On Washington Watch yesterday, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins chatted with Oklahoma pastor Paul Blair of Reclaiming America for Christ about a federal judge’s decision to strike down Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage, and the two Religious Right figures were unsurprisingly outraged.
Blair, who has claimed that the gay rights movement is a Satanic endeavor to destroy America and introduce communism, said that the movement to stop marriage equality is no different from the fights against slavery and Nazi Germany: “It’s time for us to stand with men like Charles Finney in opposition to slavery and with Dietrich Bonhoeffer to opposition to totalitarian government in Germany. We’re facing much the same thing.”
Blair: We had talked in years past when they made the change as far as the United States Military and just exactly where this is going to lead. Well, now this is on our front doorstep and it’s not just going to stop here. Ultimately, this will be forced upon pastors and our hiring practices and any Christian business within the state of Oklahoma. It’s up to us now to decide that along with our forefather pastors, “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” It’s time for us to stand with men like Charles Finney in opposition to slavery and with Dietrich Bonhoeffer to opposition to totalitarian government in Germany, we’re facing much the same thing. The answer really is simple, if we will just adhere to what the rule of law is, the Declaration and the Constitution are very clear. If we follow the rules, this union would function beautifully; unfortunately, we haven’t followed the rules in almost seventy-five years.
Because we all know how “beautifully” America was functioning seventy-five years ago.
Blair also told Perkins that the Oklahoma judge, in his marriage equality ruling, “shook his fist in the face of God and defied natural law and he shook his fist in the face of 6,000 years of human history.” He claimed that the decision was part of a growing “omnipotent, national dictatorship,” and urged Oklahoma to simply ignore the judge’s “illegal acts.”
Perkins, apparently unaware that gay people live in Oklahoma, said that the legal challenge to the state’s anti-gay laws is part of a “strategy” to “go into the heart of the conservative part of the country and force this redefinition on the people.”
Blair: It seems that any time the federal-anything acts, the citizens of the country need to shake and tremble. Not only did this guy throw out the will of 76 percent of the voters in Oklahoma from 2004, but he shook his fist in the face of God and defied natural law and he shook his fist in the face of 6,000 years of human history in stating that he knows better about how civil society should function than what God, history or the citizens of the state of Oklahoma know.
Perkins: Pastor Blair, it’s not even a question in Oklahoma, 76 percent of voters affirmed the marriage amendment. I grew up in Oklahoma and went to high school there, this is the reddest of red states. I think the strategy here is to try to go into the heart of the conservative part of the country and force this redefinition on the people. What is going to be the response, in your opinion, from Oklahomans to this decision?
Blair: We’ve already been responding to some of the other things, quite frankly beginning the travesty of Obamacare, we have been acting. But the bottom line is this, Tony: the Tenth Amendment is not going to defend itself. In the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution we didn’t establish an omnipotent, national dictatorship to rule over us. Article 1, Section 8, We the People of the United States created this federal government, we only delegated seventeen legally defined and limited responsibilities, and quite frankly the federal government is running roughshod over those limitations. Unless the states simply say we are not going to enforce your illegal acts, they’re going to continue to do whatever they want to do.
