LGBT Blogger, activist, author and GLAAD spokesman Jeremy Hooper and hate group leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council appeared on Fox News with Megyn Kelly Thursday night to discuss Phil Robertson and A&E’s suspension of him from their hit (fake) reality show Duck Dynasty after Robertson made anti-gay and racial comments during a GQ Magazine interview.
Hooper challenged Kelly to hold Perkins accountable for his anti-gay record and vile rhetoric, to which Kelly promised, “What specifically? Because I’ll ask him.”
But Kelly never asked Perkins to explain his extreme stances against the gay community, nor did she acknowledge that the FRC is a designated hate group. Instead she merely identified FRC as “a group whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and culture from a Christian world view”–a description that continues Fox’s trend of referring to anti-gay extremism as Christianity. Perkins went on to defend Robertson as upholding “biblical morality” and attack homosexuality as “sexual immorality.”
Perkins blasted Robertson’s suspension earlier on Thursday:
“A&E’s suspension of Phil Robertson shows Hollywood wants to avoid reality. The reality is that the Robertson family are Bible-believing Christians who don’t cherry pick what the Bible teaches.
“Phil Robertson has been targeted simply because he expressed his religious beliefs but there is a clear double standard that is being applied. Nothing was done when homosexual activist Dan Savage screamed profanities at Christian high school students and called them ‘pansy-(expletive deleted).’ However, when Christians simply say homosexuality is wrong and they don’t agree with it, there are demands that they be fired and silenced.
“We have also seen wedding florists, bakers, and photographers hauled into court, fined and even ordered to violate their religious beliefs by participating in same-sex weddings. It is time for all Americans to take a stand against the cultural elites who want to destroy the livelihood of people and remove God and His truth from every aspect of public life.
“The increasing awareness of this collateral cultural and religious carnage that accompanies the redefinition of natural marriage will continue to cause the debate over same-sex marriage to intensify, not abate, despite the media’s relative silence and homosexual activists increasing campaign of intimidation,” concluded Perkins.
What Media Matters didn’t touch on was the bizarre interview style that Kelley took with the two men as they never appeared on screen together directly talking to each other. Kelley interviewed each man separately back to back with two very different interviewing styles. She interrupted Hooper repeatedly, and challenged the things he said, but she allowed Tony Perkins go on and on, and seemed almost apologetic and knit-browed when asking him questions.
But why was the interview done this way without the two men interacting on questions?
According to an unnamed sourced Perkins demanded that the structure of the interview be set up that way and that was the only way that he’d do the interview together with Hopper.
Hooper’s web-blog Good As You has been following the anti-gay ramblings and exploits of Perkins, the FRC and many other rabidly anti-gay groups for the past 11 years. Was Perkins afraid that in cross talk Hopper would bring up some of his biggest anti-gay lies and propaganda and also his “possible” *cough* ties to white supremacist groups before his core audience? Whatever the reason this is proof that Perkins is nothing more than a bigoted coward who is not man enough or strong enough to defend his own words when challenged one on one.
