Jerry Boykin

The Family Research Council's Jerry Boykin was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today for a discussion of the Pentagon's recent decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat.  Not surprisingly, Boykin opposes the idea, wondering why the Obama Administration would approve this change even as Congress was working to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, claiming "there is such an inconsistency here":

The Congress, the Senate at least, passed the Violence Against Women Act which was designed to protect our women. Now it had some flaws in it, so we don't support it ... but it's violence against women, protect our women.

Now with this decision by Leon Panetta and the President, what we're doing is we're saying 'now you ladies, fix your bayonets, we're going to send you right into hand-to-hand combat with these men that are physically more capable than you in most cases and they're going to try to kill you.'  There is such an inconsistency here.

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin has joined the right-wing smear campaign against John Brennan and Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominees to lead the CIA and the Department of Defense, respectively.

In an interview with fellow anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, Boykin said that Hagel “has demonstrated some rather anti-Semitic tendencies in not being willing to stand with Israel” and that Brennan is “very sympathetic to the jihadist cause.”

Boykin added that Brennan “personally brought in a number of very subversive elements and individuals into our government” and “helped to place them in positions of great influence within our government, including the White House.”

Boykin: He also I believe has demonstrated some rather anti-Semitic tendencies in not being willing to stand with Israel. So I’m very concerned, that’s the best that we can do as a nation? If you look at his hearing it was probably the worst showing for any nominee in my lifetime so I’m very concerned.

Gaffney: I think rightly so. Let me ask you about one of the other nominations, John Brennan. I imagine you crossed paths with him during your time in the United States government including your service as the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, what do you make of his, well, I think most charitably it’s described as willful blindness about that threat, that enemy posed in the form of an existential threat I think not just to Israel but I think to all of us in the form of Islamism.

Boykin: Yeah I’m very concerned about Brennan, I’m more concerned about Brennan than I am Hagel. I’m concerned about both of them but Brennan’s track record of not being willing to acknowledge that Al Qaeda is actually executing Islamic theology, is motivated by fundamental Islamic theology. Brennan is a guy who has A) not been willing to acknowledge that this is what motivates them but B) he has personally brought in a number of very subversive elements and individuals into our government, he has helped to place them in positions of great influence within our government, including the White House. Brennan has been very sympathetic to the jihadist cause.

Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families appeared on the End Times show, Understanding the Times with Jan Markell, to warn that Obama’s nominees are further proof of his “affection for and affinity for the Islamic world.”

A lot of the things we see the President doing, his appointments, his speeches, the events he has at the White House that are often pro-Islamic events, all these things taken together is just a reflection of the fact that this is the first President in modern times that has been so overt in his hostility to Israel and so clear about his affection for and affinity for the Islamic world.

Bauer argued that if “men and women of faith walk away and leave the battlefield to our opponents” then Obama and his appointees will continue to show “softness towards radical Islam” and wage an “assault on normal marriage.”

They want us to run away from the fight and to give up so then they can make the country into something quite different than the kind of America that we want it to be. So whether it’s Israel or bad appointments like Chuck Hagel, government getting bigger, taxes going up, the deficit out of control, softness towards radical Islam, all these issues are all incredibly important, the assault on normal marriage. The last thing America can survive right now is if men and women of faith walk away and leave the battlefield to our opponents.

For decades, the Right has attempted to discredit Hillary Clinton with attacks ranging from the disturbing (killing people) to the bizarre (killing cats). But after serving four years as Secretary of State, Clinton is leaving office with sky-high approval ratings. Before she steps down on Friday, we decided to look back on some of the most extreme and befuddling accusations she has faced from the far-right during her term as the nation’s top diplomat.

1. Clinton Engineered Benghazi Cover-Up

While the official report on the U.S. mission in Benghazi found multiple security and management breakdowns that Clinton had already taken responsibility for, many on the right claimed that she actually was behind a massive cover-up. Several Republican politicians and conservative commentators said that the Obama administration withheld military assistance while watching a live feed of the attack. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board report debunked the right-wing conspiracy theories, but that didn’t stop Fox News and conservative talk show hosts from reporting them as fact and arguing that the administration used the attack in Benghazi to pass blasphemy laws protecting Islam.

As the Right’s claims about Benghazi continued to unravel, they shifted to baselessly asserting that the administration manufactured the Petraeus affair in order to preserve the alleged cover-up and that Clinton faked a concussion and blood clot to get out of testifying about the incident. When she did testify, she faced redundant and ill-informed questions from Republicans like Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who skipped a classified briefing on the incident, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who admitted he had no proof to back up his claim that the Benghazi mission was used to send arms to Syrian rebels.

2. Clinton Supports the Muslim Brotherhood

Latching onto rumors that emerged on the far-right fringe, Rep. Michele Bachmann sought to spark a McCarthyite investigation that accused Clinton’s deputy chief of staff of acting as a Muslim Brotherhood spy. Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” and along with a handful of Republican colleagues, made allegations that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was working on behalf of the group.

Of course, Bachmann couldn’t substantiate her claims and literally ran away from a reporter when asked about them. Even Republican leaders criticized Bachmann for starting the witch hunt. But her unfounded claims took off in the conservative media, which was more than happy to paint Clinton and Obama as secret Islamist sympathizers, and eventually caused trouble overseas .

3. Clinton Loves Sharia

Anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists claim that her supposed Muslim Brotherhood sympathies have turned her into a covert advocate of Sharia law. Bachmann said that Clinton was working “to take away the free speech rights of the American people” and “our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press” in order to “empower the Islamists.”

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy claimed that Clinton had accepted “submission to the stealthy Islamist effort to enforce in this country the supremacist doctrine known as shariah” and the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin said the administration had shown “support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.” Rick Joyner, the televangelist who has worked closely with Gaffney and Boykin, was left wondering why Clinton was “advocating” Sharia:

4. LGBT Rights Advocacy Will Destroy America

While the Right’s Benghazi, Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law claims didn’t hold water, they at least got one thing right: Clinton acted as a champion for LGBT equality while leading the State Department. The Religious Right fumed at her work on behalf of gay rights and exploded in anger following a speech in Geneva in which she defended the rights of LGBT people and called for the decriminalization of LGBT status.

Liberty University’s Mat Staver warned that Clinton was backing a “radical sexual anarchist agenda” while Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said that Clinton’s support of “sexual paganization” would bring about God’s judgment on America. Pat Robertson reacted to Clinton’s speech by warning that God may destroy the U.S.

5. Clinton Opposes Religious Freedom

All of the conspiracy theories and accusations seem to come together in an attempt to smear Clinton as an enemy of religious freedom. Conservatives argued that she was using both gay rights and Sharia law to undercut Christianity and religious freedoms. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins maintained that Clinton was trying to subvert the freedom of religion by using the term “freedom of worship,” even though the Obama administration frequently uses the phrase “freedom of religion” and President Bush talked about the “freedom of worship” without receiving a similar outcry from social conservatives.

At the Values Voters Summit, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem even warned that Clinton was planning to “shut down” churches and synagogues this month. Since Clinton serves just one more day at the job, she better speed up with her diabolical plans!

The conservative Christian magazine WORLD profiled Jerry Boykin, the former general turned conservative activist. Boykin left the military shortly after he was reprimanded by President Bush for making speeches, while in uniform, that depicted the “war on terrorism” as a holy war against Islam. In the article, Boykin describes his new post at the Family Research Council as a continuation of his old job at the Pentagon in fighting terrorism, telling WORLD, “Staying in the battle is the right thing to do.”

Even before becoming executive vice president of the FRC last July, Boykin was touting all sorts of bizarre, anti-Muslim and right-wing conspiracy theories and working with groups like the Oak Initiative, a project of televangelist Rick Joyner.

Boykin said that after turning down multiple offers from Tony Perkins to join the FRC, he finally decided to accept Perkins’s proposal because he “learned not to tell God you wouldn’t so something because before long that is the very thing He will have you do.”

“Boykin hopes to apply the strategies he learned in the Special Forces,” WORLD’s Edward Lee Pitts reports, and Boykin warned that there is an attempt to “remove God from society” and replace God with “evil.”

Last year, Boykin, 64, became the new executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), the D.C.-based group that has been promoting a Christian worldview in the public policy arena since 1983. It’s a task made more warlike as the nation’s capital becomes enemy territory for social conservatives.

Boykin handles day-to-day operations as the organization’s second-in-command, interacting with lawmakers, managing interviews with the press, and serving as a public face. Going into an environment where his group is considered an outcast is not a new task for Boykin, an original member who became commander of the Army’s elite counterterrorism group Delta Force.

It also isn’t Boykin’s first time patrolling Washington politics. As a deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Boykin endured a year under the political microscope. Memories of what turned into an ordeal a decade ago led Boykin to turn down the job offer from FRC President Tony Perkins initially. But God had other plans.

…

Retiring from the Army in June 2007, the New Bern, N.C., native vowed to reembrace rural life and never to return to Washington. When Perkins first offered Boykin the chance to join the FRC, Boykin refused, saying he felt emotionally unprepared for a return to the city. For a year and a half Perkins kept asking and Boykin kept saying no.

But family and friends unanimously told him he should reconsider. “I’ve learned not to tell God you wouldn’t do something because before long that is the very thing He will have you do,” said Boykin. “Staying in the battle is the right thing to do.”

Now, Boykin says he believes the controversy over his talks to churches is being used to prepare him to be able to fight the country’s culture battles: “The movement needs some grizzled old people not easily frightened by what the opposition does. Once you’ve been kicked around a bit it doesn’t hurt so much.”

Boykin hopes to apply the strategies he learned in the Special Forces, starting with having an appreciation and understanding of the opposition: “I give a great deal of credit to liberal progressive organizations in this country for message unity.” Too many social conservatives, he said, have become apathetic, expecting that someone else will defend their beliefs.

“Not enough of us are out there fighting,” said Boykin, who attributed that to the stream of media ridicule often faced by outspoken social conservatives.

Boykin, who on a recent mid-January day was preparing to visit House Speaker John Boehner’s office on Capitol Hill, described the country he’s fought for as “almost rudderless,” where a whole generation has failed to learn about the nation’s religious roots. He plans to focus this year on the nation’s debt, its growing addiction to entitlements, the integrity of the family, and the sanctity of life.

“When you remove God from society,” he said, “that void is filled with something else, and in most cases that something else is evil.”

While the Religious Right reacted with apoplectic rage following the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the lifting of the ban on women in combat has brought dejected but relatively subdued responses from conservatives.

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, who in December spoke out in favor of the ban by lying about the Israeli military’s policy on women in combat, tweeted that the decision was part of Obama’s plan to “feminize and weaken the U.S. military.”

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said that “lives could be lost unnecessarily” by the new policy, which “will harm men and the mission of the infantry as a whole.” “The administration has a pattern of irresponsible actions like this using the military to advance a social agenda,” she said, “This kind of a social experiment is a dangerous one.”

Faith and Freedom Coalition head Ralph Reed maintained that the Obama administration is “putting women in combat situations is the latest in a series of moves where political correctness and liberal social policy have trumped sound military practice.”

Richard Viguerie’s group claimed that “Obama’s plan to introduce women into frontline combat roles in the U.S. military is a dangerous and irresponsible social experiment, not an opportunity for women to serve their country and advance in their chosen profession.”

Radio talk show host Janet Mefferd on her Facebook page wrote that the move is further proof that the Obama administration is “intent upon undoing this great country” and will “stop at nothing to achieve it.”

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin, who was reprimanded by President Bush after he made anti-Muslim and political speeches while in uniform, called the decision “another social experiment”:

The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment, and they have never lived nor fought with an infantry or Special Forces unit. These units have the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy, sometimes in close hand-to-hand combat. They are often in sustained operations for extended periods, during which they have no base of operations nor facilities. Their living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions. Commanders are burdened with a very heavy responsibility for succeeding in their mission and for protecting their troops.

This decision to integrate the genders in these units places additional and unnecessary burdens on leaders at all levels. While their focus must remain on winning the battles and protecting their troops, they will now have the distraction of having to provide some separation of the genders during fast moving and deadly situations. Is the social experiment worth placing this burden on small unit leaders? I think not.

Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said that the “majority of women” don’t care about the ban or want its elimination:

News of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's intent to lift the long-standing ban on women serving in direct combat is further proof that this administration simply does not care about the issues about which the majority of women care. Once again, their interest on women issues is driven by special interest groups. The point of the military is to protect our country. Anything that distracts from that is detrimental. Our military cannot continue to choose social experimentation and political correctness over combat readiness. While this decision is not unexpected from this administration, it is still disappointing. Concerned Women for America (CWA) and its more than half-a-million members around the country will continue to do all we can to see that our men and women in uniform are governed with the respect and resources needed to do the hard task of fighting for and protecting our freedoms.

“God help us,” lamented Denny Burk of the Southern Baptist Convention, who seemed to suggest that women shouldn’t be in the armed forces at all:

Are the fortunes of women in our country really enhanced by sending them to be ground up in the discipline of a combat unit and possibly to be killed or maimed in war? Is there a father in America who would under any circumstance risk having his daughter shot or killed in battle? Is there a single husband in this country who thinks it okay for his wife to risk being captured by our enemies? To risk becoming a prisoner of war? Is this the kind of people we want to be? Perhaps this is the kind of people we already are. I would sooner cut off my arm than allow such a thing with my own wife and daughters. Why would I ever support allowing someone else’s to do the same? Why would anyone?

What kind of a society puts its women on the front lines to risk what only men should be called on to risk? In countries ravaged by war, we consider it a tragedy when the battle comes to the backyards of women and children. Why would we thrust our own wives and daughters into that horror? My own instinct is to keep them as far from it as possible. Perhaps this move makes sense with an all volunteer force, but what if the draft is ever reinstituted? Are we really going to be the kind of people who press our wives and daughters to fight in combat?

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Everyone in America ought to be scandalized by this news, but I’m wondering if it will even register on the radar of anyone’s conscience. To the extent that it doesn’t, we reveal just how far gone we are as a people. God help us.

Aaron Ahlert of FrontPageMag said the move is “sure to have deadly consequences” and represents the Obama administration “forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat.”

It didn’t take long for the Obama administration to advance a pernicious piece of its promised radical agenda. Two days after the president laid out his far-left vision during the inauguration, senior defense officials announced that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will lift the military’s ban on women serving in combat. The move overturns a 1994 provision that prohibited them from being assigned to ground combat units. Panetta has given the various service branches until 2016 to come up with exemptions, and/or make any arguments about what roles should still reman closed to women. Thus, another bit of gender radicalism has been shoved down the nation’s throat through executive fiat — and this one is sure to have deadly consequences.

...

It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that sexual tension, regardless of the legitimate or illegitimate motivation behind it, would be lessened under front line, life-threatening combat conditions. Nor is it inconceivable to think that close personal relationships of a sexual nature would make some soldiers take the kind of unnecessary risks to save a lover that might not only endanger themselves, but their entire unit.

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Once again, elections have consequences. Barack Obama has made it clear that part of his progressive agenda includes forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat, absent any input from Congress. Once, the United States military was all about projecting lethal power around the globe to protect America’s interests. Now, it is all about promoting diversity, inclusion and equality of outcome, irrespective of military readiness and cohesion. For progressives, who have elevated political correctness above all else–national security included–such radical egalitarianism is cause for celebration. For Donnelly and countless other Americans, it is anything but. “No one’s injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a five-foot-two 110-pound woman,” she contends.

Every year, WallBuilders hosts an event called "The Pro-Family Legislators Conference" designed to provide an opportunity for "conservative pro-family State legislators from across the United States to come together for an insightful briefing session with leading experts in a variety of fields that touch many of the most crucial areas of public service."

Among the speakers at this year's conference, held shortly after the election, included David Barton, Rick Green, Glenn Beck, Daniel Lapin, Kris Kobach, and Jerry Boykin.  For the last few weeks, WallBuilders has been airing some of the speeches that were delivered at the conference and today aired part of Boykin's remarks in which he warned that, because President Obama was re-elected, Sharia law would continue to spread while religious liberty would come under even greater attack and America would continue on the path toward becoming a completely Marxist nation straight out of the "Communist Manifesto": 

We've got a huge problem in America that Sharia is now being inculcated into our legal system. The influence of the Muslim Brotherhood today in America is absolutely incredible - I'm going to come back to this issue.

My friends, the attack on religious liberty in America today is at an all-time, unprecedented level and, by the way, because Barack Obama was re-elected, it's going to get worse. It's going to get worse, folks; you have to stop it.

I will tell you that America is becoming a Marxist nation - I don't care what you say, I'm tired of being called a bigot because I don't like the Marxist policies of Barack Obama. I didn't like Jimmy Carter either, nor Bill Clinton for that matter.

We're becoming a Marxist nation. You can call it whatever you want to, but we're becoming a Marxist nation. And everything we're doing is right out of the Marxist playbook. Everything! It's right out of the Marxist playbook. Go back and read the "Communist Manifesto" if you don't believe me and then look at what we've done in America.

Yesterday, the Family Research Council's Jerry Boykin was the guest on Frank Gaffney's "Secure Freedom Radio" program where he lamented that there were not a lot of military veterans serving in Congress and that, as a result, things like spending cuts and legislative changes are weakening the nation's defense. 

In fact, Boykin said that "one of the great things about the draft" was that it brought everyone into the military in one way or another and now that it no longer exists, we are seeing things like the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell because legislators "have no concept of what military life is like":

One of the great things about the draft was it brought every community in America into the military in one way or another; a son, a daughter, or a brother or a sister , or a father or whatever. So I think there is a lack of understanding of our military today, that why I think the Congress was so eager to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell because they have no concept of what military life is like.

Recently Jerry Boykin, the Family Research Council's Executive Vice President, appeared on "The John Ankerberg Show" where the two spent most of the interview discussing Iran and Israel, but eventually turning to the upcoming election with Ankerberg asking Boykin why it was important for Christians to vote, which prompted Boykin to reply that he gets "angry and frustrated with Christians who don't vote" because it shows that they don't care about giving members of our military a "Commander in Chief that cares about them:"

FRC president Tony Perkins and vice presidents Jerry Boykin and Kenyn Cureton are heading to Catalina Foothills Church in Tucson, Arizona for “Recapture America.” Cosponsors include the Center for Arizona Policy, the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) and the church’s Christian Impact Committee. Recently the church claimed [PDF] that Obama is pushing a “reprioritization in human rights policy in favor of the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights” that is contributing to a “global crisis in religious liberty” and likened Obama to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Saddam Hussein.

During his Sunday sermon, Rev. Allen Cooney called on members of the church to “actively pray and work for the defeat of Barack Obama” in the upcoming election as he is an “enemy” of Christianity and religious freedom.

Of course that shouldn’t be a surprise as Perkins believes it is a sin for a Christian to vote for Obama and Boykin thinks Obama is using health care reform to create a personal Brownshirt army.