Tony Perkins blames military suicides on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

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The President of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, has blamed the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell for suicides in the US military.

Speaking on his own radio program, Mr Perkins said that the “social engineering” of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the policy which banned openly gay or lesbian people from serving in the US military, was to blame for military suicides, Right Wing Watch reports.

Speaking about the decision to repeal DADT, he said: “The volume of these decisions coming out of this administration is unbelievable, unbelievable.

“The stress in our military, when you look how they have used the military for their social experimentation: driving Christianity out, putting homosexuality in, suicide rate going through the ceiling.

“I think it was last year if I recall the numbers there were 349 suicides in 2012 and I believe that’s more than were killed in combat, that’s the highest number since the Pentagon began tracking suicides back in 2001. And what are they doing? Adding additional stress by this social engineering. Unbelievable.”

DADT was repealed on 20 September 2011, amidst warnings that the US military would be aversely affected by the change.

Mr Perkins’ claims go against a study released in September, which revealed that the repeal, one year on, had no negative impact on the US military.

The University Of California Los Angeles Palm Center conducted the study, the first of its kind.

According to the findings of the study, cohesion, recruitment, retention, violence and harassment, or morale were all unaffected by the repeal.

Earlier this week, the American Family Association spokesman, Bryan Fischer blamed a gay “lobby” for “destroying” the US military, and said that peoples’ daughters will be drafted into the army “to die” because of gay people.

Speaking on his own program, Focal Point, a video of which was posted by Right Wing Watch, Mr Fischer refers to gay people as a “homosexual lobby”, “bullies”, and “bigots”.

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