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The Department of Defense reported this week that military suicides reached new heights in 2012, with 349 servicemembers taking their own life last year across the four branches.
The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins thinks he can explain the tragic statistics.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has joined American Family Association's Buster Wilson in linking the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell to the military's suicide rate. Discussing the Pentagon's new policy on allowing women to serve in combat units yesterday on his radio program, Perkins said that the Obama administration's work in "driving Christianity out [and] putting homosexuality in" are "adding additional stress" that leads to a higher rate of suicide.
Right Wing Watch posted the audio of Perkins' comments.
Even by the standards of the religious right movement, this is pretty vile. Not only does Perkins assume that gay people can't be Christian, but he's drawing a truly ridiculous connection, based on nothing but his own bigotry. How does Perkins even imagine this working, exactly? There were 349 servicemembers who felt "stressed" by serving alongside openly-gay soldiers, so they killed themselves?
The mind reels.
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It's like the only Family Research this Council does is taking surveys among the members of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Someone needs to unskew this nimrod.
The only difference between those two groups is that Westboro stands on the street corners showing everyone their crazy.
The largest number of these are men killing themselves is when they are no longer around lots of men- who must go back to normal life with women and stuff.
So that makes them prime candidates for men who have no appreciation of companionship with other men?
Let's not make the obvious salacious comments at this point because this is a real tragedy happening to people defending our country. When the numbers of suicides exceeds that of combat deaths, this becomes an issue that both sides should deal with seriously, and without the gratuitous injection of comments to score some cheap political points.
If the right wing has any true compassion for our warriors, they can start by joining Democrats in supporting Veterans programs both in mental health and retraining to ease the transition back into civilian life. One third of these suicides are not from people who have been in combat, and their stresses have to do with transitions where financial challenges are a dominant factor. How about not standing in the way of the Veterans Jobs Bill? Why does the Right wing want to short change those who have served? Patriotism is not about waving the flag more vigorously than the next guy. If you don't take care of your own, your flag pins mean nothing.
Because they've been harvested, their value extracted, and now it is time to dispose of them.
Nothing personal, business is business. When an asset becomes a liability it's time to dispose of the liability.
.
Tony Perkins, head of a designated hate group, who once bragged of buying David Duke's mailing list "for my christmas card list."
Driving his variety of "Christian" out of the military would be a good thing - we'd then have a military where we didn't have to worry about their loyalty to the government.
Really detestable. I think I just threw up a little.
If being around LGBT folk causes suicide please make him grand marshall at the next parade.
Much better.
I'm not even a little bit surprised by this. Which makes the whole thing that much sadder.
sure fella, the sexual orientation of others is way more traumatic than war...
Maybe just being straight is traumatic. Tony seems pretty wound up.
It's my understanding that Israel requires soldiers to leave their weapons on base, not take them home, and that this policy resulted in a radical reduction in suicides and homicides committed by soldiers. Not sure of the extent of the policy, but it's pretty compelling.
Couldn't work here, as apparently even a 5-year old can go in and buy a gun if they have the cash.
I guess he never considered the possibility that some of the service members who committed suicide did it because of harassment or as a result of PTSD. I'm sure that they were not all feeling put upon because DADT was repealed.
Correct. I wonder if Perkins has any idea how many deployments our soldiers are asked to serve, never knowing when a bomb could go off, killing them or their buddies, or being away from family and friends for long months, or feeling alienated from others in American society who have not experience these hardships. Could that have anything at all to do with it?
Thank you Mr Perkins for driving fundamentalists and people like yourself further into irrelevance .
Remember the good old days under Bush when you thought people actually gave a $hit what you said.
News flash . Your hate group has been exposed for what it is and the group you represent gets smaller and smaller each day.
The dustbin of history awaits you.
Obama administration is driving christians out? Much be a pretty tepid "xtians" vis a vis the ones that were burned at the stake, rather than renounce their faith!
I don't think Ol' Tony can't speak for Christians 'cause everything I've ever seen him do or say has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.... unless preaching hate is a Christian value .
He longs for the days of the inquisition
Spoken exactly like someone who never served in the military or in live combat. As someone who has done both, I can speak from experience that, the sexuality of the person standing next you, never crosses your mind. The only thing anyone who has ever been in live combat thinks is, I hope we make it out alive, and everyone does their job so we can make it out alive.
Secondly if someone commits suicide because of who someone else has sex with. Than they are mentally unfit for service to begin with. And if that person is spend that much time thinking about who someone else is sleeping with, than they are not doing the job they were trained to do, and risking everyone else's lives for something they have zero control over. And as I said before, are unfit for service.
He did actually serve in the military, as a Marine. Further proof that "you can always tell a Marine, you just can't tell him very much." (old swabbie joke)
Homophobia causes suicide? Find a cure for homophobia.
What about all of those soldiers who committed suicide BEFORE Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed? Or, don't they count in Perkins's book?
Poor oppressed Christians.
Remember folks, it's not the strain of multiple deployments, being shot at, facing IEDs or watching your friend's brains getting splattered all over your uniform that makes you want to kill yourself--it's the fact that he may find you attractive that is the last straw! Geez, just when I think these morons have plumbed the very deepest depths of stupidity, they prove me wrong by finding yet another, even lower level.
Hey, cut Tony a break- he's got to get this month's fund raising letter in the mail, and the topics that draw cash are getting scarce!
The evil side of Christianity sure does have a pretty mouth.
So let's see. Homosexuality is blamed for natural disasters, terrorist attacks, declining heterosexual marriage rates and now, military suicides.
Brought to you by your friends at Scapegoats R Us.
These soldiers have to get up every day and face more war, terror, possible loss of life or limb, and separation from their families. They may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel (if one even really exists). I'm guessing that might be a more reasonable explanation for what's going on with the suicides.
Wait--so are the fundamentalist Christians all stressed out and killing themselves because they can't proselytize within the military anymore? (Poor them.) But as far as I know, nobody's telling them they have to stop being Christians... On the other hand, imagine the stress of non-Christian soldiers who have religion shoved down their throats on a regular basis by their own commanders.
There are 4 letters that fools like Perkins should learn something about: PTSD.
"There are 4 letters that fools like Perkins should learn something about: PTSD."
But then that might mean people like Perkins has to give a dayum about anything other than profit and ruffling the feathers on the right, and that's never gonna happen...
There is some good news about fundamentalist christians and GLBT:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-l-windmeyer/dan-cathy-chick-fil-a_b_2564379.html
Between working in the entertainment industry AND working in New York City, I am "surrounded" by them there gay fellas for most of my day, and have been for over 15 years. Before that, I was a theater major in college. I've never tried to kill myself.
I refuse to believe I am made of stronger stuff than people in the military.
Which only leads me to the conclusion Tony Perkins doesn't know his closeted ass from his closeted elbow.
This dude is non-stop disgusting.
There is a limited data set and the DOD gathers a lot of data about each suicide. An enterprising journalist should be able to put Perkins creepy claim to the test.
Tony Perkins makes me want to buy an automatic rifle.. Just saying Tony!
Don't worry though, I'm an altruist in JeZeus' name, just like you! I'd never harm a fly!
There was an essay a couple days ago on Salon--an experience of a post-DADT gay military spouse has shown that the cure for homophobia in the military is to gradually stop hiding (and no fellow soldiers committed suicide as a result; that's just silly).
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/27/get_to_know_the_lesbians/
If you would take into consideration the comments from the Christian Reich about women in combat units that "mixed units lead to unintended pregnancies", then there is a logical set of conclusions to be drawn. If combat & other units were composed of solely teh gay, then these units would be the best in the military due to no unintended pregnancies disrupting those units. And, all military suicides would magically disappear. Or, an alternative would be to turn our all volunteer military into an all gay volunteer military.
Amazing how much hate our Christian Leaders continue to display! If Jebus came back, he would probably be a gun toting preacher of hate.
Our world is a grand place filled with wondrous experiences - wearing a uniform and going off to a stress filled, carnage laden battlefield to fight or die trying is not one of them!
Yeah, my homosexual unit member will not be on the same page as me? I will give up the fight to commit suicide? I can't sustain traumatic morale after 4 tours of duty in less than 6 years? Oh, no, the gay got on me?
Tony Perkins is no Christain - he's a simpleton! -Kevo