Today, Floyd Lee Corkins, the young man who opened fire at the Family Research Council headquarters last year, plead guilty to several counts in court.
And today, FRC head Tony Perkins again blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the incident, which could have been deadly if it were not for a security guard who disarmed Corkins before he harmed anyone.
Perkins claimed that SLPC gave Corkins a “license for violence” by labeling the FRC as a hate group. Perkins also contended that the SPLC gave his group the label to “silence” it because it speaks out on Christian principles in regards to homosexuality.
Now a stereotype about gays is that sometimes we can be brutally honest even to the point of not caring about hurt and angry feelings. I generally refrain from that stereotype, but today I feel the need to embrace it.
Someone has to sit Mr. Perkins down and school him on the truth. I am very certain that Perkins is already aware of this truth, but he needs to be told publicly so that everyone else can know.
SPLC isn’t responsible for Corkins’ near massacre at FRC headquarters last year. If Perkins wants to blame someone, he should look to himself and his organization.
For years, while under the guise of Biblical principles, FRC dehumanized the lgbt community. Time after time, the organization performed a mass slander against us by claiming that we are like drug abusers, that we are pedophiles, that we are terrorists and that we are led by Satan. It actively undermined any effort of the gay community to achieve any form of equality or the right to self-determination. FRC is even so cold-hearted as to claim that efforts to prevent gay youth from committing suicide is wrong.
In addition, FRC relies on phony experts to create “studies” and “papers” designed to lend some degree of credibility to its negative claims about the gay community, even if these “studies” and “papers” cherry-pick legitimate studies.
Let’s be clear. This is not an accident. FRC’s actions against the lgbt community are intentional. FRC’s actions against the gay community are deliberate. When Perkins calls gays pedophiles, he knows what he is saying is not true and you can tell by his weaselly verbiage:
There is a disproportionate number of male on boy — when we get on pedophilia, male on boy is a higher incident rate of that. We never said all homosexuals are pedophiles. that’s not what we’re saying.
When Tony Perkins smears efforts such as the “It Gets Better Campaign,” he knows that his attacks could hurt gay youth, but he doesn’t care. When an FRC phony expert such as Peter Sprigg cites a study while omitting crucial parts of it which would destroy his “dangers of homosexuality” claim, he knows exactly what he is doing.
And when Perkins claims that FRC is not about hatred, it’s the biggest lie of them all. It’s the organization’s lifeblood. FRC can’t get people to read its emails, listen to its phony experts, visit its webpage, or donate money if the organization doesn’t give folks a reason to. And what’s a better reason to support FRC than stopping a so-called sinful homosexual out to destroy your values and harm your children in the process?
Through its lies and distortions, FRC nursed fears of gays, stoked the egos of some Christians based upon a few arguably mistaken Biblical verses, and exploited stereotypes about gay sexual intercourse until it created a wall of hatred against gays.
But here is the thing about hatred. It’s like a fire which can’t be controlled. Sooner or later it backfires on its creator. And in this case, the hatred which FRC sowed against the gay community backfired on the organization in the form of a young man with a gun, a warped mind, and an ugly mission which thankfully he was unsuccessful in accomplishing.
No one should blame SPLC for what happened at FRC headquarters last year. SPLC merely called out the fact that FRC was promoting hatred.
Corkins did more. He proved it.
On that day in which he walked into FRC headquarters, the organization met what its effort to promote hatred of gays had given birth to.
A demented child.




14 Comments


How about blaming the nutcase with the gun? You seem to imply that the shooter was the victim. I don’t like a lot of organizations but I don’t go around trying to murder people. A just cause still doesn’t make violence and murder acceptable. I find your article offensive.
Prosecutors say Corkins, who had been volunteering at a center for gay, lesbian and transgender people, was carrying ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his bag. Chick-fil-A was making headlines at the time because of its president’s stated opposition to gay marriage.
Corkins intended to smear the sandwiches in the faces of his victims to make a statement about gay rights opponents, he acknowledged during a hearing Wednesday…
In his plea agreement, Corkins acknowledged he identified the [Family Research] Council as “an anti-gay organization” by visiting Southern Poverty’s website. The head of the Council, Tony Perkins, called on the group to stop labeling his organization and others hate groups because of their stance on gay issues. A spokeswoman for the Alabama-based Law Center did not immediately return a telephone message…
“He targeted us because we had been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which we think is very reckless,” [FRC employee Leo Johnson] says.
I blame his jesus freak mother.
Be the change you wish to see.
I can’t get past this point.
Alvin, I deeply respect what you do and follow your work regularly, but you lose me on this one. If we are to condemn victim-blaming and rationalizations of hate and violence, then we also need to practice the alternative we expect others to live up to… even when the victim in a particular case has been vile.
I do not believe that violence and fear are the response to violence and fear that we should espouse.
Inspire. Be the change you wish to see. And that means not making excuses for violence.
Agreed, this article is bullshit.
You don’t go around murdering people because they say things you don’t like or agree with.
Folks, I understand your points, but I do not back away from my position. While not absolving Corkins, I stand by my assertion that FRC is to blame (at least partly) for what happened because it created the circumstances through its lies. I understand the need not to blame the victim but too many of us are going overboard to the point that WE seem to be absolving FRC of any responsibility in this situation. And FRC has responsibility. This is not a rationalization of hatred and it’s not a rationalization of violence. It is a genuine belief of mine that FRC seeks to escape culpability for its many of distortions and lies against the gay community and some of us are too quick to help the organization. We can be glad that no one was seriously hurt in this situation and we can pray that it never happens again. But don’t forget the point that FRC contributed to what happened by helping to create that wheel of fire which turned around and scorched it badly.
“Th’ hast spoken right, ’tis true.
The wheel is come full circle, I am here.” – King Lear.
I have to support Alvin on this one. While I’m not in favor of blaming the victim, I can’t really consider FRC a victim here. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” I think that has some relevance. Some of you are trying to absolve a group that bases its very existence on dehumanizing gay people from any responsibility for this man’s actions. Here’s GLAAD CAP’s entry on Perkins, here’s the entry for Peter Sprigg, and here’s the SPLC’s page on the FRC. When it comes to anything purporting to be a factual statement, they lie. Did anyone anywhere think that years of spewing this kind of hate was not going to generate a reaction? And of course Perkins, being who and what he is, blew the incident way out of proportion — this was hardly a “tragedy” to use his term. 20 dead first-graders is a tragedy; one wounded security guard is not a tragedy. There’s another saying that I think is relevant here: “You made your bed, now lie in it.”
I think Alvin has made some good points. I’m only sorry it’s not appearing in the New York Times.
And about that headline — it wasn’t a “near massacre” — it wasn’t even in the ballpark.
Not usually. We leave that up to the gov’t we elect. We let groups like FRC rise to power, and influence policy and laws, based on absolute lies. I’ve seen Perkins dozens of times on the TEEVEE, spewing lie after lie, and not being called out on his bullshit. ( Who are the fools who let the Fairness Doctrine slip away, afterall? ) My hats off to the SPLC, an organization I’ve donated to, support and consider accurate in their labeling. Something our gov’ts ( national, state and local ) thinks is unnecessary, evidently. Be it our food, our foreign policy or almost anything that doesn’t push their convoluted agendas. As to this young man’s actions, not appropriate. However, the bombing of abortion clinics, the robbing of banks and the murdering of law enforcement, etc. can just as easily traced right back to fringe groups within the ” so-called ” prolife and profamily movement. Mr. Perkins, it appears, did almost reap what he surely sowed.
Tony Perkins is the person who decided an organization was responsible, not Alvin. Alvin is simply directing the blame, such as any organization is responsible for the attempted shooting, onto the correct organization. It’s not SPLC, it’s FRC.
Hate is as hate does.
Fine post.
Hate is as hate does. Interestingly the SPLC does not list the shooting as a hate crime.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-incidents?year=2013&state=All
And your point, Agent #86?
Sorry Alvin, but that’s a swing and a miss. The rationalizations you’re using are the same ones groups like Army Of God use to excuse themselves from any moral quandary they have with fire-bombing health clinics and murdering doctors. To me, Floyd Lee Corkins is in the same league with Scott Roeder: an unhinged dingbat whose sense of personal moral righteousness outweighed, in his head, the rights of others to be alive.
As much as a reprehensible scumbag Tony Perkins might be (and is), nobody gets to decide whether he, or any of his band of bigoted little elves, lives or dies. (Personally, a just death for Perkins would be heart failure brought on by huffing poppers while leafing through “Marine Man-wich Vol. XXII” or something. Or maybe strangling to death during an act of auto-erotic asphyxiation in the shower.)
… Although deep down, I’m betting FRC is disappointed there weren’t any deaths at the hands of F.L. Corkins. If he’d been successful, they’d have been provided with a whole crop of martyrs to rally around.
Normally, I would disagree with placing blame on a victim, but not in this case. FRC has been spewing hatred — and, in a way, victimizing LGBT people,– for so long that… yeah, it is their fault.
FRC and other right-wing groups — and not just the anti-gay ones — have spent decades fostering a climate that encourages violence against their “enemies.” I’m not going to consider them victims when someone turns it back on them.