Tony Perkins, president of the Family
Research Council (FRC), has compared accepting transgender people to
allowing a person to jump off a building to their death.
Perkins, who has close ties to
President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, was recently
appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
(USCIRF). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recommended Perkins
for the appointment.
Perkins made his comments during
Monday's edition of his radio show, Washington Watch. After a
caller compared identifying as transgender to identifying as a cat,
Perkins agreed.
“If you are a male – genetically
you are a male, biologically you're a male – and you say, 'Well,
I'm not a male; I'm a female.' I mean, what's to keep you from
saying you're an animal?” Perkins
rhetorically asked.
Perkins went on to say that identifying
as transgender is “lunacy” and that such people are “ultimately
hurting themselves.”
“Think about this for a minute.
Someone says, ‘Well look, I’m a bird-man, alright? I’m a
bird-man and I’m going to jump off this building and fly.’ Do you
have a responsibility to stop that person from jumping off that
building? I mean, you know that they don’t have feathers and they
can’t fly, but you would hurt their feelings if you said, ‘No
wait, Fred, you’re not a bird-man. You’re a man but you’re not
a bird and you can’t fly.’ But out of respect for not hurting his
feelings, you go ahead and let him jump, and that was the end of
Fred,” he said.
“That’s again the lunacy, because
the reality is when we allow kids, people, to identify with something
other than reality, it is ultimately hurting themselves,” he added.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
has labeled FRC a “hate group” because it has “knowingly spread
false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people.”