FALSE PROPHET
Tony Perkins
Pastor and President of Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group
As manager of Woody Jenkins’s 1996 US Senate campaign, Perkins signed business contracts with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. Perkins also once served as a State Representative in Louisiana, where he authored and passed the nation’s first Covenant Marriage law. Perkins is a strong supporter of the “Big Lie,” signing a letter from the Conservative Action Project asking battleground state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump slates of electors. In January 2022, Perkins said that criticizing Christian nationalism for its ties to January 6 equates to "shaming Christians for trying to impose their beliefs on America."
Tony Perkins is a Southern Baptist pastor, president of the Family Research Council (designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), an influential Washington D.C. insider, and a leading architect of the religious right’s political infrastructure. In 2018, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appointed Perkins to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Hindu American Foundation criticized Perkins' “long history of hateful stances against non-Christians.”
Perkins’ Christian Nationalist Rhetoric
Argues that “evil” Muslims and progressive Christians don't deserve the same Constitutional freedom of religion as conservative Christians because “true religious freedom” only applies to “orthodox religious viewpoints” like his.
Spreading Islamophobia, Perkins said: “We are a nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. That’s the foundation of our nation, not Islam, but the Judeo-Christian God.”
Behind the Community/Cultural Impact Team model, an often overlooked but powerful driver of the religious right’s political infrastructure, providing evangelical churches with “in-house leadership for congregational response to the moral and social issues that impact the community, state, and nation.”
Applauds Italy’s new prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who has previously praised Hitler ally Benito Mussolini, been described as “Italy's most far-right prime minister since Mussolini,” and centered her campaign around far-right Christian opposition to immigrants and LGBTQ rights.
Called racist conspiracy theories surrounding President Barack Obama's birth certificate "legitimate," and said it "makes sense" to believe the Christian Obama is actually a Muslim.
Perkins’ Christian Nationalist Policy Positions
On the “necessity” of advocating against LGBTQ individuals: “To me, that is the height of hatred, to be silent when we know there are individuals that are engaged in activity, behavior, and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation.”
Says the marriage debate “is literally about the entire culture: it’s about the rule of law, it’s about the country, it’s about our future… it’s about the loss of religious freedom, it’s about the inability to be who we are as a people.”
In a 2015 interview, Perkins agreed with extremist Messianic Jewish pastor Jonathan Cahn that Hurricane Joaquin was a "sign of God's wrath" over the legalization of gay marriage and abortion, saying: "God is trying to send us a message."