This is Tony Perkins. He is much scarier than the Tony Perkins who played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. This Tony Perkins makes blood spinning down a bathtub drain look like a cup of Kool-Aid spilled at a Girl Scout fundraiser.
This Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council, the political offshoot of Focus on the Family, which is James Dobson’s main organization.
James Dobson is a person very keen on calling himself a Christian. So is Tony Perkins. So are all the people who work for and/or support their organizations.
Tony Perkins carries “a tremendous burden to reclaim the culture for Christ.” That’s what it says about him on the FRC website. So it must be true.
Oh, and that little kerfuffle you might have heard about last winter, when the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the Family Research Council as a hate group, because it’s that virulently anti-gay? According to Perkins, that was nothing more than “the left’s smear campaign of conservatives.”
It’s all just part of Tony’s big fat Christian burden.
Being a lobbytitian (half-lobbiest, half-politician—and isn’t that what they all are anymore?), Tony’s other big burden is money. Tony wants lots and lots of money. And he knows that nothing makes a certain kind of person reach for his or her wallet faster than the fear that there are actually gay people in the world.
Hence, this recent fundraising letter sent by Tony to Family Research Council supporters:
Sigh.
So, I just came back from five days spent at The Hotel del Coronado, where my wife and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Upon returning home I found a few emails alerting me to the letter above. So I thought I’d write a little something about it. After all, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Center are still to so many the public face of Christianity. And that’s a travesty that I, an everyday, normal, non-insane Christian, am inclined to help combat.
But as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t write a decent piece about this letter. No clever angle for the story came to me; no witty perspective, no engaging spin. It’s like at some level I just didn’t care about Tony Perkins and his pathetic letter. I got as far as what you now see written above the letter, and no further. After that I just ran out of writing juice.
I chalked it up to some sort of anniversary hangover. After all, I am still on the week off I’m spending with my wife. I dunno. But I can tell when I’m just not going to be able to write a piece, and this was one of those times. So I let it go.
And I spent a wonderful day at home with my wife.
And just now, as I was heading off to bed, it occurred to me why I couldn’t figure out how to write this piece. It’s because my feelings about it are so … extremely absolute. There’s zero traction in it for me. It’s like trying to run on ice. No grip.
Every single time I think of Tony Perkins and this letter, nothing more interesting or edifying comes to my mind than a block of feelings that, broken down, runs about like this:
This animal. This cretin. This travesty. This demon. This parasite. This blight. This twisted purveyor of evil. This insidious enemy of everything for which Christ stood. This sickening mule. This heartless charlatan. This shameless huckster. This vile opportunist. This creator of human suffering. This trafficker in pain. This braying bully. This puffing affront to decency.
This preening, flag-waving goon.
This grinning, slavering creature who, in exchange for money, induces children to commit suicide.
This odorous, rotten chum pretending he’s nourishment.
This lover of hate.
If you’re a Christian who actually understands and cares about Christ, please tell anyone who will listen that Tony Perkins is to Christianity what a slimy, chewing worm is to a perfectly wonderful apple.
So. There’s that bit of venting.
And now to bed, to sleep, to dream of a world in which people like Tony Perkins would never dare promote themselves as representative of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.
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