Truth Wins Out: Tony Perkins 'Cannot Be Allowed To Exploit' FRC Shooting

Truth Wins Out this evening joined the Southern Poverty Law Center in condemning Family Research Council president Tony Perkins suggesting the SPLC which deems FRC a "hate group", deserves blame for suspect Floyd Corkins shooting a security guard at FRC's headquarters yesterday.

Rejecting Perkins' suggestion that his LGBT opponents bear some responsibility, TWO executive director Wayne Besen said in a statement that "the LGBT community knows all too well the devastating consequences of violence."

"Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people are harassed, threatened, intimidated, beaten, and killed on a daily basis in violent acts of hatred all over the world, simply because of who they are and who they love," he said. "That is why -- yesterday, today, and every day -- we stand squarely against violence in all its forms, because violence is never a way to resolve political differences or settle disputes."

"[Perkins] expressed appreciation for the LGBT community's swift repudiation of violence but asked us to go further and disavow FRC's hate-group designation. Truth Wins Out cannot do that," the equality activist insisted.

[FRC] says that gays are deviants and pedophiles, strongly promotes fraudulent 'pray-away-the-gay' therapy, calls for the imprisonment of gay people, and says that homosexuality is destructive to society. Perkins cannot be allowed to exploit the sympathy rightfully generated by this inexcusable crime to whitewash his group's ongoing anti-gay activities. If the FRC wants to stop being labeled a hate group, it must stop doing and saying hateful things.

TWO Director of Communications John Becker also rejected Perkins' perspective, saying that insisted that "yesterday's senseless act of violence does not exonerate the Family Research Council and other anti-gay hate groups from the decades they've spent slandering, demonizing, and actively lying about the LGBT community."

He went on, "The Southern Poverty Law Center - a venerable civil rights organization that monitors and documents extremism across the country - rightfully labeled the Family Research Council an anti-gay hate group because of its extensive history of spreading malicious, hateful falsehoods about gay people. FRC is not a hate group because of its public policy views, as Mr. Perkins has alleged. It is a hate group because it earned that designation."

Andrew Shirvell Ordered To Pay Chris Armstrong $4.5 Million

A jury today said that former Michigan assistant district attorney Andrew Shirvell must pay Chris Armstrong (pictured) $4.5 million for 2010 blog posts that attacked Armstrong and his alleged "homosexual agenda" during Armstrong's tenure as student body president for University of Michigan.

ABC News offers more details:

Christopher Armstrong's attorney Deborah Gordon says a jury in U.S. District Court ruled in favor of her client Thursday.

Armstrong accused Andrew Shirvell of defamation and causing him emotional distress on an anti-gay blog, in Facebook posts and during visits to the Ann Arbor campus.
...
Armstrong had offered to drop the lawsuit if Shirvell apologized.

Armstrong's suit also only asked for $25,000. Mr. Shirvell sure could have saved a lot of trouble and money if he had just offered some contrition instead of rattling on about "radical homosexual agendas" and how his blogs were a one-man "movement" to oust Armstrong.

SPLC Responds To Tony Perkins' 'Outrageous' Claims

Mark Potok, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center, penned a post this afternoon in which he takes on Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and others' assertion that SPLC deserves blame for yesterday's shooting at his organization's HQ.

Reminding readers that his organization has spent four decades working to end political violence and have "strongly criticized all those who endorse such violence, whether on the political left or the political right," Potok says that Perkins' remarks are "outrageous" and amount to nothing more than a craven attempt to score political points.

From Potok's response:

Perkins’ accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.
…
Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC’s criticisms of the FRC and the FRC’s criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.

Towleroad Guide To The Tube #1189

NOT PRETTY: South African police open fire on striking mine workers.

LEND AN APPENDAGE: The next generation of robotic hand is here.

ALL HAIL: Presenting Yasushi, king of the capybara.

'YOU REALIZE FROM YOUR FIRST STROKE': Vintage Gillette commercial.

For recent Guides to the Tube, click HERE.

News: Romney's 13%, Dave Mustaine, Lauren Conrad, Influential Victorians

Mitt Romney claims he pays at least a 13% tax rate. From the GOP presidential hopeful: "I did go back and look at my taxes, and, over the past 10 years, I never paid less than 13 percent... Every year, I paid at least 13 percent, and if you add in, in addition, the amount that goes to charity, the number gets well above 20 percent."

A shirtless Stephen Amell gets me even more excited for the CW's Arrow.

84% of New Yorkers couldn't give a hoot whether or not our next mayor is gay or lesbian.

Whet your appetite for British period drama with the Downton Abbey season 3 trailer.

One trick pony Rick Santorum will try to rally conservatives against marriage equality in Washington State.

The Ukrainian Moral Commission has decided that Spongebob Squarepants is gay and therefore unfit for television.

Thoughts on the late Gore Vidal's legacy: "It is difficult to overstate the courage Vidal demonstrated in publishing 'The City and the Pillar' in his early years as a writer. At that time, homosexuality was both a crime and, in the eyes of the medical establishment, a debilitating 'disease' — as well as the great American taboo. But honesty, both intellectual and moral, was an innate Vidal quality all his life — he always said and wrote exactly what he thought, no matter what the cost.

Local governments are using eminent domain to help rescue residents from underwater mortgages. Could this be just the tool needed to turn solve the nation's property-related problems? From NBC News: "Critics say seizing individual properties would benefit only the homeowners who gets a break on their loan balance. But proponents counter that local mortgage seizures would serve the public good because they would help boost local housing markets and speed economic recovery."

Anderson Cooper is still on vacation with Kelly Ripa as rumors continue to swirl that he booted boyfriend Ben Maisani after Maisani kissed another man.

Congratulations to Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott! A Google-derived algorithm decided they are the most influential Victorian novelists.

Great Britain is pretty "disappointed" after Ecuador granted Wikileaks leader Julian Assange political asylum.

As part of their effort to oust Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty, the Republican who single-handedly squashed civil unions there, the group Fight Back Colorado is asking readers to pick the lawmaker's next profession: Chick-fil-A jockey; spin class instructor, because of all the spin he puts on his hateful politics; or undertaker, "because he killed the civil unions bill—and 30 other important bills in the process".

Jodie Foster has Kristen Stewart's back.

Cheyenne Jackson sits down with David Mixner to discuss a variety of topics, including his forthcoming Broadway show alongside Henry Winkler: "In my Broadway play coming up [The Performers], I have some dialogue and some costumes that are gonna take some real cojones to say and wear without some initial embarrassment. But that's why I do what I do. Cuz if something scares you, it means you should do it. Again, thank you Oprah."

A new report that will shape the next decade of scientific research "emphasizes the need for research to better understand the sun, how it interacts with Earth and other bodies in the solar system, and the origins of potentially harmful space weather..."

Former reality star Lauren Conrad took down this video of her destroying books because it rightfully upset people.

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine claims President Obama staged recent mass shootings, including the one in Aurora, Colorado, so that he can destroy gun rights.

Let us not play the blame game with the FRC shooting.

FRC's Tony Perkins Says SPLC 'Should Be Held Responsible' For Floyd Corkins' 'Domestic Terrorism': VIDEO

Like NOM's Brian Brown, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is blaming the Southern Poverty Law Center for Floyd Corkins opening fire at his group's HQ yesterday.

"Floyd Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy," Perkins said on Fox News today. "I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held responsible that is leading to intimidation of what the FBI has characterized as domestic terrorism."

Watch Perkins' remarks AFTER THE JUMP.