Tony Perkins, disinvited

Helen Rittelmeyer writing at National Review Online: “When a respected national figure like Tony Perkins starts seeing prayer-luncheon engagements canceled over a position rooted in Christian orthodoxy, it’s time to make sure our religious liberty is still in the last place we left it. The chaplain’s office would never say that a guest of the base may not believe as Perkins does, of course, but it does seem to be suggesting that its guests keep that opinion to themselves. Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Ga.) suspects that this chilling effect is exactly what Perkins’s critics had in mind. ‘They knew there would be a backlash to this, and I think they had a design about that.’ The incident wasn’t about Perkins, he thinks, but about ‘using him to drive a message — that your brand of sermon is no longer welcome in the U.S. military.’”