Tony Perkins, president of the
Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC), has criticized
former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's assertion that bans on
same-sex marriage hurt children.
Kennedy wrote the court's majority
decision in Obergefell, the 2015 case which found that gay and
lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.
Speaking with Bloomberg TV, Kennedy
said that he viewed the case in terms of how it affected the children
of gay couples.
“As I thought about this, and I
thought about it more and more, it seemed wrong – unconstitutional
– to say that over 100,000 adopted children could not have their
parents married,” Kennedy
said.
In a press release, Perkins, who has
close ties with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, said
that Kennedy “has it all backwards.”
“As social science will tell you,
Justice Kennedy has it all backwards,” Perkins wrote. “Although
he said he tried to take everything into consideration, he obviously
neglected the one thing that judges in his position are called to
consult: the Constitution.”
As evidence, Perkins pointed to an
American Thinker column by Nancy Pearcey, in which she stated
that allowing gay couples to marry harms “all children.”
(Related: Study:
Children raised by gay couples healthier, happier than general
population.)
FRC has been labeled a “hate group”
by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) over its anti-LGBT
rhetoric.