Tony Perkins, the president of the
anti-gay Family Research Council, is taking aim at John Berry,
director of the Office of Personnel Management and the highest
ranking openly gay official in the Obama administration. Berry might
be the next target of conservatives who have been putting the feet of
liberal appointments to the fire.
In a video
message posted on YouTube, Perkins uses a speech Berry delivered
in June as fodder for the argument that the Obama administration is
“pushing the homosexual agenda.”
Berry's Washington D.C. speech was in
fact severely criticized by gay bloggers and activists, some of whom
called it pandering despite his sexuality.
The speech came after a series of
missteps by the administration left bloggers and activists
frustrated, angry and threating a boycott. The Justice Department
had just filed a brief defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA), the law that allows states to ignore legal gay marriages and
defines marriage as a heterosexual union for federal agencies.
Berry was
trotted out to remind the LGBT community that gay people work
in the administration, but his speech faltered. He reiterated that
the president is committed to repeal of DOMA, but that the
administration cannot cherry pick which laws to defend, and promised
the administration would repeal the law “before the sun sets on
this administration.”
Perkins, however, used the points in
the speech to illustrate the gay community's plan, which is to “play
the victim and pass hate crimes giving sanctioned and special
protected status to those who engage in homosexual behavior” and
“use the weight of the EEOC to force acceptance of not only
homosexuality, but cross dressing and other forms of sexual deviancy
through the passage of the so-called employment non-discrimination
act.”
“The next target is the military,”
he adds.
“And once our nation's military falls
– the Defense of Marriage Act will be utterly defenseless, leaving
rouge judges and liberal legislators to impose their radical views on
the entire nation.”
“Don't doubt for a minute that they
have a plan,” Perkins says, “and they are working their plan.”
Conservatives have also campaigned for
the ouster
of openly gay safe school czar Kevin Jennings, a choice decried
by the far right since the Obama administration announced his
appointment as director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.