Family Research Council

The Obama administration announced Monday that it would drop its fight to maintain age restrictions on the sale of emergency contraceptives. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and Anna Higgins of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity responded on yesterday’s Washington Watch by outlining the supposed consequences this decision will have on young girls.

Perkins lamented that “inappropriate sexual behavior,” such as “date rape” and relations between adults and minors, “can easily be dealt with” now that the pill is available to minors without parental consent, while Higgins warned that the pill will now “be available to people who are preying on young girls,” despite the fact that allowing minors to purchase Plan B has no relation to its availability to adult predators.

Higgins: This over the counter access is really- another health concern is it’s going to be distancing girls who are at high risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases or being sexually abused from accessing medical care or from talking to their parents about these issues.

Perkins: Let me zero in, Anna- Anna Higgins is my guest, you’re listening to Washington Watch, I’m your host Tony Perkins. We’re talking about a decision that came from the Obama administration last night to drop their appeal of a judge’s ruling out of New York that would require over-the-counter sale of Plan B, the one-pill version that’s sold by Teva. The issue of sexual exploitation, now that this drug is available over the counter, it’s easy if there is a case of inappropriate sexual behavior, whether it’s a date rape or something else, it can be, or an adult that’s having relations with a minor, that can easily be dealt with without any participation of a parent or other medical experts or guidance provided that could protect that child in the long run.

Higgins: Yeah that’s a grave concern that’s being glossed over by the proponents of this decision. You know they’re really not addressing this. It’s a very serious concern. Because what we have here is a way for this kind of emergency contraceptive or Plan B to be available to people who are preying on young girls and these young girls are avoiding their first line of defense which is parents and doctors, you know, and protecting them against people who would prey on them. So you know this is available like you said to any age, there’s no age limit now, so you know these young girls could be potentially eleven, twelve years old and the idea that they’re being preyed upon by sexual predators is a very real possibility.

Current Family Research Council Executive Vice President Jerry Boykin fancies himself an expert on Marxist insurgencies, so much so that he apparently detects them everywhere he looks.

So it was no surprise that when he was on Glenn Beck's television program last night discussing the recent revelations regarding the NSA surveillance program, he declared that the entire program was "right out of Rules For Radicals, Saul Alinsky" and "very much a part of what I consider to be the Marxist model," designed to be used by the Obama administration to discredit its political opposition and critics:

In his daily email to members yesterday, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins doubled down on his totally unfounded claim that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell led to a spike in sexual assaults in the military.

Perkins writes that “most” servicemembers have become “victims -- not just of assault, but of this new sexually-charged environment,” adding, absurdly, that when Congress repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell it “made sexual attraction a qualification for military service -- on par with academic performance, community service, physical fitness, or moral standing.”

We’ll repeat: a study one year after the policy was repealed found that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly has had no negative effect on the military.

It must have taken a lot of restraint for America's top military leaders to sit through yesterday's Senate hearing on sexual assault and never say the one thing on everyone's minds: "We told you so." A little over two years ago, the same Senate ignored the warnings of many of the men assembled Tuesday and charged ahead with its repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" against the military's advice. Now, a year and half into this post-DADT era, these Senators demand to know why sexual attacks are through the roof.

Isn't it obvious? The Pentagon downplayed the effects of open homosexuality when it was implemented in 2011 -- something it will have a tough time doing now, with the rate of male-on-male assaults at a record high. While the media rightly highlights the female victims, the Pentagon's 1,400-page report explains that service men are just as affected -- if not more so. According to the Defense Department's own numbers, military men suffered 2,000 more sexual attacks than their female counterparts in 2012, the first full year that open homosexuality was tolerated. All together, "unwanted sexual conduct" climbed to 26,000 cases (up from 19,000 in 2010) -- a 37% spike in two years. And some believe that's a low estimate -- in part because men are so reluctant to report abuse, especially from other men.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said a "focus" of the assault office "is specifically geared toward male survivors and will include why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors..." Unfortunately, most are victims -- not just of assault, but of this new sexually-charged environment. And while the military could certainly do a better job of cracking down on abuse, lawmakers are blasting service chiefs for a problem that, in many ways, they helped create! Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), for example, led the charge to overturn DADT -- and then spent yesterday's hearing complaining about the result.

Of course, the liberal members of the Armed Services Committee were careful to dance around the same-sex assault issue, but there's no mistaking the elephant in the room. The White House has spent Barack Obama's entire presidency sexualizing the military, beginning with the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that when Congress made sexual attraction a qualification for military service -- on par with academic performance, community service, physical fitness, or moral standing -- it radically altered America's fighting force.

Tony Perkins must be watching a lot of LOGO, as the Family Research Council president appears to be under the impression that gays and lesbians represent close to one out of three characters on TV. “Homosexuals make up 4% of the population, but they’re a whopping 30% of TV characters and storylines,” Perkins maintained on his daily radio commentary today, even though according to GLAAD, “LGBT characters account for 4.4% of scripted series regulars in the 2012-2013 broadcast television schedule.”

The FRC based the commentary on an article in the conservative National Catholic Register criticizing “Hollywood’s powerful homosexual culture.” The 30% figure Perkins cited does not refer to gay characters on TV but to one Catholic screenwriter’s claim that “based on her own experience, [homosexuals] make up 30% of Hollywood’s entertainment industry.”

Not only did Perkins manufacture the “30%” figure, he also alleged that “lovable gay characters” on TV are “make-believe people” whose “dangerous lifestyle is just another funny footnote.” He warned that these gay characters are being used “to desensitize America.”

Perkins asserted that in reality, gays are typically “dying of AIDS” and “bullying kids.”

“Of course, producers don’t show you the reality of homosexuality: the men and women dying of AIDS, or the same-sex couples threatening Christian businesses,” Perkins said. “They don’t cast the Dan Savages bullying kids or the parents kicked out of school for opposing gay curriculum.”

Is marriage headed for a Hollywood ending? Hello, I’m Tony Perkins with the Family Research Council in Washington. The debate over same-sex marriage has been perfectly scripted by Hollywood. Television shows are full of lovable gay characters, whose dangerous lifestyle is just another funny footnote. Unfortunately for America, those make-believe people are having a real-life impact. In a new survey, almost 20% of Americans credit television with changing their minds on same-sex marriage. And that’s no accident. Homosexuals make up 4% of the population, but they’re a whopping 30% of TV characters and storylines. Liberals are using this barrage to desensitize America and viewers are buying it. Of course, producers don’t show you the reality of homosexuality: the men and women dying of AIDS, or the same-sex couples threatening Christian businesses. They don’t cast the Dan Savages bullying kids or the parents kicked out of school for opposing gay curriculum. Like most everything else on TV, it’s fiction. And the only way to fight it is knowing your role in speaking truth!

Mike Huckabee hosted Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin today to discuss a report on the rise of sexual assault cases in the military between 2010 and 2012, which Boykin linked to the “sexualization of our military with social engineering” policies like the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell 

While Boykin correctly stated that “there are actually more men that have been sexually assaulted than women,” as we have noted, women represent a higher percentage of assault cases since there are only 200,000 women in the active-duty military.

He repeated the false claim that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is linked to the number of assaults on men. However, CNN reports the 2012 rate “remained unchanged for active duty men” from 2010, the year before the law was repealed.

The two also tied the rise in assaults to the end on the ban on women in combat, a decision that was made in 2013 — before the study’s release — and hasn’t even been fully implemented.

Huckabee: General, there has been such a rash of sexual assault in the military and it’s become virtually epidemic. I wanted your assessment, do you think this has anything to do with the fact that we’ve so liberalized the policies of everything from women in combat, the whole conception of the separation of the gender, as well as saying we’re not going to have any restrictions on homosexuals in the military? Does that have anything at all to do with this?

Boykin: Well I think it has everything to do with it, Governor. We have seen, if I may use this term, a sexualization of our military with social engineering. One of the things that most of the people don’t realize is in a recent survey there are actually more men that have been sexually assaulted than women. We are trying to violate the laws of nature, failing to recognize that these young men and women are at the peak of their sex drive when we try to mix the genders for reasons that to me are illogical and in doing so what we are doing is we are inviting this kind of behavior, it’s not acceptable and it has to be punished and dealt with. But I think that this social engineering has manifested in a number of ways and this is certainly one of the clearest.

The New York Times reported this week that President Obama is planning to nominate three judges to fill long-vacant seats on the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This is hardly unheard of: every president since Jimmy Carter has placed at least three judges on the D.C. Circuit, and Obama only just had his first nominee confirmed to the court.

But Senate Republicans and conservative activists really, really don’t want President Obama to put any more judges on the D.C. Circuit – perhaps because it is currently dominated by Republican nominees who are intent on rolling back things like clean air regulations, cigarette labeling requirements, and National Labor Relations Board rulings.
      
So the Senate GOP is threatening to filibuster anybody Obama names to the court and even trying to push through a law permanently deleting the vacant judgeships in order to prevent Obama from filling them.

What has resulted is one of the more bizarre manifestations of Obama Derangement Syndrome. The talking point that Senate Republicans and their allies have landed on to defend this planned obstruction is that President Obama, in nominating judges to existing judicial vacancies as is required by his job, is in fact “packing” the D.C. Circuit in the style of FDR. (Or, in the words of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board,  like a “king”).

In a column for Breitbart News yesterday the Family Research Council’s Ken Klukowski goes even further, writing that by merely planning to nominate judges to the court – a constitutional requirement of his job fulfilled by every one of his predecessors – Obama has launched an “attack on the independence of the federal courts,” “declared war on judicial independence,” and is “trying to declare law by executive fiat.”

Now that Obama has declared war on judicial independence, Republicans are planning a counter-strategy. There are 13 federal appeals courts. The D.C. Circuit’s caseload is light, while several other circuits are overloaded. Sen. Charles Grassley and Senate Republicans are proposing moving those three seats to courts that could very much use them. Obama would still appoint those three judges, but not to the D.C. Circuit.

It takes legislation to create or move federal judgeships, so this is shaping up as a major part of the battle over courts that are independent of political manipulation.

There are only 80 slots on the Supreme Court’s docket every year. For 20,000 federal appeals each year, whatever the appellate court says is the final word. Obama is hoping that if he can overhaul the judicial balance of the court, his unprecedented claims of federal power might withstand court challenges. From Obamacare to EPA requirements, labor rules, and IRS rules, all these topics and more are going before the D.C. Circuit.

Obama cannot enact major liberal legislation now that he’s lost the House and might also lose the Senate next year. Instead, he’s trying to declare law by executive fiat. Whether he gets away with it likely turns on whether he can change Senate rules and then pack the D.C. Circuit with sympathetic judges.

This attack on the independence of the federal courts should be of concern to all Americans.
 

The latest fundraising pitch from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins blasts “the national Republicans” whom he says are “running away from the natural and biblical definition of marriage, flocking to the radical side in support of same-sex ‘marriage.’”

Perkins’ letter insists that allowing same-sex couples to get married is dangerous to religious liberties, to the next generation, and “dangerous to civilization itself.” Perhaps worst of all is that Obama’s “machine” would benefit from the GOP alienating its conservative base:

Sacrificing our values, and their distinctives as a Party, will send millions of voters packing. One terrible side effect: President Obama’s machine will be stronger than ever. Their radicalization of American public policy will intensify.

But be assured that Perkins “cares deeply” about gay people:

Please understand: this is no vendetta. We care deeply about those who engage in either heterosexual sex outside of marriage or homosexual behavior in any context. Both are immoral and unhealthy. We want what is truly best for them and for our nation.

What is truly best for them is a lifestyle of biblical morality. (emphasis in original)

Perkins calls for a “massive outpouring of outrage from principled conservatives” and urges supporters to sign a petition to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. And, of course, to send a check.

On yesterday’s edition of Washington Watch, Tony Perkins and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council hosted an entire program about a pamphlet from an association of LGBT Department of Justice employees, which the two dishonestly represented as an official government memorandum.

Unbelievably, Perkins wondered if he can come out “and declare that I’m straight and the fact that I’m proud that God made me this way,” and Sprigg said no “because that would be considered hostile.”

Later in the program while speaking to a caller, Perkins said that while GLAAD named him “the most dangerous man in America” he only “speaks from love” about gay people and that he “completely denounce[s] hateful rhetoric, calling people names and demonizing them.”

Of course, GLAAD has never named Perkins “the most dangerous man in America,” and Perkins has quite a record of “demonizing” gays …like the time he called them literal pawns of the Devil.

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin yesterday chatted with Frank Gaffney for an entire program about the forthcoming “Islamic Republic of America” where Boykin’s granddaughters are forced to wear burkas. After his usual anti-Muslim ramblings, Boykin explained that the Islamic conquest of America can only take place once people lose “traditional American values.” He argued that the Obama administration is trying to get rid of such values by repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the ban on women in combat, which he linked to an increase in reported sexual assaults.

It’s important to understand that this administration in particular has sexualized the army, I mean there’s been so much of this social engineering that all revolves around gender and sexual behavior. What we’re doing though is we are setting ourselves up for absolute failure. Yes, sexual assault is at an all-time, unprecedented high. But then when you look at the fact that we have repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell so that we’ve mixed people of the same sex with same-sex attraction at a time when our military is under great stress, that’s a problem; now we’re trying to put women into ground combat roles where you cannot violate the laws of nature, plain and simple, and we’re going to put women into units where there is absolutely no privacy, where you are inviting exactly what is occurring already, and that is sexual assault, sexual attraction and all of these things.

What is this all about? Why are we doing this? Well the answer is the people that are making these decisions do not care one thing about military readiness; in fact I would say most of them don’t even understand military readiness. They have an agenda and they are fulfilling that agenda by going after the military, which at the end of the day still maintains very traditional American values. While we’ve got people in the military that do some bad things from time to time, at the end of the day we still have the uniform code of military justice and it still finds, for example, adultery to punishable under the uniform code of military justice; at one time sodomy was punishable under the uniform code of military justice. It has maintained very traditional American values and what this is is an assault on the last bastion of traditional values in America because you can’t change this society until you change the military.