Perkins Claims that Gay Rights Advocates 'Want to Silence the Church'

Yesterday on Today’s Issues, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and American Family Association head Tim Wildmon hosted New York City Councilman Fernando Cabrera to discuss the city’s decision to prohibit church groups from using public school buildings, which was recently overturned by a federal judge. During the interview, Cabrera attacked gay rights advocates for supposedly siding with the city government, to which Perkins replied that “homosexual groups” want “to silence the church. They want the church to go away because they don’t want that moral voice in the community.” Cabrera even claimed that gay rights supporters “want to censor language and speech”:

In another part of the program, Perkins said that while President Obama apologized for the burning of Qurans in Afghanistan his administration “is silent when Christianity is attacked in this country.” Later, Wildmon said that “Islam is not a religion of peace. That is not true.” Wildmon lamented, “President Obama on this issue, you’d at least like him to speak out on the violence committed against Christians around the world, but you don’t hear anything about that.”

However, last May President Obama defended the rights and freedoms of Christians in Egypt in a speech about the political crisis in the Middle East and earlier this week the State Department released a statement condemning Iran for giving him a death sentence because of his refusal to recant his conversion to Christianity. In fact, the State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report documents and denounces the persecution of Christians in countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan.