I guess it was asking too much to allow a member of any progressive religious organizations some air time to counter professional grifters Franklin Graham and Ralph Reed, so ABC "news" decided the best they could do was to give one of their favorite Villagers, Cokie Roberts, some time to rebut them.

I'd really like to know why an outlet that considers themselves "news" thinks we need to be hearing from these two in the first place? Reed should have been serving jail time along with his buddy Abramoff instead of continuing to line his pockets and being allowed to appear on our airways to spread lies every time you turn around.

Following Graham's praise of Putin and his anti-gay crackdown, the viewers were treated to grifter Reed making erroneous claims about same sex marriage and adoption, and as Will Kohler noted, spreading blatant Mark Regnerus type lies on the issue.

Cokie Robert called him out on the sheer cruelty of his arguments, but not on them being wrong on the facts as well:

REED: And by the way, Martha, the social science on this is clear. This isn't about Vladimir Putin. This is about what's best for children here in the United States. And the social science is irrefutable. And it is that a child who grows up in a home without the mother and father present and they both play very unique procreative, nurturing and socializing role, they're nine times more likely to end up dropping out of high school. They're five times more likely to end up in poverty. And they're three times more likely to end up addicted --

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: -- orphanages and --

REED: -- drugs and alcohol.

ROBERTS: -- than a child raised in a home. And the fact that people are willing to take these children and raise them and raise them in a loving way is clearly better for these children --

RADDATZ: Would you agree with that?

Would you rather have a child sitting in an orphanage and not have gay parents?

REED: I think that the social science is just simply not in yet on same-sex couples and I think the law has every right to set an ideal. And the ideal is a mother and a father --

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: -- the reason the numbers have changed so dramatically on this, first of all, that ideal isn't true in all kinds of families that (INAUDIBLE) being what it is and the abandoned mothers.

But it is also true -- I mean, if we got -- if we got better men, we'd be in better shape.

But the --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No disagreement there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No disagreement here either.

ROBERTS: The reason the numbers have changed so fast and so dramatically on this question of gay marriage -- it's really like no other issue we've ever experienced -- is because everybody in American now has experience with someone who is gay. People have come out of the closet and said, I am your brother. I am your sister. And then they have seen these families raising children and see these --

At which point, host Martha Raddatz decided it was a good time to change the subject and move on. I'll just leave everyone with the question Kolher asked at his blog:

So whats worse. Graham’s and Reed’s utter lies and bullshit? Or ABC hosting this anti-gay hate-mongering grifter and a sleazy conman (guess who’s who) on a “news” show on Easter morning?

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