Christian anti-LGBT hate group is demanding tax breaks for neo-Nazis and white supremacists
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Researcil Council
The head of a major Christian group is rallying for tax-cuts for white supremacist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT groups.
Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council (FRC), emailed his group’s followers demanding sliced tax rates.
In an email seen by political commentator Joe Jervis, Perkins claimed that Democrats were trying to “use the IRS [International Revenue Service] to do their dirty work.”
Moreover, he called the FRC and various other groups with dense histories of homophobia “mainstream Christian organisations.”
House Democrats call to deny more than 60 hate groups tax-exemption status.
Perkins’ call came after a hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee–chief tax-writing committee of the lower house–to investigate why hate groups were given not-for-profit status by the federal government.
The hearing concluded with House Democrats calling to no longer subsidise hate. As a result, this would deny more than 60 Christian hate groups tax-exempt status, according to a series of tweets from the committee.
Representative John Lewis said in his opening statement: “Hate is not consistent with the goodwill of our nation and its people.
“I believe that the federal government should not sponsor or support groups whose hatred seeks to divide us,” he said according to a Committee press release.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins delivers remarks at the opening of the council’s Value Voters Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel September 21, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
To Perkins, however, such a move will be cast organisations such as his own, which advocate that homosexuality is “unnatural” (as the FRC website states) into collapse.
“This is exactly what conservatives warned about after Obergefell,” Perkins wrote in the email.
“Before the Supreme Court forced same-sex marriage on the country, President Obama’s solicitor general admitted that faith-based organizations would be the single most vulnerable group in America,” Perkins wrote.
“Now, Democrats want to weaponize the IRS against Christian nonprofits and others with whom they disagree.
“But don’t think for a second that they’ll stop with a list of 60. If they succeed in making the Bible ‘hate speech,’ they’ll march on to America’s churches—and then to anyone with politically incorrect views.”
What other organisations were named?
Other organisations named by the committee included The New Century Foundation, which run the white supremacist magazine American Renaissance.
The publication that makes claims like “when blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization – any kind of civilization–disappears.”
Another mentioned was the VDare Foundation. A group that once specified that “diversity per se is not a strength, but a vulnerability. It is a luxury that we can only afford as long as we preserve our breadwinner, the white American people.”
Tony Perkins and the FRC have close ties to US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has a recorded and, at times, intimate history with the FRC, with Perkins being a member of Trump’s inner circle.
Perkins is alleged to have had input in a White House policy document that made the case for banning transgender people from the military by citing transgender people’s “high rates of mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders” and “extremely high rates of suicidal ideation and other comorbidities.”
Moreover, Perkins once suggested that the LGBT+ rights movement will lead to paedophilia, claiming: “Once you’ve rejected basic biology and 2,000 years of civilization, there are no boundaries.”
Perkins has been condemned by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in the past for repeatedly linking gay rights to the Holocaust and comparing gay people to Nazis.
