Louisiana Voice

Well, it’s official.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has bestowed upon the right-wing lobbyist group the Family Research Council (FRC) the official status of a CHURCH and Tony Perkins (not the late actor, but the former Louisiana legislator from Greenwell Springs) as its religious leader, or pastor, as it were.

A church.

The agenda of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who says it is a “MISCONCEPTION” that the founding fathers wanted the separation of church and state, notwithstanding, there can be no earthly way to see FRC in any light other than as an association established – and functioning – as a lobbying organization.

That FRC actively lobbies against abortion and LGBTQ rights and in favor of exemptions to civil rights laws should prohibit it from either being designated as a church or in participating in partisan politics.

And it doesn’t – or shouldn’t – matter which side of a given issue it advocates. If it promoted abortion or LGBTQ rights or took a hard line on the enforcement of civil rights laws across the board, it still should not be designated as a church.

To do so makes a mockery of the Constitution.

Just to be clear for the trolls out there who will attempt to pick this post to pieces, I will repeat: It does not matter which side of an issue you happen to espouse. If you are involved in ANY politcally-charged issue, no matter which side you advocate, you should not call yourself a church.

To be clear, I have no issue with its status as a non-profit organization. The American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are non-profits.

But they are not churches.

FRC, it should be noted, is also against gender-affirming (transgender) SURGERY – in other words, changing one gender designation to another. But it has not seen fit to take a public stance against the slaughter of school children other than for Perkins to blame the shootings on “RECKLESS RHETORIC.”

Sometimes silence can be deafening.

But calling a multimillion-dollar organization established for the sole purpose of lobbying Congress and state legislatures on any politically-volatile issue a church?

C’mon, folks. Let’s use a little common sense here.

We may as well designate the New Orleans Saints a church. I mean, look at some of the people in the stands during a Saints home game. If that isn’t worship, I don’t know what you’d call it.

How about the gas pumps at Sam’s Club? The rush to those pumps during the recent spike in gas prices resembled some religious tent revival services I’ve seen. And Waffle House. Those poor overworked wait staff employees are louder than any preacher and the hungry crowds are just as fervent as any amen corner.

Might as well make them churches, too. And don’t forget the Tiger Athletic Foundation out at LSU. The influence they have over the hiring and firing of coaches has to be divinely-inspired. And they’re as skilled at fund-raising as any televangelist

And of course, there’s the most obvious of all: Mar A Largo, a Mecca-like destination for the Frump devotees. And he’s exhibited something of a huckster’s skill at raising funds.

I probably shouldn’t have suggested that last one because some reader may actually get that suggestion to him.

But back to FRC and its president, Tony Perkins.

In 1996, then-State Rep. Woody Jenkins was waging a spirited campaign for the US Senate. His campaign manager was Perkins. Perkins signed off on a check for $82,000 for the purchase of a robocall campaign from a guy named David Duke. The money to be paid to the former KKK leader was routed through another firm in order to conceal the Duke connection.

Perkins explained to the Baton Rouge Advocate: “We didn’t want any appearance that we had any connection to Duke.”

No s**t? You didn’t want an appearance that you were in bed with the KKK?

While Perkins insisted to The Advocate that the campaign had complied with federal election law, the Federal Elections Commission felt otherwise and fined the Duke campaign $3000 for illegally concealing the deal with Duke.

On another occasion, Perkins, who at the time was a reserve Baton Rouge police officer, learned in advance of the potential of violence at a scheduled protest against a Baton Rouge abortion clinic. Because he also worked as a reporter for Jenkins’s weak-signal television station, “Woody Vision,” he neglected to inform his superiors at BRPD. Instead, with a camera crew in tow, he waited in hopes of getting the anticipated melee on film. There were many arrests but fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Perkins, though, was suspended from by the department for violating his oath of office and subsequently resigned.

The SPLC in 2010 designated FRC as a HATE GROUP because of its trashing of LGBTQ people and for spreading “harmful pseudoscience about them.”

Rather than embracing the Christian doctrine of love and acceptance, FRC has instead advocated the criminalization of homosexual conduct, an official position that certainly seems to validate its hate group status.

But a church?