Trump adviser Tony Perkins says transgender flags are ‘unpleasant’
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)
Trump religious freedom adviser Tony Perkins has claimed transgender flags flying on Capitol Hill are an “unpleasant” sight.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders were among prominent figures to fly transgender flags from their offices last week to protest the Trump administration’s ban on trans people serving in the Armed Forces.
The protest, which was organised by the National Center for Transgender Equality, has not gone down well with evangelical leader Tony Perkins, a Trump appointee to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Tony Perkins hits out at ‘unpleasant’ trans flags
In a blog, the leader of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council claimed the flags are “jarring” and “unpleasant.”
He wrote: “It’s a jarring sight on the 5th floor of the Longworth House Office Building.
“A sea of baby blue and pink flags greets everyone who walks by — an unpleasant reminder of just where the new majority’s priorities are. Not that anyone really needed reminding.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (Getty)
Perkins went on to claim that banning transgender troops “saves our military from deadly distractions,” despite experts saying their is no military justification for the ban.
The Trump official went on to claim that the Obama-era policy of allowing transgender troops was a “ticking time bomb, meant to explode on the next president’s watch,” adding: “What they didn’t account for, in all of their radical scheming, was a leader who would do something about it.”
He added: “Political correctness doesn’t win wars — and it’s time we put an end to policies that pretend it does.”
Tony Perkins has extreme anti-LGBT record
Perkins was appointed to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2018 despite his extreme anti-LGBT beliefs, which led the Southern Poverty Law Center to designate the Family Research Council an anti-LGBT hate group.
Perkins claimed in a 2018 blog post that decriminalising homosexuality was a “mistake”.
The evangelical leader has also been condemned by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for repeatedly linking gay rights to the Holocaust and comparing gay people to Nazis.
In 2014 Perkins insisted 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 claimed that Christians are being sent to “camps”, and that soon gays are “going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians”.
Under the leadership of Perkins, FRC also cheered on the imposition of a harsh new anti-gay law in Uganda.
