MSNBC Rejects Anti-Perkins Ad

Pro-LGBT faith activists are angry with cable network MSNBC for refusing an ad denouncing the antigay views of frequent guest Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

 Faithful America has been lobbying to get Perkins off MSNBC, noting that FRC has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for spreading discredited and defamatory information about LGBT people, such as associating homosexuality with pedophilia. MSNBC has had Perkins on 23 times since it made the hate group list in 2010, more than any other network, according to the Faithful America ad. The ad calls on viewers to “tell MSNBC that Tony Perkins doesn’t speak for your faith.”

Faithful America received notice of the ad’s rejection Wednesday. “Clearly MSNBC doesn’t want its viewers to know the truth about one of their frequent guests,” Faithful America head Michael Sherrard said in a news release. “If network executives consider Tony Perkins’s false and hateful rhetoric about gays and lesbians inappropriate for an ad, then he shouldn’t have any place on their programming.” Last month a Faithful America contingent including Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson delivered petitions to MSNBC with signatures of 20,000 people demanding that the network cease featuring him.

Asked for comment by The Advocate, an MSNBC spokesperson said, “We have many guests from a variety of viewpoints who all play roles in the political process. The views of our guests are not those of MSNBC.”

Watch Faithful America’s ad, plus a video with footage of Perkins’s appearances and the petition delivery, below.