Defending his offensive remarks comparing gay people to alcoholics, Gov. Rick Perry on Monday dug himself an even deeper hole. He even tried to dismiss his rancid history of pandering to religious-righters by bashing the LGBT community.
CNBC’s “Squawk Box” host Joe Kernan told Perry how offensive his most recent remarks were:
“I have a really high bar for what I would take offense to, but that would exceed the bar for me on being an offensive comment. I don’t think gay marriage leads to cirrhosis of the liver or domestic violence or DWIs. I don’t understand how that’s similar.”
He went on to ask whether Perry thinks gay people can be “cured” of their homosexuality, as the new Texas Republican Party platform suggests. Perry said he didn’t know and would “leave that to the psychologists and the doctors.” Kernan didn’t let him get away with that cynical trick:
“Well, the psychologists, they’ve already weighed in. They’ve dismissed the idea that sexual orientation is a mental disorder.”
Kernan then gave Perry the chance to explain how his and the Republican Party’s unrelenting hostility to the LGBT community doesn’t turn off a growing number of voters. Perry’s response was breathtakingly hypocritical:
“I don’t necessarily condone that lifestyle. I don’t condemn it, either. We’re all children of god. And the fact is that people will decide where they want to live if Washington will respect the Tenth Amendment.”
Perry doesn’t condemn LGBT people? Seriously? Let’s review, again, Perry’s history of gay-bashing:
- In 2005, at a ceremonial signing of a ban on same-sex marriage in Texas, Perry suggested that gay military veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should probably live somewhere other than the Lone Star State.
- In 2011 Perry criticized the Obama administration’s defense of the human rights of people who are imprisoned, brutalized and even murdered because they are gay, calling the administration’s policy “not in America’s interests” and “not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.”
- Also in 2011 during his disastrous presidential campaign, Perry appeared in a television ad in which he criticized allowing gay people to serve openly in the military.
- In 2013 Perry compared opposing gay Boy Scouts to opposing slavery.
And don’t forget that Perry’s prayer extravaganza in Houston weeks before he announced his disastrous presidential campaign in 2011 featured a virtual “who’s who” of gay-bashers and assorted extremists.
Now he tries to cover up his hateful history. Good luck with that.
