Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, talks about "the Supreme Court's back alley type Roe v. Wade decision" and the "guardrails" of nature.

On "Fox News Sunday" today, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, attempted to match wits on the subject of marriage equality with former Solicitor General Ted Olson. Early on, the moderator, Chris Wallace, asked Perkins about the Supreme Court's recent denial of review in seven same-sex marriage cases from different lower courts:

TONY PERKINS: ... I think the effect of this is the court did a back alley type Roe v. Wade decision by letting the lower courts do their evil bidding. 

So... back alley abortions... we know what those are. A "back alley decision"...  would be... hmmm... as if judges who are not Supreme Court judges are doing something shadowy and illicit? And leaving a case unreviewed is somehow — working backwards in time, I guess — getting the lower courts to do what the Supreme Court has bidden? This is pretty insulting to the vast majority of judges in this country, the judges who are not Supreme Court justices. These people are all following a duty — whether you like how they do it or not — to apply constitutional law in the cases within their jurisdiction. If all the lower courts agree on an issue, it's not sneaky or arrogant or evil for the Supreme Court to fill its docket with other cases.

Olson ignores the "back alley" smear and concentrates on the comparison of same-sex marriage to abortion. The better analogy is to interracial marriage, he says. Perkins says that's "apples and oranges." Why?

A "profoundly offensive" statement by Condoleezza Rice.

She referred to the mother of a gay man's partner as his mother in law:

Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, says the secretary's comments were "profoundly offensive" and fly in the face of the Bush administration's endorsement of a federal marriage protection amendment, though that backing be less than enthusiastic.

"We have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," says Sprigg. "But even beyond that, the deferential treatment that was given not only to him but his partner and his partner's family by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is very distressing."

Hmmm... I thought the word had gone out that opponents of same sex marriage were supposed to deny any hostility to gay people.

More here:

"In the world of protocol, verbal miscues are anathema," the Family Research Council said in a message to conservatives.

"The question arises, what guidelines do the State Department and White House follow? Neither federal law (the Defense of Marriage Act) nor District of Columbia law recognizes a marriage between Dr. Dybul and his partner, and 'mother in law' is therefore both linguistically (and possibly legally) improper and morally provocative.

"Why did Secretary Rice deploy the term in the presence of the First Lady? We've written to ask her, and we'll let you know what we hear," said FRC President Tony Perkins.

In reporting on the swearing in ceremony last week, USA Today said the "celebratory moment for a gay couple was emblematic of the political identity crisis facing the Republican Party."

Is this a "political identity crisis," that must be worked through? I think Condoleezza Rice and President Bush think they can be entirely warm and supportive to gay people and still take the position that marriage is a special man-and-woman tradition. But there are lots of people on both sides of the question who view that position as impossibly contradictory.