others. I would hope I get judged on loving my neighbor as myself. I then work at it, and work at it a lot, but I will not call a bully “someone whose opinion must be tolerated.” Nope. If I am being mean and unfair or too intolerant I want to be convicted by my spirit at quickly as possible. If I don’t notice, then I want someone to slow my roll for me. I will use that measure on others because it is loving them the way I want to be loved.
Judging by physical traits that cannot be changed is an unjust measure that none of us want to be used on us in the day of Judgement Jesus spoke of. We are guaranteed to be judged by idle words- Jesus.
So, basically I am in a position to speak my convictions of loving my neighbor, keeping money changers in mind as not the church Jesus was looking for, and calling a wolf a wolf and not a “confused and rabid sheep who should be tolerated.”
Now as far as measuring is concerned…it will be funny when the judgment day comes and the righteous homophobes who think gays go to hell have to pass a marriage/sex quality test for their own salvation. The measure you use= to the measure used against you. The Big Guy said it. I can’t be sure, but I won’t risk it.
I have issues with MSNBC’s Chris Mathews now. If Matthews and his wife are such big supporters of LGBT rights, then in my opinion he really doesn’t understand that when he allows Perkins to spew his hate on national TV that he is, in effect, allowing that hate to be free of any consequences that might become of it. Yes, I have to tolerate other people’s opinions, but the person that spews a hateful opinion is not free from the consequences of that hate.
Holy cow, there are a lot of posts to this article! As usual, where religion is concerned, it doesn’t take much to get a lot of people breathing fire.
I imagine there is a lot of cognitive dissonance among Christians, inasmuch as a lot of them WANT to be good, friendly, people, but then run up against a lot of the passages in the Bible that explicitly declare homosexuality to be antithetical to the faith (to put it mildly).
I’m not a Christian, but I’ve read the Bible a lot, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, as a good Christian, you could jettison 99.9999% of the book, and still be a good Christian. The only sentence any Christian should pay attention to is, “Love the Lord with all your heart, and mind, and vital force. The second command is like it; love your neighbor as yourself.”
Done. Finished. Go home and do that. Nothing to see here, folks. All the rest of the claptrap in Leviticus (which nobody, not even the most orthodox Jew, does anymore), Revelation (which reveals jack-squat), the Pauline letters, the Ten Commandments, is necessary. If everyone who professed love of Christ did those two things, all these discussions would never take place.
Brook E Mantia – RIGHT ON!
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