54 Republicans in Congress accept award from hate group

An anti-LGBTQ hate group honored 141 congressional Republicans on Tuesday for their work opposing abortion rights and LGBTQ equality.

More than 50 of the honorees showed up to accept their awards in person.

FRC Action, the political arm of Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council, gave out its “True Blue Award” to the 90 House Republicans and 51 Senate Republicans that received a “perfect 100 percent” on its annual scorecard. At least 54 of them showed up to a Tuesday morning reception to accept the honor.

Perkins praised the recipients as “the champions who have consistently stood up for life, family, and religious liberty.”

“We hope that voters will recognize the pro-life, pro-family, and pro-religious liberty voting records of the ‘True Blue’ members and elect more candidates like them in the 2020 election,” he added.

More than a dozen of the recipients tweeted out photos of themselves accepting their award from Perkins.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) bragged of her “100% record with @FRCAction voting to protect life, codify the Hyde Amendment [ban on most federal abortion funding], and confirm conservative judges.”

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) tweeted that he was “proud to receive the True Blue award.”

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) also said he was “honored to receive the #TrueBlue award” and would “always be an advocate for defending faith, family, and freedom.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Family Research Council as a hate group, stating that the organization “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.”

“The intention is to denigrate LGBT people as the organization battles against same-sex marriage, hate crime laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy,” the group notes.

As recently as 2010, Perkins falsely claimed that there was “overlap” between pedophilia and homosexuality.

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem,” he said at the time.

FRC Action also published a blog post on Wednesday attacking Sesame Street for “inviting drag queen Billy Porter on to teach kids the virtues of gender confusion.”

It wrote that by including the Tony-, Grammy-, and Emmy-winning actor and musician, the “once-beloved kids’show” was “making the best case for defunding PBS yet.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.