Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBTQ group Family Research Council, said yesterday that state lawmakers and religious conservatives have not had to fight as hard on social issues on the state level recently because the United States is no longer being run by “bathroom-in-chief” Barack Obama.
During yesterday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Perkins responded to a New York Times article that reported that the Religious Right’s fights on social issues are gaining “little legislative momentum in statehouses.” Perkins pushed back on any notion that state lawmakers don’t want to waste time on “icky social issues” and claimed that social issues are simply a lower priority under President Trump.
“There’s no need to spend all the legislative time on these issues about who uses the bathroom because we no longer have the bathroom-in-chief, Barack Obama,” Perkins said, referring to efforts in conservative state legislatures to limit the bathrooms available to transgender people. “Recall it was the White House that put down an order, sent down an order, through the Department of Justice and the Department of Education as to who could use what bathroom—basically, bathroom confusion. That is what that former president was occupied with.”
“Well now we have a president that understands the confines of the White House in terms of its limits by the Constitution,” Perkins said, going on to praise Trump’s reversal of the Obama administration’s guidelines on the rights of transgender students in public schools.
“Could it be that the liberal media once again is wanting to put their spin, if not create, news, as opposed to report it?” Perkins said.
