Rick Perry Confronted by Teenager Over Gays Serving

Decorah, Ia. – A College student was cut off in mid question by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who told her that pollution from hydraulic fracturing does not exist and that it was made up as a fear tactic from liberals, a statement that received groans from some people in the audience.


“We can have this conversation but you cannot show me one place – not one — where there is a proven pollution of groundwater by hydraulic fracking,” Perry told 22-year-old Carrie Kauffman.


Fracturing – or fracking – is a term used to describe a process of using pressure to release natural gas and petroleum from the earth. Perry noted that it’s been done in Texas for years.


A draft report released Dec. 8 from the Environmental Protection Agency found that the process polluted groundwater with chemicals in Wyoming, a report picked up by national news organizations, including CNN and the Wall Street Journal.


“Bring me the paper,” Perry, a 2012 Republican candidate for president, told the crowd. “Show me the paper. I am truly offended that the American public would be hoodwinked by stories that do not scientifically holdup. If that was true, it would be on the front page of every newspaper. It would be on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News. Everybody would be running that story.”


Perry was unaware that she was bisexual when she approached him with the question.
Rebecka’s father, Todd Green, a Democrat and professor of religion at Luther College, expressed disappointment in Perry’s response to his daughter.
“For a group of women and men to fight for the freedom to run for president, to gather here peacefully and assemble here peacefully in a place like Decorah, but not for them to have the freedom to be open about who they are but he can be free to be open about who he is, to me it seems to be a major contradiction and very hypocritical,” Todd Green said.
“He acknowledged being a sinner as well and then labels an entire group of other people sinners, but now he’s making the same the distinction between certain sinners who can’t serve openly in the military in terms of being gay and others who can,” he said. “To me, this is all a contradiction and I’m very disappointed in this position, and I hope whoever our next president is, GOP or Democratic party, that they will continue along the path allowing people to serve openly lesbian and gays, bisexual, transgender persons in the military.”
The father and daughter attended Perry’s townhall Sunday evening because she was angered by one of Perry’s ads running in Iowa, he said.
“My daughter Rebecka particularly was very incensed by the ad Governor Perry ran a week or two ago here in Iowa where he complained about the problem of gays serving openly in the military but Christians not being able to celebrate Christmas openly. He seemed to get that backwards,” Todd Green said.
“It takes no courage to come out of the closet to be a Christian and run for president of the United States,” he said. “I’d be more impressed if you were Muslim or an atheist and coming out like that, but to come out as though this was an act of courage for him to proclaim his Christian faith, but he also wants to take the stand against gays in the military. This is someone who’s in the position of power and privilege and he’s abusing it.