Soledad O'Brien Grills, Interrupts, and 'Agrees to Disagree' With Tony Perkins on Gay Marriage
In a rather blatant show of a double standar
d, CNN's Soledad O'Brien
interrupted and grilled the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins over
his opposition to same-sex marriage, but she gave an exceedingly soft interview to a guest who was "elated" at President Obama's open support
of same-sex marriage. The interviews kicked off Thursday's 7 a.m. hour
of Starting Point.
CNN was quite one-sided
in its Wednesday afternoon coverage of Obama's announcement in favor of
gay marriage, and O'Brien simply carried that bias into Thursday
morning. She sought the "reaction" of guest Mitchell Gold to the
President's remarks, and Gold told her he was "still elated" and lauded
the President's "courageous" action.
Soledad
even asked Gold if he was "disappointed" that the President may not
have gone far enough in leaving the issue to the states. This is the
same CNN reporter who aired a prime-time one-hour special titled "Gary
and Tony Have a Baby," so her bias toward same-sex marriage is pretty
obvious.
Unsurprisingly, Perkins was grilled by Soledad after she threw
softballs for Gold. First, she demanded his reasons for opposing
same-sex marriage – a question she never asked of her other guest. "I
want to ask you a question about sort of, what is your big argument
against gay marriage? What's the root of your argument against it?"
That started a back-and-forth between the two on the whole issue. [Video below. Audio here.]
A transcript of the segment, which aired on Starting Point on May 10 at 7:00 a.m. EDT, is as follows:
[7:00]
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, good. Good morning to you. Listen, give me a sense
of your reaction this morning after hearing President Obama's
announcement.
MITCHELL GOLD, founder, Faith In America: Well, I'm still elated and
filled with emotion. What President Obama did yesterday was so
courageous...
(...)
O'BRIEN: Well, he also said, Mitchell, he believes that the issue
should be decided state by state, which really isn't going as far as
potentially as he could go. Are you disappointed by that?
(...)
O'BRIEN: He talked about it being an evolution, and he talked about
even the impact that his wife and his daughters' experiences have had on
this evolution. Do you believe, in fact, it was sort of a personal
evolution or was it more of a political evolution, and I know you are
often heavily involved in politics, where you look at the poll numbers
especially how the poll numbers trend among young voters and you think
this is a smart political evolution actually.
(...)
[7:09]
O'BRIEN: I want to ask you a question about sort of, what is your big
argument against gay marriage? What's the root of your argument against
it?
PERKINS: Well, it's an argument for marriage. It's an argument for
marriage. When we look at what the impact that policy, public policy has
had on marriage, you know, we don't have to guess about that. We go
back to the late '60s with the adoption of no fault divorce. When a
government takes a position – a policy position on marriage, it has an
effect.
And we've seen the consequences of that. We have over 40 percent of
children being born out of wedlock. We have a decline in marriage, a
rise in cohabitation. The social costs of that are tremendous.
(Crosstalk)
O'BRIEN: When government took a position – but when government took a
position, let's say, against the ban on interracial marriage it had an
effect too, right? It brought legal marriage to blacks and whites who
wanted to get married.
(Crosstalk)
PERKINS: You're talking about redefinition. You're not talking about –
there is no rational reason to keep people of different races that were
of opposite sex to marry. They met the qualifications of the definition
of marriage. What we're talking about here is a further redefinition of
marriage.
O'BRIEN: But hasn't marriage been redefined and redefined?
(Crosstalk)
PERKINS: The effect that's going to have – it's going to intentionally
create environments where you have children growing up without a mom and
a dad, and social science is overwhelming –
(Crosstalk)
O'BRIEN: But we have environments where children grow up. Forgive me
for interrupting you – but have environments already in heterosexual
couples where kids grow up without a mom and a dad. So you're certainly
not arguing well gay marriage is fine as long as the couples don't want
to have kids, because then you would be able to avoid that problem of no
– kids growing up without a mom and a dad, or older couples who aren't
going to have kids.
PERKINS: There's no argument that – there's no argument that those
things have occurred and that the state of marriage in this country is
problematic. There's no argument there. What I'm saying is, you look at
the consequences, the cost do government as a result of that, the
increased social cost. Why would we want to intentionally do more of
that? The point here is public policy -- what we set doesn't mean that
everybody is going to reach that standard, but we should set a standard
that is best for society. We don't make public policy based upon –
(Crosstalk)
O'BRIEN: Doesn't public policy follow culture? But it sounds to me like
you're saying public policy sets culture. I would say maybe culture
actually goes first and public policy follows when you're -- certainly
if you're going to talk about equality and rights to sort of say, well,
you know, I'm concerned about this issue so we'll overlook the equal
rights part of it, seems a little unfair at the least.
PERKINS: Well, it's not an issue of equal rights. The – everybody has
the same rights, what we're is the redefinition of marriage –
O'BRIEN: How is it not –
PERKINS: – and it goes much beyond marriage –
(Crosstalk)
O'BRIEN: Wait no, no, let me stop you there. Forgive me, and I just
want to – let me stop you at that point. So how is it not an issue of
equal rights if one group can get married and another group cannot?
PERKINS: There are restrictions on marriage now. You can't marry a
close relative. You can't marry someone who is already married. So
everybody has restrictions placed on them on who they can marry in our
society. And this goes beyond the issue of marriage. This goes beyond as
we've seen, curriculum that is introduced into schools. I mean parents,
they want to have a right over what their children are taught.
And we've already seen that parents lose the right to determine what
values their children are instructed with that are in contradiction to
their religious convictions. So this goes way beyond just marriage. It
goes to the employees and employer relationship. It goes to public
facilities. So it's a much bigger issue than just two people who love
each other and want to commit their lives to each other. They're free to
do that. They just can't redefine marriage and try to bring with that
all of these other issues that accompany it.
(Crosstalk)
O'BRIEN: But I think marriage has – but hasn't marriage been redefined
over and over and over? In the 1800s, right, women were property of
their husband. Marriage has been redefined over time on that issue.
PERKINS: No.
O'BRIEN: In slave era, black people could not marry each other, right?
Marriage has been redefined to say that actually black people can –
people who are no longer slaves and blacks can marry. Interracial
marriage is now legal. That happened as recently as 1967. It was illegal
when my parents got married. My dad's white, my mom's black. So
marriage has – is always being redefined, what is legal and under the
law in marriage, right?
PERKINS: No, marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman.
That has – that definition has never changed for over 5,000 years of
human history. What we're talking about here is changing the very core
definition of marriage.
O'BRIEN: Marriage has always been as someone has decided to define it,
and sometimes they change that definition. That definition has changed.
Marriage – a man and woman as long as they're white in some laws, right?
So I would disagree with you on that.
PERKINS: Never been changed from a man and a woman.
O'BRIEN: But the idea of marriage and the institution changes all the
time. So the idea that somehow this is the first change to marriage, I
think, you might be mistaken on it.
PERKINS: No, I admitted that. We have changed the policy regarding the
marriage. The example I used was in the issue of no fault divorce, and
the weakening of the marriage laws and what it has resulted in
significant social cost and ramifications. So these things should be
evaluated very carefully before we make such a – this would go beyond
anything that's ever been done before, as I said, going back to the core
definition of marriage that's always been between a man and a woman.
O'BRIEN: Well, we're going to agree to disagree on this one. Tony
Perkins, nice to have you on the show, as always. Appreciate it.
