Tony Perkins, president of the
Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC) and a possible
Senate candidate, has claimed that allowing gay and lesbian couples
to marry will turn kids gay.
Perkins made his remarks in response to
a caller's assertions during his weekly radio program, Washington
Week, that the
term “natural marriage,” if based on the Bible, would include
polygamy.
“There's actually more of a
historical basis for polygamy than there's ever been for same-sex
marriage because same-sex marriage has never existed for the last ten
years at best,” Perkins
answered.
“Well, it's a new thing. I'll grant
you that,” the caller said.
Perkins insisted that marriage equality
threatens the next generation: “If it's normative and it's normal,
then we would say we would want more of it, if it's beneficial.”
“People don't suddenly one day decide
to become gay, you're either gay or you're not,” the caller
replied. “I've never met anyone who just scratched their head and
went, 'You know what, I think I'm into guys now' or 'I think I'm into
girls now.' It just doesn't happen.”
When “you say heterosexual marriage
is the same as homosexual marriage, then you change the curriculum in
our schools and you have kids, as a natural part of growing up and
developing, they're curious and they don't know, and we're exposing
them to even more sexuality and overt sexual messages and we're
telling them, 'Hey experiment.' And that is what lead, in many
cases, to children going down a particular path, is early childhood
sexual exposure, sometimes it's traumatic. And by normalizing that
and mainstreaming that, what you will do is you will have more
children going down that path and that's why they want to get this
message into our schools,” Perkins said.
“I understand your argument, but is
there any data to support that?” the caller asked.
“Well if you sexualize a culture –
I can tell you the data is very clear on what's happened in the last
30 to 40 years where we have inundated young people, children, with
sexual messages and they become sexually active,” Perkins answered.
“So when you take and mix into that homosexuality and other forms
of sexuality into that, yes they are going to move down that path,
they are going to engage in what you tell them about. That is why
it's problematic. That is why parents are upset about what is
happening in Hawaii and other states that are teaching their kids how
to engage in homosexual behavior, or heterosexual for that matter. I
don't want my kids that are 11, 12 and 13 years old taught how to put
on a condom or taught about how to engage in sexual behavior with
someone who has HIV in a safe fashion. That is not what the schools
should be about. They should be about teaching our kids to read, to
write, to engage in science. How do we ever expect to compete
globally when we're fixated on teaching our kids about sex?”