On September 1, former police officer and President of the Family Research Council (FRC) Tony Perkins appeared on Fox News to discuss the shooting in Odessa, Texas.
During the segment, Perkins, as well as pastor Corey Brooks from New Beginnings Church, made the case that a waning morality in the United States is contributing to incidents of public violence.
Following introductions, Perkins stated that &#8220;at some point, we have to realize that as a nation, we have a problem, and the problem is not the absence of laws, it&#8217;s an absence of morality. Really, the result of a decade&#8217;s long march through the institutions of America driving religion and God from the public square.&#8221;
Host Todd Piro then asked Perkins to elaborate on a recent op-ed in which he wrote about gun violence.
Perkins replied:
<blockquote>
Well, I&#8217;m willing as a former police officer and an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment, I&#8217;m willing to sit down with the Left who say, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hear any more about your prayers.&#8221; Well, I agree. Praying alone is not enough. It&#8217;s time to act, and it&#8217;s not just about having a conversation about restricting those who should not have guns, criminals, but it&#8217;s also a discussion of the absence of a moral core in our culture today.
I mean, look, we&#8217;ve taught our kids that they come about by chance through primordial slime and then we&#8217;re surprised that they treat their fellow Americans like dirt.
It&#8217;s time we talk about the result of the Left&#8217;s systematic march through our institutions driving religious expression from the public square. I think we have to go back to the point where we instill in these children &#8211; at least give them the opportunity to know that they&#8217;re created in the image of God, therefore they have inherent value, and as the first president United States said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t think that we can have morality without religion.&#8221; We&#8217;ve driven religion from our public life, and we&#8217;re shocked that we no longer have morality and we no longer value human life.
</blockquote>
Piro then brought on Brooks, and asked him for his position.
Brooks stated:
<blockquote>
I agree a lot with with Tony just said. The fact that morality is at a &#8230; low in America right now, we have to do everything we can to make sure that we turn America back toward God. It&#8217;s unfortunate that in so many institutions, God has been forced out of the equation and as a result, you see individuals throughout America who have emptiness &#8211; whether you&#8217;re dealing with the kid in Texas or a kid on the block in Chicago &#8211; a lot of these young people have emptiness inside; they&#8217;re needing attention affirmation, and acceptance, and until we get that settled, and no matter how many laws we do, no matter how restrictive we make it &#8211; Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws, but yet we still have a high surge of violence &#8211; that is because we&#8217;re lacking in morality.
</blockquote>
When Piro noted that some in the mainstream press would argue that &#8220;religion doesn&#8217;t stop bullets,&#8221; Brooks responded:
<blockquote>
Well, I&#8217;d tell them that the legislation doesn&#8217;t stop bullets. The fact that peoples&#8217; hearts are not changed by politics; peoples&#8217; hearts are not changed because of laws; peoples&#8217; hearts are changed by God, and I really do believe that the lack of morality in America, the [act] of forcing religion into the fringes and not being a part of our society has really caused us some serious issues.
</blockquote>
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/etgeRgroL9E" width="720"></iframe></div>
Christian religious identification appears to be on the decline in the United States.
<a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx">Gallup polling</a> shows that from 1985 &#8211; 2018, the percentage of respondents who claimed to be &#8220;Protestant&#8221; slid from 57% to 35%, while the percentage of people claiming to hold no religious association at all rose from 8% to 20% over the same time period.
Identifying Catholics have also dropped by 6% (28% &#8211; 22%).
Gallup asked: &#8220;How important would you say religion is in your own life &#8211; very important, fairly important, or not very important?&#8221;
From 1992 &#8211; 2018, respondents who said that religion was &#8220;very important&#8221; dropped from 58% to 50%; respondents who said that religion was &#8220;fairly important&#8221; dropped from 29% to 23%; while respondents who said that religion was &#8220;not very important&#8221; jumped from 12% to 26%.
Gallup probed further, asking: &#8220;How often do you attend church or synagogue &#8211; every week, almost every week, about once a month, seldom, or never?&#8221;
From 1992 &#8211; 2018, &#8220;every week&#8221; dropped from 34% to 22%, while &#8220;never&#8221; jumped from 14% to 28%.

Tony Perkins On Mass Shootings: ‘The Problem Is Not The Absence Of Laws; It’s An Absence Of Morality’

Christianity

Shooting

Tony Perkins

Now that it has been revealed that YouTube is using the radically left-wing group, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), to influence its decisions as to what is too offensive to be placed on YouTube, conservatives are justifiably furious, and are <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/377310-conservatives-cry-foul-over-controversial-groups-role-in-youtube-moderation">going public</a> with their condemnation of YouTube&#8217;s partisan slant.
The revelation that the SPLC was one of the groups monitoring YouTube content came from <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/27/google-youtube-southern-poverty-law-center-censorship/">The Daily Caller</a> as it noted that the SPLC is one of over 100 groups YouTube relies on for content-filtering process.
Brent Bozell, the head of the Media Research Center, stated, &#8220;It speaks more to YouTube than it does to the SPLC. It&#8217;s not surprising at all that the SPLC is doing this sort of thing. YouTube has a legal right to do whatever it wants in this space, but it has no ethical right to project itself as some kind of objective purveyor of information when it not only aligns itself with radical groups, but won&#8217;t be transparent on how it&#8217;s doing business.&#8221;
The SPLC has called groups such as the Family Research Council and the Center for Immigration Studies &#8220;hate groups,&#8221; while <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2016/0218/Does-the-Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-target-conservatives">listing</a> Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson in their 2014 &#8220;Extremist Files.&#8221;
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, slammed the inclusion of the SPLC, saying, &#8220;They have to do one or the other &#8212; they are players on the field of public policy and acting as the umpire. The SPLC is an advocacy organization for policy. Yet at the same time, they want to flag people on the other side of the debate.&#8221; He warned YouTube:
<blockquote>
They are going to find this is a double-edged sword. They want to appease the liberals they&#8217;ve stacked onto their boards, then they will find the lawmakers that created the favorable regulatory and tax environments for them will start changing for them as well. You&#8217;re going to find lawmakers who have been reluctant because of their conservative moorings to weigh in on this. If you see these companies continue to take steps like YouTube teaming up with the SPLC to flag content, you are going to see regulatory action taken or pushed by Congress.
</blockquote>
SPLC President Richard Cohen protested to a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in November that SPLC&#8217;s refusal to name Antifa protesters as a hate group was because Antifa didn&#8217;t meet the specific hate group definition of targeting specific classes of people.
Cohen <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/8967/7-things-you-need-know-about-southern-poverty-law-aaron-bandler">refused</a> to call Black Lives Matter a hate group in 2016, despite the fact that its members had explicitly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/7353/5-things-you-need-know-about-black-lives-matter-amanda-prestigiacomo">called for dead cops</a>. Cohen said, &#8220;There&#8217;s no doubt that some protesters who claim the mantle of Black Lives Matter have said offensive things, like the chant &#8216;pigs in a blanket, fry &#8217;em like bacon&#8217; that was heard at one rally. But before we condemn the entire movement for the words of a few, we should ask ourselves whether we would also condemn the entire Republican Party for the racist words of its presumptive nominee &#8212; or for the racist rhetoric of many other politicians in the party over the course of years.&#8221;
Last year, PragerU sued YouTube for censoring its videos. <a href="http://humanevents.com/2011/07/28/isnt-the-southern-poverty-law-center-the-real-hate-group-2/">Human Events</a> wrote as far back as 2011 in a piece titled, &#8220;Isn&#8217;t the Southern Poverty Law Center the Real Hate Group?&#8221;:
<blockquote>
All of which begs the question: Is the SPLC, by its own criteria, the real hate group? It still carries weight in plenty of circles here in America, and so when it categorizes an organization as a hate group, many people of good conscience are influenced by that designation, one which is quite stigmatizing and destructive, as evidenced by the recent events involving FOTF and AFA mentioned above. Yet it is the leaders of the SPLC who are either irresponsibly attacking other fine organizations, or worse still, knowingly defaming them.Who then deserves the title of &#8220;hate group,&#8221; Focus on the Family or the Southern Poverty Law Center? Who has been guilty of demonizing others and spreading hurtful, inaccurate information? Whose actions and words have been hateful? The record speaks for itself.
</blockquote>

Conservatives Slam YouTube For Using Radical Left-Wing Site To Monitor Content

Prager University

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

YouTube

Donald Trump, in his latest attempt to show how responsible he is, decided to <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/266556-trump-blames-two-corinthians-gaffe-on-tony-perkins">blame</a> evangelical activist Tony Perkins for Trump&#8217;s gaffe at Liberty University when he referred to Second Corinthians as &#8220;2 Corinthians.&#8221;
Speaking with Don Lemon on CNN, Trump blustered, &#8220;Tony Perkins wrote that out for me. He actually wrote out the 2, he wrote out the number 2 Corinthians. I took exactly what Tony said, and I said, &#8216;Well, Tony has to know better than anybody.&#8217; &#8221;
In typically hyperbolic Trump fashion, the candidate stated that &#8220;a lot of people&#8221; told him his error was, in fact, correct. He puffed,&#8220;It&#8217;s a very small deal, but a lot of people in different sections of the world say 2, and I&#8217;ve had many, many people say to me.&#8221; Then he reached for another excuse: &#8220;My mother, as you know, was from Scotland, and they say 2.&#8221;
At Liberty, Trump, reading from his notes, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EIgHsGZAmk">stated</a>, &#8220;Two Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians 3:17, that&#8217;s the whole ballgame,&#8221; prompting laughter from the Christian students.
Trump&#8217;s ignorance of the Bible has been in evidence for some time; despite his<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/2678/trump-brags-about-his-great-relationship-god-hank-berrien"> protestations</a> that he &#8220;had a great relationship with God.&#8221; He <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/26/reporter-presses-donald-trump-to-name-his-favorite-bible-verse-take-a-look-at-how-he-responds/">repeatedly refused</a> to name a single Bible verse that was his favorite, <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/2675/donald-trump-pro-abortion-hank-berrien">championed abortion</a> for years, and does <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/after-saying-he-goes-a-lot-donald-trumps-church-says-hes-not-an-active-member/">not attend</a> church regularly.
<blockquote>
&#8220;I took exactly what Tony said, and I said, &#8216;Well, Tony has to know better than anybody.&#8217;&#8221;
Donald trump, with Christian humility, blaming evangelist Tony Perkins for Trump&#8217;s biblical gaffe
</blockquote>
If Trump wants to flaunt his Christian credentials, he may want to check out First Corinthians, (or he would put it, One Corinthians), where it states:
<blockquote>
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.
</blockquote>

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Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins On Mass Shootings: ‘The Problem Is Not The Absence Of Laws; It’s An Absence Of Morality’

Conservatives Slam YouTube For Using Radical Left-Wing Site To Monitor Content

Donald Trump Botched A Biblical Reference. Now He’s Blaming Someone Else. Just Like Jesus Would.