Tony Perkins urged attendees of the 2019 Voters Value Summit in Washington to “pray like we’ve never prayed before” and proffered that the current political battle isn’t between Republicans of Democrats but between “two worldviews.”
Mr. Perkins, the President of the Family Research Council, noted at the outset he was not speaking as the chair of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and instead struck a decidedly political tone in urging members of Congress to sign a discharge petition for a vote on ending late-term abortion, such as was approved by New York State earlier this year.
He also disclosed a plan to drop off 90,000 baby hats to Capitol Hill and the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
“We’re over halfway,” said Mr. Perkins. “This represents about 50,000 hats we’ve collected [so far] in this campaign.”
The morning plenary saw speeches from House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, and the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (US-AID), Mark Green, who recounted visiting a Yazidi woman in northern Iraq who’d faced the scourge of the Islamic State and showed him a picture of her missing daughters.
“As if somehow, someway we could find them,” said Mr. Green, appearing to choke up. “Sadly, we could not.”
Mr. Perkins in recent days has been a vocal critic on social media in countering President Trump’s decision to pull 1,000 troops out of northern Syria in a cessation that, religious liberty observers argue, will lead to devastation and violence upon the region’s Kurdish Christians and Yazidis. However, on Friday, he avoided the subject and stayed, largely, to domestic affairs.
At a roundtable discussion of people who’ve become the face of the religious liberty debate in America, Mr. Perkins stoked a familiar theme within conservative religious circles, that anti-discrimination policies in cities, states and at the federal law threaten Judeo-Christian values.
“We wouldn’t compromise our convictions and sit and wait to have those terrible penalties,” said Joanna Duka, a wedding designer who challenged a City of Phoenix’s anti-discrimination ordinance that would’ve penalized her, possibly with jail, for refusing to work with gay couples on their wedding planning. Ms. Duka won last month at the Arizona Supreme Court.
“We are women of faith,” said Ms. Duka. “And our art was an extension of that faith.”
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been scheduled to address the Summit on Friday, but did not attend. The ongoing impeachment machinations on Capitol Hill were not far from the minds of attendees.
One booth in the entryway from the Heritage Foundation promised the facts on impeachment. Attendees were also warned not to rebroadcast the proceedings without consent, with the video prompter posting an intense-eyed image of House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, at the center of the Democrats’ push for impeachment proceedings.
“We need to censure Adam Schiff for making up his opening testimony,” said Mr. Meadows, to applause from the crowd.
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