Trump’s evangelical adviser: I would refuse to go to a gay wedding
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Researcil Council, stand for the Pledge of Allegiance on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention (Win McNamee/Getty)
A religious adviser to Donald Trump has suggested that people should snub the weddings of their gay relatives.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is a close confidant and informal adviser to Donald Trump, consulting directly with the Republican on religious issues during his election campaign.
Perkins, whose group also had ties to Trump’s former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, this week encouraged Christians to shun gay weddings.
He made the claim on his internet radio show, while taking calls from listeners.
According to Right Wing Watch, Perkins said: “I get the whole argument about love, ‘we just need to show love’.
“Sometimes expressing love is standing for truth, and I think we could lull people into a false sense of security by simply going along with what is culturally acceptable in some circles.
“Now, I’m not going to tell people across the board you shouldn’t go. I haven’t gone that far. I would tell people to be very prayerful about it, but I personally, it’s not something I could do.
“I don’t think it would be a good representation, people knowing very clearly my stand on biblical truth, and I think other Christians need to bear that in mind as well.”
Trump has previously heaped praise on Perkins, who has been condemned by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for repeatedly linking gay rights to the Holocaust and comparing gay people to Nazis.
After coming under fire for a speech that misquoted the Bible, Trump said: “Tony Perkins wrote that out for me… Tony Perkins is a very, very good guy.
“He actually wrote out the Two, he wrote out the number ‘Two Corinthians’.
“I took exactly what Tony said, and thought, Tony has to know better than anybody.”
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
When he’s not moonlighting as a Trump speechwriter, Tony Perkins is head of the Family Research Council – listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because its extreme anti-gay views.
Perkins has made a number of extremely disturbing claims about gay people in the past, insisting Christians are “going to find ourselves being loaded in cattle cars like it was when the Nazis took over before we realize we are in such terrible danger”.
He claims that Christians are being sent to “camps”, and that soon gays are “going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians”.
The SPLC notes he compared gays to paedophiles, saying: “While activists like to claim that paedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. It is a homosexual problem.”
Perkins has also claimed that letting gay people serve in the Boy Scouts will increase the risk of child molestation.
Despite insisting he is simply an activist for ‘religious freedom’, Perkins simultaneously says that clergy who support gay rights don’t deserve “true religious freedom”.
He also branded the ‘It Gets Better’ anti-bullying campaign “disgusting”, saying: “It’s part of a concerted effort to recruit [kids] into that lifestyle.”
Ahead of the Supreme Court court ruling in favour of equal marriage, Perkins threatened a “revolution” in the United States over the issue.
