On Wednesday, a young man named Floyd Corkins made an inept attack on the offices of the Family Research Council, an act of politically-motivated domestic terrorism that is no different from bombing an abortion clinic. Clearly, such actions are unjustified, indefensible, and reprehensible. Working on the theory that one bad turn deserves another, the FRC immediately tried to exploit the shooting to launch an attack on the reputation of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a longtime foe of the FRC’s anti-gay crusade.
“Let me be clear that Floyd Corkins was responsible for firing the shot yesterday,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told reporters in Washington about the suspect. “But Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.”
Right. Because the FRC’s relentless slanders against gays wouldn’t have offended anybody if it hadn’t been for those damn kids and their stupid dog.
Just for comparison, here’s Tony Perkins commenting on Bill O’Reilly, who was criticized for having called Dr. George Tiller a “baby killer” multiple times on television just prior to Tiller’s assassination by a pro-lifer.
Bill O’Reilly has never shied away from denouncing late-term abortions and the handful of doctors who perform them. In the aftermath of George Tiller’s murder, O’Reilly became an easy target for the liberal media who tried to pin some of the blame on Bill, saying he incited the violence by decrying these unnecessary procedures on his show. Despite the unfair allegations, O’Reilly spoke the truth, bringing new light to a gruesome procedure. On behalf of our co-sponsors and millions of values voters, we want to express our gratitude to a culture warrior who uses his national platform to promote life–no matter what the personal or professional costs.
So… SPLC notices that the FRC aggressively promoting anti-gay slanders and policies intended to marginalize or eliminate homosexuals from American culture, and calls that “hate,” and that’s irresponsible, but Bill O’Reilly repeatedly calls an abortionist an outright murderer (and later denies that he did so), and that’s heroic, even though in the latter case the attack was deadly and in the former case it wasn’t. Bias much?
Since Tony Perkins claims that when you call a group “haters” that means you are licensing a murderous attack on them, maybe somebody could do a search for the phrase “the real haters are…” and see how many times either Perkins or his allies on the religious right have said it of LGBT groups or individuals. (My own Google-Fu is not strong.) I imagine Dan Savage, for example, has been called a “true hater” dozens if not hundreds of times by people whom the FRC has praised as champions of truth, Americanism and the Christian family. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Savage had been called worse things by Perkins himself.)
“FRC quick to exploit shooting”
About as surprising as a hot fire.
Pfft. It’s only bad if you say something negative about them. Don’t you get that yet? Everything they are and do is righteous, and it doesn’t matter if what you consider to be negative consequences come of it.