LISTEN: Baltimore Uprising? It's LGBT Folks' Fault, Says Texas Congressman

In Rep. Bill Flores's tortured logic, same-sex marriages lead to family breakdown, which leads to situations like that seen in Baltimore this week.

LGBT people get blamed for a lot of things we have nothing to do with — in the latest example, one congressman is blaming same-sex couples for single-parent homes, poverty, and the unrest in Baltimore (which is actually the reaction to the death of a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray, while in police custody).

On the Washington Watch radio show yesterday, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins noted to U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, a Texas Republican, that many social problems are due to “the breakdown of the family,” which Perkins said the “redefinition” of family — i.e., allowing same-sex couples to marry — “would only accelerate.”

“You’re exactly right, Tony,” Flores replied. “If you think about it — let’s talk about poverty, for instance. … The single best indicator of whether or not a child is going to be in poverty or not is whether or not they were raised by a two-parent household or a single-parent household, so the breakdown of the family has contributed to poverty. You look at what is going on in Baltimore today, and you see the issues that are raised there.

“Healthy marriages are the ones between a man and a woman because they can have a healthy family and they can raise children in the way that’s best for their future, not only socially but psychologically, economically, from a health perspective,” he continued. “There is just nothing like traditional marriage that does that for a child.”

Perkins then asserted that social science has proved that “children do best when they have a mom and a dad — it’s not two caregivers.” Of course, social science actually indicates that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well in life as those brought up by opposite-sex couples. And likening same-sex couples’ families to single-parent families is the proverbial apples-to-oranges comparison.

Flores also said “it’s very scary” that the “big, heavy-handed federal government” may, via a Supreme Court ruling, invalidate state constitutional amendments that ban same-sex marriage. He is, however, willing to invoke the federal government’s power to ban such marriages nationwide, as he supports amending the U.S. Constitution to do so (see a list of the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment’s cosponsors here). Both he and Perkins had attended an anti–marriage equality rally before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding marriage yesterday.

Listen to the Washington Watch clip below, courtesy of Right Wing Watch.