Media Research Center’s Tim Graham talked to Janet Mefferd yesterday where he claimed that opponents of same-sex marriage can’t get on TV, a point which he then undercut when he admitted that anti-gay activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Harry Jackson actually made the rounds on TV to respond to President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality. Graham called Obama’s announcement a “tragic,” “dark” and “depressing moment” for America, and declared that he “would like to see what would happen” if pastors like Jackson could speak about same-sex marriage during interviews just as “he does at his church”:
Graham: I think for a lot of people Obama saying, ‘I think this should be the way it is in America,’ was really a tragic moment for the country, it was a very dark moment, a very depressing moment. Those people, like me, who have that opinion, try getting on television!
Mefferd: That’s what I was going to ask you, as you were surveying the landscape of the media over the weekend and since the President made this stand on his new evolution, which was really an old evolution that he brought out again, did you see many conservatives or many people who were in favor only of traditional marriage getting a say so on TV?
Graham: A little bit, I mean the most prominent one of course has been Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and he has made the rounds a bit, I think some of the best things he said is again, in a political context they’re not really having a moral discussion, the media wants to discuss this in political terms. I think the hard thing for people to do, I saw Bishop Harry Jackson on News Hour on PBS, he doesn’t really do in the studio what he does at his church. He doesn’t reach for the Bible, he doesn’t make a testimony, I think people get intimidated saying ‘I’m here in this secular place and I’m going to say secular things.’ I just wonder, I would like to see what would happen, if you try to engage these people, because you have to explain this is where the opposition comes, it’s from a religious, traditional point of view.
Graham may be on to something, as TV interviews might be much more candid and exhilarating if Harry Jackson told the hosts at PBS or MSNBC that demonic forces, specifically the Queen of Heaven, are responsible for gay rights, just as he preaches in church:
Or if Perkins went on CNN or Fox News and said gays are “held captive by The Enemy”:
