John Ankerberg

Over the weekend, Craig Parshall, Jim Garlow, and Tony Perkins appeared on The John Ankerberg Show to make their collective case against marriage equality.  Most of the discussion involved things we have heard a thousand times before, but there was one interesting segment in which Parshall claimed that gay marriage proponents are counting on activist judges to disregard the law and ignore the fact that gays are not a minority and that gay rights are in no way "fundamental rights," while Perkins claims that Judge Vaughan Walker is gay and therefore biased:

Parshall: Let's take Judge Walker as an example. He accepted the argument that every opposition to homosexual on moral or religious grounds is based on fear. He accepted the preposterous testimony of expert witnesses, political scientists as a matter of fact, who said that homosexuals in America are discriminated against because they are politically powerless.

Now anyone who spends time in Washington DC knows that's absurd. They have a president right now sitting in the office, Barack Obama, who's elected in part by the gay rights lobby who he courted. They have passed hate crimes law, top of their agenda, got it passed, House, Senate, got it signed into law by the President. Other laws are presently pending, initiated by gay rights people. In fact, one of the economists in this very case who was testifying for the proponents of same-sex marriage said on average, the average homosexual couple is much more economically affluent and powerful than the comparable heterosexual couple.

Does this sound like an insular minority that's discriminated against because they're politically powerless? That suggestion is absolutely patently absurd.

Ankerberg: What about the thing where he says this is a fundamental right, that it's an equal right and you can't deny it?

Parshall: Well here's a fundamental right: a fundamental right has been defined, the formula by the Supreme Court in repeated cases has said a fundamental right is a right that is deeply rooted in the history, tradition, and practices of a nation. Now the gay rights movement started around 1969 in a riot outside of gay bar in New York. How could we possibly say it's deeply rooted in the history of America compared to hundreds of years, thousands of years actually, of Western civilization honoring one man, one woman as the definition of marriage?

Perkins: And I'd also point out, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, that Judge Walker is one of two homosexuals that sit on the federal bench. So the idea that his worldview played a part in this decision is clear when he totally dismisses all of the social science put forth by the proponents of Prop 8 and just embraces. without critical review, what I could call propaganda.