Transcript of Tony Perkins segment, "Praise the Lord" program, Trinity Broadcasting Network, April 12, 2005, 10pm ET:
Parsley: I want to get right to our next guest, again I've
anticipated this for months, he's the president of the Family Research
Council, which was formed in 1983 as a not-for-profit educational
institution in Washington, DC. In 2003 he became the president. The
Family Research Council has experienced tremendous growth and
influence. He also served as a two-term state representative in
Louisiana, ran for the United States Senate in 2002. He authored and
passed the nation's first covenant marriage law to address the
instability of marriage. He's my good friend Tony Perkins and I'm so
proud to introduce him to the great TBN family. Tony, welcome, we're
so glad to have you.
Tony, November 2003, 2004, seems like a decade ago. But I believe and
I believe you do too, that a tremendous door was opened for believers
as a result of what happened in that election. Talk to us about
that.
Perkins: Many felt like we won on Election Day. We didn't
win, down south we'd say we just - it was the time trials, we just
placed. Now we're in a position to have influence. And I was
meditating on that the days following the election, and in my prayer
time, the Lord led me to Joshua chapter 10. Remember the story where
Joshua, where they were pursuing the armies of the five allied kings, and he
prayed, "Lord, let us finish this battle," and the sun stood still and
gave them an opportunity. I believe what we're seeing in America
today, is the sun has not yet set on this nation.
Parsley: Praise God.
Perkins: But, we have a responsibility. Joshua's men - It's
interesting, I encourage you to go back and read that chapter, chapter
10 of Joshua. They were actually going to help the men of Gibeon, they
were not fighting on their own behalf, they were fighting for
others. We're fine, everyone here tonight, we're fine, I'm going to go
home, my children, they're going to grow up knowing about Jesus. But
you know what, not every child's in America's going to know about the
Lord.
Parsley: That's right.
Perkins: And we've got a government that, judges that are slowly
but surely taking away the right of our children and the right of the
church to tell our children. And we've got to do something about
it. The men of Israel, they marched all night long, they fought all
day, and that's exhausting, that's exhausting. And we've felt like
we have done a lot in this past election, and I've talked to many of my
friends in the church and pastors who, in an unprecedented way, and I
want to thank you, Pastor Rod, for your work in the state of Ohio and
in encouraging other pastors. I've been working with pastors for years
and I love you as pastors. But you are some hard people to work
with.
Parsley: That's the truth.
Perkins: It's been slow in getting these pastors - But let
me tell you what. The pastors are now moving.
Parsley: They are.
Perkins: The Lord has gotten hold of their hearts and
they're standing as they have never stood before.
Parsley: You know Tony I believe that's as a result - I
think pastors are historically down on what they're not up on, and I
think they've been intimidated -
Perkins: Absolutely.
Parsley: - because they weren't informed. And that's why we
need great institutions like the Family Research Council. I want to
tell you right now. A whole lot of what I learn, I go right on that
website and I learned at the Family Research Council - and I thank God
for what you're doing, and it's informing pastors. You know we're
afraid of what we don't know, and -
Perkins: And you've been beaten down -
Parsley: Yes.
Perkins: Pastors have been beaten down by the media and by the
culture, made to feel like they're not relevant. Let me tell you
what. If there's one thing that's going to turn this nation around,
it's pastors.
Parsley: Amen.
Perkins: We - While we'll talk about the political issue,
we're going to talk in a moment about the judicial issue, but what
America needs, and you touched on it before with Bishop Jackson, a
great man of God, we must have revival.
Parsley: We have to have revival.
Perkins: If we're going to experience revival in this
nation, it's the spiritual leaders that are going to lead this nation
into revival, then reform, reformation, which must take place if we're
to survive as a nation.
Parsley: That's it. God spoke to me and he said, don't you
dare go out and speak on any political issue in any other context than
when you gather people together and give them an opportunity to say
yes to Christ because I believe it's the greatest opportunity of
evangelism we've ever had in this country.
Perkins: Absolutely.
Parsley: A reformation is on the way.
Perkins: But it's going to take God's people and it's going
to take, God's, men of God standing up, women of God standing and
leading the congregations. You know, we want to talk about the
judiciary, and I want to get right to that if I can, because there's a
lot of -
Parsley: There's a lot going on right now, and one of the
reasons, and I appreciate you accepting my invitation is because a lot
of times I'll say, you know what? I need to get up on this issue so I
go to Tony and I say, Tony, talk to me about this. Explain this to
me. All of us can pretty well understand that Jim should not marry
George.
Perkins: Yup.
Parsley: And Susie should not marry Betty. We can pretty
well get that. But when we hear terminology on the news like "judicial
tyranny" and what's going on with the filibusters in the Senate on
judicial nominees, please, educate us.
Perkins: Well it's real simple Pastor Rod. Back when our
country was founded, the founders had this great, I think,
God-inspired idea that you have three branches of government. You have
an executive branch, you have a legislative branch, and a judicial
branch and they created the judicial branch as a third branch, in fact
they saw it as the lesser of the three branches of government. They
were not elected by the people, they were appointed by the Congress
and by the way, it was only the Supreme Court that was created by the
Constitution, the lower courts are a creation of Congress. Now let
that sink in for a moment.
Parsley: The lower courts are a creation of Congress. In
other words, what we saw happen in Florida, those judges, those
judgeships, those courts were created by the Congress.
Perkins: That's right. The Federal courts, those lower
courts, are created by the Congress. Now who's greater, the created or
the creator?
Parsley: I don't know if anybody heard that.
Perkins: Now who is more important? You would think that the
courts, that they think, in their arrogance, and this - you mentioned
in the beginning of the program, about Terry Schiavo, what Congress
did and the President, I believe the President, Tom DeLay from Texas,
Senate majority leader Bill Frist, they acted responsibly -
Parsley: Yes they did.
Perkins: - they acted in a very reasonable way -
Parsley: Yes they did. [applause]
Perkins: This is what they did. They simply
said look, there are enough circumstances surrounding this case that
it merits to be looked at anew. The judge, a probate judge in the
state of Florida, for four and a half years had sat on this case. There
were questions being raised, they said, look. We want the federal
courts to look at the facts anew. We don't want them just to look at
the judicial procedure, we want them to look at the facts.
Parsley: Exactly.
Perkins: What did the courts do? The courts thumbed their
nose at two other branches of government. Our courts are in a
persistent state of arrogance and we've got to do something about
these courts. Well - let me give you a little history lesson
here. Back in 1803, there was a court case that led to new found power
by the courts. They began to grab power. [Perkins holds a long-handled
mallet]
Parsley: Now wait a minute, we started off with
this. [Parsley holds a small mallet] Yeah, things are increasing
here.
Perkins: There was a case, it was the Marbury versus Madison
case where the courts began a new process called "judicial review."
They began to question the executive and the legislative
branches. That was never envisioned by the founders. So all of a
sudden they start throwing out laws and orders passed by the executive
branch. As a former elected official in the state of Louisiana, I tell
ya, I passed a number of laws, overwhelmingly through the legislative
process, signed by the executive, only to be thrown out by a federal
judge.
I'll give you one in particular, it was a bill, for the first time
in the state of Louisiana, to provide regulations for abortion
clinics. You know abortion clinics in this country operate with less
oversight than most veterinary clinics? You realize that? There are
women dying in abortion clinics because of, and in this one we
documented rusty instruments, unsanitary conditions, we went in, we
were able to get footage of this, we showed it, I presented the first
time in the legislature where video was used to show this,
overwhelmingly the legislature passed it but a federal judge
overturned it.
Parsley: So the will of the people, and the will of the
people as expressed through their elected representatives, gets
totally thrown away?
Perkins: That's right, by one -
Parsley: It gets totally ignored by one judge.
Perkins: That's right.
Parsley: Now a President is elected for four years, eight if
he runs for a second term. A senator, United States senator for two
years. A United States House of Representative member, for, no -
Perkins: Senate for six -
Parsley: House for two. So, four, six and two. What about
these judges?
Perkins: Lifetime. Lifetime. You have a, you have judges
that will serve two, three, decades, or more, and we talk about
specifically the Supreme Court. There's been a tremendous power grab
by the Supreme Court and this is where we stand today. The Court has
supersized its perception of itself, and let me give you a couple of
facts. 1962, prayer was removed from the public schools. 1963, bible
reading, and reciting the Lord's Prayer was taken from the schools. 1980,
the Ten Commandments were taken out of our schools. 1985, a moment of
silence was banned from our public schools if the children were
encouraged to pray. 1992, clergy members, pastors who came to a church
to pray for graduation, outlawed by the United States Supreme
Court. 2000, the year 2000, prayer at football games of high schools
was banned by the United States Supreme Court. 2004, states were
authorized to discriminate against scholarship funding if a student
chose to get a theological degree, the state could refuse to fund them
if they funded others. And then 2004, the Supreme Court took a pass on
whether or not the Pledge of Allegiance was constitutional with the
phrase "under God."
Parsley: Now somebody join, an Eastern Kentucky boy, and
just one time say, "that ain't right." -- Okay, something has to
happen here, I found a marvelous quote the other day, it's in this
book here, [Parsley's own book] "Silent No More." Listen to this.
"The court in addition to the proper use of its judicial functions has
improperly set itself up as a third branch of Congress" - third house
of Congress - "a super legislature. We have therefore reached a point
as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from
the Court and to save the Court from itself. We want a Supreme Court
which will do justice under the Constitution, not over the
Constitution, we are a nation, a government of law and not men." That
was 1937 and President Franklin Roosevelt is the one that said
it.
Bring us up to date on what's going on right now concerning
nomination of judges to fill these posts. I understand that the United
States taxpayers are spending 5.1 billion dollars a year on the federal
judiciary. What they're paying for are filled benches. What they're
getting are empty benches and filibuster.
Perkins: What's happened, Paster Rod, is as we just talked
about these issues, it is clear that the courts are out of step with
America. And the liberal mindset has been driven from the legislative
branch, it's been driven from the executive branch, and the last
bastion of this anti-Christian anti- really, American, viewpoint is in
the courts. And so there is a radical minority in the United States
Senate that is doing everything they can to preserve this
anti-Christian, anti-American philosophy in our courts, and the way
they're doing it is by denying the President an up or down vote on his
judicial nominees.-- But they're not even voting, they're not even
voting. This is what's happening, unprecedented, a judicial
filibuster.
Now filibusters in the Senate have been used before, they're not
used in the House, it's a parliamentary procedure in the Senate. But
it's only been used in the past on legislative issues, only rarely has
it ever been used for a judicial nominee. Now the Constitution says
that the Senate shall advice and consent with the President's judicial
nominees. How can they give advice and consent unless they vote one
way or the other, and they're simply refusing to vote. This is how it
works, only Washington does it work this way. To vote - to pass - to approve a
judge, you only need 51 votes out of the 100 votes in the United
States Senate.
Parsley: Everybody say fifty-one.
Perkins: Fifty-one. Now, in the Senate, you have to have
sixty votes to vote to get fifty. Now does that make a whole lot of
sense? That is what they're doing, it's called a cloture vote and
you've got to have sixty votes to end a filibuster to vote when you
only need fifty.
Parsley: So the filibuster is, they read out of the
phonebook, they keep this thing going, the debate open. It takes sixty
votes to make them stop the debate and vote. Is that right?
Perkins: Technically, that's it.
Parsley: But it only takes fifty-one votes -
Perkins: To win. Now every one of these judicial nominees,
let me clarify something real quick. You will hear them say, there's
been dozens of the President's judicial nominees that have been
approved. That's true, to the lower courts. But at the important
appelate court level which is just one step below the United States
Supreme Court, they've been filibustered. They have not had a vote up
or down. Let me tell you why. Many of these people - it's because of
their positions, because of their faith, because of their position on
the issues that they have been targeted by this radical minority in
the United States Senate. One of - Bill Pryor, from the state of
Arkansas, is Catholic, he's very strong pro-life, and he has made
statements to that effect, and Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New
York has said, his deeply-held, quote, deeply-held religious views
challenge his credibility as a judge.
Parsley: Okay. What can we do?
Perkins: Well this is what we need to do. We need to speak
to our United States senators, that we need an up or down vote, and
there's people on both sides of that, Republican and Democrat. And I
want to mention, if you live in a state where Senator Snowe, or
Senator Collins, or in Pennsylvania with Senator Arlen Specter, who is
the chairman of this important committee, they need to support the
President's judicial nominees. Senator McCain, Senator Hagel, Senator
Chafee and Senator Warner.
Now one other thing, this is absolutely critical. We've worked
together on marriage, we've worked on these other issues and those are
at the forefront, and I've spent most of my public life working in the
defense and promotion of marriage. If we lose the courts, friends, we
lose the nation. We've got to take a stand on this issue and I believe
in a very short period of time there's going to be a showdown in the
United States Senate. And it's going to come a time to cut, or fish,
fish or cut bait. And they have got to vote to support the, what's
called the Constitutional option, simply restoring Constitutional
order to the United States Senate and that only fifty-one votes will
be needed to approve these judicial nominees.
Now on Sunday April 24, we're calling it Justice Sunday, where we
recognize that it's time to stop this filibuster of people of faith. And I
encourage you to go to our website, www.frc.org, we're actually going
to have a nationwide simulcast that night, churches all across the
country joining together to pray together and to take a stand for
justice in this country and stop this filibuster of people of faith.
Parsley: Amen. How many of you learned a whole lot you didn't
know?
I want you to know right now that you can find
information at frc.org. Go there, write it down somewhere. I do it all
the time. And I want you to get involved in these issues. Can we just
bring Debbie up, can we go ahead and do that? Let's go ahead and bring
Debbie up, we'll sing at the end, is that all right? We've got a
nation hanging in the balance. Have you enjoyed the honorable Tony
Perkins tonight? Would you like to have him back on TBN? Let's have
him back. Thank you Tony, thank you so much.
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