A leader of the Family Research Council has opined that its perfectly okay to kidnap the children of gay parents.
FRC senior fellow Peter Sprigg (right) was speaking with president Tony Perkins on Washington Watch last Thursday, when the conversation came to Mennonite pastor Kenneth Miller, who is being sentenced for helping “ex-lesbian” Lisa Miller flee to Nicaragua with her young daughter, rather than share custody with her former partner, Janet Jenkins.
Sprigg, author of Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage, told Perkins that Jenkins doesn’t have any parental rights because she’s not biologically related to the girl, and that the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act shouldn’t be applied in this case:
In normal marriage between a man and a woman the presumption of paternity was a presumption of something that is almost always true. But the Vermont court, which has allowed these civil unions, granted them all the legal rights of marriage, has converted that into a presumption of parentage whereby you are presuming something that cannot be true, something that is biologically impossible. That just shows how in the same-sex marriage debate we are flipping logic on its head.
And another aspect of this is that the law that Lisa ran afoul of—and that Kenneth Miller, this pastor, ran afoul of—is something called the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act.
It was designed again normally for the context of heterosexual marriages that break up, where there is a divorce and perhaps a custody battle between two parents who are both the biological parents — the biological mother and the biological father — who have divorced each other and it’s designed to prevent someone from taking a child and crossing state lines to another jurisdiction in order to get a more favorable court ruling. So the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act was designed to protect the rights of a biological parent so that they cannot have their rights violated by the other biological parent.
But here you have the rights of the biological parent being violated by someone who is not the biological parent at all. So again, the original purposes of these laws are being turned on their head in this case.
What amazes us is how easily Spriggs divides parents into biological and non-biological classifications: Millions of straight Americans adopt, foster, use surrogates and IV treatments, and otherwise parent kids that are not biologically related to them. Including, we can only assume, members of the FRC.
How about we take this to the next level?
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We’ve come to expect hatred and bile from folks like Sprigg, but it’s surprising he’d alienate his own base like that.
Source: Right Wing Watch
LaTeesha
Christians have been abusing kids for years so this comes as no surprise.
ted72
@LaTeesha
Well said.
1EqualityUSA
Such a mutant.
Cam
“”But the Vermont court, which has allowed these civil unions, granted them all the legal rights of marriage, has converted that into a presumption of parentage whereby you are presuming something that cannot be true, something that is biologically impossible.”
_______________
Their problem is that they are SO desperate to attack gays in any way and they aren’t used to their comments being questioned in their own echo chamber that the complete idiocy and hypocrisy of their statements is easy to point out.
Ok, so based on his comments that this is ok because there is no biological link from at least one parent to the child….then they must also be advocating the kidnapping of adopted children and foster children as well.
This is as stupid as their attempts to attack gay marriage because marriage is for having children and then not being able to defend the comment when people say “Oh, so older or infertile couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry then according to you?”
Dakotahgeo
Keep paying no attention to the dunderhead Evangelipods, as if their opinion matters/mattered at all. Should they be involved in kidnapping ANYone’s children, shoot them on sight! No need for expensive trials or crowded jails.
MikeE
Hmmm, isn’t he promoting a criminal activity? Isn’t he actively calling out to others to break the law and commit a felony?
NormdePlume
“There will always be good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
– Steven Weinberg, Nobel prize-winning physicist
In this case, the FRC doesn’t even qualify for the “good people” part. What rotten bastards.
2eo
@MikeE: It’s not fascism when christians do it.
2eo
Also I will point out yet again that THESE PEOPLE ARE cHRISTIANS, and we’re sick of christians trying to distance themselves from them, THEY ARE YOUR BELIEFS.
Stop pretending they’re not.
jackpapa
Nice that nowhere in his rant does he even consider the damage to the child when it is ripped from a loving relationship with the parent who is left behind. Christian priveledge and Christian entitlement must END. Christian belief and worship are fine for those that choose it, but it should in no way override the rights of any citizen to protection under the law.
queerty1958
What in the hell is wrong with these people? They have the most twisted view of the world and how they believe others should live their lives according to them. They need to focus only on their own lives and butt the hell out the live of others. The more they speak, the more I run away from all religion!
CNYMASC
He sounds like he is committing a Federal crime by conspiring to promote kidnapping. I just forwarded this to the US Attorney General and the NYS Attorney General
Shannon1981
Shouldn’t the promotion of criminal activity, especially involving a child, mean that this man and his henchman go to jail, or, at the very least, are investigated?
MK Ultra
I’m wondering what many others are: isn’t trying to convince others to committ a crime, a crime in and of itself?
SpeedyG1975
If he thinks it’s okay to kidnap the children of gay parents, then how would he feel about it being okay to kidnap the children of idiots like him?
Dakotahgeo
@SpeedyG1975: Uggggh, NO! Who the hell wants someone else’s idiot children, especially from the unholy unRight(eous)?!
Yiannis
@NormdePlume : many thanks for sharing the Steven Weinberg quote with us. It’s great and I’ll use it as often as I’m allowed to. Organized religion is one of the worst, if not THE worst, obstacle to humanity being really free. Honest expression of sexuality, on the other hand, is one of the biggest tools of self-liberation. So, I think, in some way, us LGBT folk are leading the way to personal freedom for all humanity. It may sound a bit too much, but think about it for a minute… Thanks, this is my first post here 🙂
Yiannis
@NormdePlume: many thanks for sharing the Steven Weinberg quote with us. It’s great and I’ll use it as often as I’m allowed to. Organized religion is one of the worst, if not THE worst, obstacle to humanity being really free. Honest expression of sexuality, on the other hand, is one of the biggest tools of self-liberation. So, I think, in some way, us LGBT folk are leading the way to personal freedom for all humanity. It may sound a bit too much, but think about it for a minute… Thanks, this is my first post here 🙂
(Being my first post, I didn’t realize that I had to write it as a reply until it was too late. So I wrote it a second time). I’ll eventually learn…
Chad Hunt
@2eo: Your moronic rhetoric when it comes to christians is just astounding. Have you never heard of the words hypocrite or hypocrisy. People who claim to be something that they clearly are not are hypocrites. Just like a person who goes on Queerty and says they care about the LGBT community yet at every turn spews vile rhetoric at other members of the community they espouse to love does not agree with their bile.
Chad Hunt
Clearly what this person does not understand is it takes a whole lot more to be a parent then just an egg or sperm donation. I know many people who are more of a parent to various children then the biological host or donor could ever hope to be.
2eo
@Chad Hunt: I hardly feel that calling on moderate christians to actually do something about their lunatic fringe could be considered “moronic rhetoric”, but I am bothered about the impact such implicit dismissal of any problems in christianity has on actual people and larger secular society and the punishments forced on the poorest and worst off in humanity too.
It’s a shame you have to try and for some reason compare me to Avenger, Brian or BJ. Just about sums up your worth as a poster of contributor. Sad really.
Billysees
@queerty1958: 11
What an excellent sentiment you’ve written.
How true.
But even more truer is that most mature folks of the faith are not like this bunch.
Sometimes I wonder that all of this anti-LGBT stuff you hear so often now-a-days is some sort of dog-and-pony show for the supreme court to persuade their decisions.