Marriage Equality

Like Rep. Louie Gohmert, Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage also participated in pastor Rick Scarborough’s Tea Party Unity conference calls back in March, where he made the “libertarian” argument against legalizing same-sex marriage.

Brown commended his anti-gay organization for having been able to “motivate a lot of the Tea Party groups” along with “African American and Hispanic folks” around their shared fear that gay marriage will undermine the Constitution and jeopardize “the future of Western civilization.”

After discussing how NOM is “working with leaders like Senator [Marco] Rubio or Ted Cruz,” he warned that marriage equality will grow the size and scope of government. If the state recognizes same-sex unions, Brown claimed, then public officials will “use the power of the state to punish, repress and marginalize” anti-gay activists.

He said that NOM’s opposition to marriage equality rests on the “libertarian argument” that if the state refuses to “recognize the truth that marriage is by its nature the union of a man and a woman” then “you’re giving the power to the state to call black white and white black, to put a falsehood into the law and a state that can do that is a state that pretty much can do anything.”

This is an issue where we can get new blood to support the Constitution, I mean that’s what’s at stake, Constitutionalism. When you have African American and Hispanic folks stepping up and saying that we will stand up for traditional marriage, we can make inroads there. I think the local Tea Party groups that have helped us with marches, helped us in any way they can, they’ve understood that this is about marriage, this is about the future of Western civilization, but this is also about our Constitution and whether judges can willy nilly create law out of thin air and I think that that has helped motivate a lot of the Tea Party groups.

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We need leaders and we’re working with leaders like Senator [Marco] Rubio or Ted Cruz, or whoever they may be, who understand what’s at stake and will really lead the party and sort of counter some of these arguments. The second part of this is this false libertarian argument that somehow the state should just get out of marriage altogether. That is not going to happen. There is really one or two outcomes that’s going to happen in this: either we’re going to have the state embrace this new definition of marriage and use the power of the state to punish, repress and marginalize those of us that know that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, or we’re going to have the state recognize the truth about marriage.

Ours is actually a libertarian argument. We’re not arguing that the state create marriage, the state does not create marriage, but the state has to recognize the truth that marriage is by its nature the union of a man and a woman. When it abandons that truth, you’re giving the power to the state to call black white and white black, to put a falsehood into the law and a state that can do that is a state that pretty much can do anything.

Brown also fielded a question from notorious ant-gay activist Brian Camenker of MassResistance, who asked why NOM is not taking “a hard stance” against same-sex relationships and openly calling homosexuality “perverse” and “unnatural.”

Brown said that NOM tries to avoid making those arguments outright simply for tactical reasons as they are trying to sway Justice Anthony Kennedy and “it’s not likely that a stronger argument about homosexuality is really going to shift Kennedy.”

However, Brown said that other groups should continue “taking a harder line in focusing more on homosexuality.”

“Different groups need to do different things, not all groups have to do the same thing,” Brown explained. “So folks that are taking a harder line in focusing more on homosexuality, there need to be different groups doing different things.”

Camenker: It’s concerning to a lot of people that the arguments being used in the various court cases concede that homosexual relationships are legitimate and not a perversion or what have you, we just don’t like them, and we wonder if there was more of a hard stance that they are not legitimate, that it is perverse, unnatural and what have you, that we might have some better success in some of the cases.

The second part of the question is I understand that you’re at CPAC, what is it like being virtually the only pro-family, pro-marriage guy there? I’m very disturbed at the way CPAC is being run this year.

Brown: Whenever I’m asked about what I think about homosexuality, I’m very clear, I believe and as a Catholic I believe in the traditional teaching of our church. I think that sex is reserved for marriage, period. As far as the legal arguments go we may differ. I think a lot of the legal arguments have been made in the Prop 8 case especially have been made to speak to [Justice] Kennedy and Kennedy has already found in the Lawrence case, for example, that states can’t ban sodomy. So it’s not likely that a stronger argument about homosexuality is really going to shift Kennedy.

I know some people think we need to focus more on homosexuality. All I’ll say is that when asked I state what I believe and many of the religious supporters that we’ll have at the march clearly will stand up and proclaim biblical truth on marriage, but I’m not sure whether legally that is the best strategy. Also, different groups need to do different things, not all groups have to do the same thing. So folks that are taking a harder line in focusing more on homosexuality, there need to be different groups doing different things.

Conservative talk show host Steve Deace is not happy with Bill O’Reilly’s seeming reversal on marriage equality, telling Religious Right activist Bob Vander Plaats that O’Reilly is “betraying” his own viewers and is essentially a “charlatan” and a “fraud.”

While discussing the Supreme Court’s handling of the marriage cases with Vander Plaats, who warned that the court could “set off a constitutional crisis,” Deace said that O’Reilly is a traitor to his conservative base: “you stab them in the back, throw them under the bus and use the enemy’s own language against them. To me that’s a hanging offense; that is a hanging offense.”

Vander Plaats: If you usurp the will of the people—we saw it in Iowa, you usurp the will of the people, three justices get removed, there’s a credibility gap with the three justices that continue to serve— if you usurp the vote of the people of California you will set off a constitutional crisis against these United States and it should be a constitutional crisis. People like you and me and others, we’d help do our part to set off a constitutional crisis if that is in fact what they came back with.

Deace: I’ve got a bee in my bonnet big time and it’s Bill O’Reilly at Fox News. I don’t like charlatans, I don’t like frauds; give me Rachel Maddow, at least she’s honest. But when you are trying to profit off of the very people you are betraying and you have tried to condescend them and patronize them for years and then at the moment they probably need you to return the favor of all the money they made you over the last fifteen years the most, you stab them in the back, throw them under the bus and use the enemy’s own language against them. To me that’s a hanging offense; that is a hanging offense.

Deace said there are no good arguments for same-sex marriage, and gay rights activists are just throwing “a hissy-fit.” He even said it is pointless to note that homosexuality is found in other species besides humans since “there’s also the licking of one’s own genitals, the flinging of one’s own feces and the eating of live prey and then puking it up to feed your offspring in nature too.”   

With this issue there are no good arguments for it because the argument essentially boils down to, ‘because I want it.’ It’s essentially a tantrum; it’s policy by desire. ‘Because I want it.’ It’s a child throwing a hissy-fit, tantrum in Wal-Mart because mom bought me the regular sized M&Ms and not the king-sized that I demanded. As Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation pointed out on CNN this week that just drove the reporter into a meltdown, ‘no one is in jail for having consensual homosexual sex with another adult, what you’re trying to do is impose your narrow definition of what this means and therefore what it means for free speech and religious liberty on everybody else.’ So they throw out all these clichés and they are so easy to debunk. One of my favorites is, ‘well there’s homosexuality in nature.’ There’s also the licking of one’s own genitals, the flinging of one’s own feces and the eating of live prey and then puking it up to feed your offspring in nature too.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) is no stranger to pushing anti-gay rhetoric and policies, and in the Washington Times today attacked marriage equality for being “in defiance of biology, nature and common sense” and allegedly “further[ing] the destruction of the family.”

According to Huelskamp, a Supreme Court ruling that struck down either Proposition 8 or the Defense of Marriage Act would do “irreparable harm to yet another pillar of the American paradigm for our patriotic, wholesome culture.”

“If that definition is changed by the court, the purpose of marriage devolves to mere recognition of an emotional union,” Huelskamp writes. “In so doing, the children of America will be shortchanged.”

President Obama and I have very different notions of what a family is. For liberals, the family can apparently be everything from “Heather Has Two Mommies” to “Daddy’s Roommate” to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “It Takes a Village.” In the opinion of electoral majorities in Kansas and 40 other states, however, that does not a family make.

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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in two landmark cases concerning homosexual marriage . The Hollingsworth v. Perry case challenges the federal constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative approved by 7 million voters to amend California’s state constitution to define marriage as an institution that involves only one man and one woman. The Windsor v. United States case challenges the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 federal statute overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 that recognizes traditional marriage for federal purposes and protects states from having homosexual marriage imposed upon them by other states. If at least five Supreme Court justices do not resist the temptation to legislate from the bench, they might overturn Proposition 8 and DOMA. If that happens, the high priests and priestesses of political correctness will have done irreparable harm to yet another pillar of the American paradigm for our patriotic, wholesome culture — “God, the flag, mom and apple pie.” Activist judges have already expelled faith from the public square (forbidding the Ten Commandments, a cross in remembrance of our military heroes, and Christmas Nativity scenes) and decriminalized burning the Stars and Stripes in public. The First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” initiative and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s sugary-drink ban suggest the days of consuming apple pie might well be numbered.

That leaves motherhood. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Congressional Resolution that established Mother's Day. Every president since Woodrow Wilson has issued proclamations that pay homage to the significance of motherhood. In 1981, Ronald Reagan wrote: “They shape the character of our people through the love and nurture of their children. It is the strength they give their families that keeps our nation strong.” In 2011, President Obama wrote: “[W]e celebrate the extraordinary importance of mothers in our lives. The bond of love and dedication a mother shares with her children and family is without bounds or conditions.”

In the Hollingsworth case, though, The Justice Department argues that children do not need mothers. The Obama administration makes the incredible assertion that motherhood is superfluous to rebut an argument that the traditional two-parent family, led by both a mother and a father, provides the ideal situation to raise a child. In defiance of biology, nature and common sense, the administration argues that children need neither a father nor a mother and that having two fathers or two mothers or more is just as good as having one of each.

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Redefining marriage to remove parents of both sexes from the equation would further the destruction of the family, the most fundamental building block of society. If that definition is changed by the court, the purpose of marriage devolves to mere recognition of an emotional union. In so doing, the children of America will be shortchanged — and the will of the American people would be once again short-circuited by black robes in Washington.

Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center is very, very, very angry at the media’s coverage of the Supreme Court’s marriage cases. In fact, he is so angry that he is accusing the media of pushing “full-blown fascist propaganda.”

After calling the comedy The New Normal a “propaganda show,” Gainor told the American Family Association’s news service that the media “are going to have almost no voices [from the other side] because they don’t believe that anybody should have a right to think otherwise.”

Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for MRC, said from the Post to the big three broadcast networks, the mainstream media is actively lobbying the American public.

“They even talk about the media component, how the media have propagandized our ‘media culture,’ in the words of [NBC news anchor] Brian Williams,” notes Gainor. “So they talk about it and they show Ellen DeGeneres, they show Modern Family clips, they show Will & Grace. They show a very tiny snippet The New Normal, which conveniently is NBC’s propaganda show.”

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And Gainor tells American Family News that NBC has been the biggest violator of pushing its own gay agenda, citing its report that he says was “filled with images of TV’s gay icons.”

“That’s their strategy,” he remarks. “They’re going to have almost no voices [from the other side] because they don’t believe that anybody should have a right to think otherwise. It’s beyond bias; it’s actually I would even say beyond censorship. It is full-blown fascist propaganda.”

The MRC spokesman says while the Supreme Court may not be able to come to an agreement, the elite media has determined the issue to already be decided.

Fred Luter, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, appeared Wednesday on TruNews with Rick Wiles, the Religious Right talk show host who is convinced President Obama is literally a demon.

After Wiles shared with Luter his theory that gay rights activists are to blame for North Korea’s threats to launch a nuclear strike against the US, Luter explained that while he is “not that strong in prophecy” he would not be surprised that there might be a connection.

“I would not be surprised that at the time when we are debating same-sex marriage, at a time when we are debating whether or not we should have gays leading the Boy Scout movement, I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that we have a mad man in Asia who is saying some of the things that he’s saying,” Luter said.

Listen:

Wiles: You know at precisely the same time the Supreme Court is hearing these arguments on same-sex marriage in Asia a crazy man in possession of nuclear weapons, Kim Jong-un, is openly saying: I have ordered our military to position our rockets on US targets in Hawaii, Japan, Guam and the mainland of the United States. He has gone into a full state of war this week. I don’t know, Pastor Luter, I don’t know if anybody is — I know they’re not — they’re just not putting this together. You got this happening over here and you got this happening over here: could the two be connected? Could our slide into immorality be what is unleashing this mad man over here in Asia to punish us?

Luter: It could be a possibility, I’m not that strong in prophecy but I would not be surprised that there’s not a connection there simply because of the fact we’ve seen it happen in scripture before. I would not be surprised that at the time when we are debating same-sex marriage, at a time when we are debating whether or not we should have gays leading the Boy Scout movement, I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that we have a mad man in Asia who is saying some of the things that he’s saying.

Indeed, Wiles started the program by warning that the US is being “transformed into a socialist, homosexual, anti-God, anti-biblical morality cesspool” and will commit “national suicide” if the Supreme Court rules “that homosexuals can marry.”

I have to admit I’m at a loss to understand the complacency and apathy of tens of millions of American Christians who are standing by, twiddling their thumbs while their nation is transformed into a socialist, homosexual, anti-God, anti-biblical morality cesspool. I fear that the moral decay has accelerated and worsened to such a degree that it is now impossible to halt the decline without a major catastrophe crippling the nation.

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The Bible is full of examples to what happens to a nation that goes into idolatry and witchcraft and sexual sin, it always ends in disaster, always. So why aren’t we telling the American people that if you allow the Supreme Court to rule that homosexuals can marry, you have just committed national suicide. Why isn’t anybody standing up?

Luter told Wiles that he agreed with his analysis that the US may end up being “destroyed” like Sodom and Gomorrah over same-sex marriage.

Wiles: If the Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, what are the ramifications for this nation? Luter: Oh man I would hate to think of it. You talked about Sodom and Gomorrah in your introduction and I can just see that happening man, it would be like America is pointing its finger at God and saying: ‘I know what your word says God, I know what the scripture says but we want to be our own king, we want to do things our own way.’ The last time a nation did that they were destroyed, Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed. I just see things getting consistently worse in America because of our decisions that we’ve made to just get farther and farther away from God and God’s word.

Wiles: Do you think the average evangelical Christian in America comprehends the spiritual ramifications of this country endorsing same-sex marriage, do you think people sitting in the pews of churches, are they aware that once we go down that road….

Luter: I don’t think so. I don’t think they are Rick because I think if they were we’d have more of us standing against it, shouting out and saying that enough is enough. I don’t think they are aware, I don’t think that they are aware of what the consequences of these decisions and choices can be to our nation and to our families and to our churches.

After Wiles said that ten million Christians should stop going to work in order to protest the nation’s alleged immorality, Luter said that the country needs “about ten million Rick Wileses” to “start revival in America.”

Wiles: The country, the economic system would be on the verge of collapse if ten million productive Christians — guess who goes to work every day, the Christians; guess who pays their taxes, the Christians — if ten million productive Christians simply said ‘we’re going to sit things out until this craziness stops,’ I think it would be over in a couple days.

Luter: That would be powerful, that would be a phenomenal statement to America and I think also to the world. The challenge would be getting those ten million Christians together to make it happen.

Wiles: Apparently they don’t believe the Gospel enough.

Luter: I agree, we need about ten million Rick Wileses in the world, it would be radical.

Wiles: That would be a scary thought.

Luter: I think it would start revival in America, I really do.

Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver yesterday spoke to Vic Eliason of Voice of Christian Youth America on Crosstalk, where the two agreed that legalizing same-sex marriage nationally “would be the same as pronouncing the death sentence on America.”

Staver, who is also the dean of the Liberty University School of Law, even went so far as to say that marriage equality would “obliterate” morality, marriage and “the idea that there even is a God,” along with harming children, parents and society at large.

Eliason: You know as we see the comments, one website indicated that if the court strikes down marriage as we know it that it would be the same as pronouncing the death sentence on America that many of us know and love, recount the days of Sodom and Gomorrah as returning to our culture. Your thoughts?

Staver: Well I think so. Same-sex marriage is ultimately the abolition of gender; it’s ultimately the abolition of any moral behavior with regards to human sexuality. This whole assault on marriage is really an attempt to obliterate not only morality but Judeo-Christian morality, to obliterate marriage and to even obliterate the idea that there even is a God.

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Staver: You’re going to have people lose their professions, you’re going to have parents lose their rights, you’re going to have churches and other avenues of religious free exercise ultimately throttled and marriage and morality are going to crumble. Children are ultimately going to pay the price and society will suffer.

He later cited California’s law barring the use of ex-gay therapy on minors as an example of how gay rights represent “a direct assault on the very core of our liberties and morality, marriage and even God.”

Staver described Rob Portman, Karl Rove and Reince Priebus as “cockroaches” which “start running” once “you flip on the lights” over their comments on gay marriage, and Eliason said of the Log Cabin Republicans: “Is there nobody to clean the cockroaches out?”

After discussing George W. Bush’s failure to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, Staver joined other Religious Right leaders like Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer in warning about the emergence of a “third party” and a “mass exodus” from the GOP “if the Republican Party were to adopt same-sex marriage.”

Listen:

Staver: You know it’s like going into a building at night and you flip on the lights and all of the sudden the cockroaches start running, and I think this same-sex marriage issue has shown the cockroaches within the Republican Party, the RINOs: Republican In Name Only. That’s why we lost the 2008 election, that’s why we lost the 2012 election, because they put forth their party person who is not really a conservative and doesn’t resonate with the American people and couldn’t carry a conservative message and articulate it if it was handed to them.

Go back to George W. Bush, George W. Bush surrounded himself by a number of people that were not conservative and in fact though he was elected in 2004 on a marriage mandate, that was what ultimately pushed him across the line; remember that was the time when thirteen states passed constitutional amendments, eleven of them actually on the day he was elected, and Ohio was a key state and Ohio had marriage on the ballot and that pushed him over the top. He had a marriage mandate and coming into 2005 we asked him to push forward with a Federal Marriage Amendment; instead, he and Karl Rove backed away. They tried to reform Social Security, which was not a mandate of his, and he failed and we lost that opportunity.

So now you have Karl Rove and you have [Reince] Priebus and some others, [Rob] Portman, they’re going down a way that ultimately will split the Republican Party. I can tell you what, if the Republican Party were to adopt same-sex marriage, if they were to do that, evangelicals will leave en masse and that will create a third party. No one wants to create a third party, they want to work within the system, they want to make sure that it advances freedom and liberty and the sanctity of life and marriage, but if the Republican Party goes down that road you can bet that there will be a mass exodus from that party and it will not win elections again for many, many years in the future.

Eliason: You know Mat, as we look back to a term that isn’t new but they call them Log Cabin Republicans and that of course was the group that favored homosexual involvement and moral decadence, as I define it, but this was the liberal element. When I saw that happen years ago down in my heart I thought: Is there nobody to clean the cockroaches out? Why do you coexist with that?

During an appearance on The Steve Deace Show, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) maintained that “our democracy and our representative form of government” will be “in dire straits” if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage. He told Deace that he is not “aware of any” precedent of the court making such a sweeping decision that would represent “a huge invasion into states’ rights.”

Deace: We’re talking about a supermajority of US states have already, all of them within the last ten to fifteen years, have defined what marriage is within their borders and now we have the US Supreme Court determining whether it has the jurisdiction to override a supermajority of US state laws. Mark, do you know of any precedent for that ever in American history? I can’t come up with one, ever.

Meadows: No, I’m not aware of any and obviously if it gets down to nine people deciding the will of the people our democracy and our representative form of government is in dire straits. The people here in North Carolina overwhelmingly came out and voted really en masse and with such energy that I’ve not experienced in over twenty-eight years of following politics here in North Carolina have not seen that kind of energy, and here we got the Supreme Court looking to overturn a California law that really where the voters voted there as well and you know it was obviously overturned in the Ninth Circuit and now we’ve got the Supreme Court saying that they’re going to weigh in on this particular issue. It’s a huge invasion into states’ rights and the state definition of marriage, whether you call it traditional or natural marriage, I call it marriage, you know it’s between one man and one woman, period.

Later, the freshman congressman charged that any such ruling would lead to “a constitutional crisis,” although he didn’t answer Deace’s question about how Congress would respond to the court’s decision.

Deace: What happens, I mean you’re a congressman, if the court does that, you are in a state that has already asserted its will on this issue but you’re in the body that our founders constitutionally gave oversight of the judicial branch, so you’re right in the thick of this debate. What happens if the court decides that they are their own constitutional convention without any recourse at all, what happens?

Meadows: Well I mean obviously we start to have a constitutional crisis. We’ve already seen some of that with the executive branch saying that they’re not going to enforce certain laws. I think it was Justice Scalia that brought this out in the last couple of days is when you get an executive branch that starts to decide what’s constitutional and what’s not and what they’re going to enforce and what they’re not, they’re usurping the authority of Congress and that’s the representative form of government and we can’t stand for that, as a people we can’t stand for that so we need to stand up and make sure that our voice is heard.

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, anti-gay pastor Harry Jackson said conservatives can win their fight against marriage equality if they succeed in convincing Americans about gay marriage’s dire consequences, such as the “automatic” legalization of polygamy.

“If same-sex marriage is allowed to be mandated by fiat,” Jackson warned, “then right behind it, polygamy and many other forms of marriage will automatically sweep the land within just a matter of a few years.”

Watch:

Yesterday in an interview with Religious Right broadcaster Janet Mefferd, National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown said that his group’s march against gay rights near the Supreme Court reminded him of the Civil Rights Movement. “I was not alive during the Civil Rights Movement but this is what it must have felt like,” Brown said.

This isn’t the first time Brown has compared anti-gay activists to the Civil Rights Movement, however, that hasn’t stopped him from criticizing President Obama for linking the movement for gay rights to the struggle for racial equality.

We were hoping for 5,000 people and we ended up with over 10,000. We filled the whole area in front of the court when we marched. It was a diverse coalition, we had African American leaders, Hispanic leaders, State Sen. Ruben Diaz brought 30 buses from the Bronx; it was just amazing. What I was most happy about, we talked about this before the rally, the way everyone conducted themselves. We were chanting, we were united but when folks tried to get in our way, there were some gay marriage protesters who tried to get in front of the march and stop us even though we had a permit, everyone just knelt down and started praying. I was not alive during the Civil Rights Movement but this is what it must have felt like, people were just so ecstatic to stand up and they did it in a loving, respectful way but they weren’t going to be silenced. I couldn’t be more happy with what happened today, I think it’s a huge step forward for the pro-marriage movement and I don’t think it’s going to be lost on the Supreme Court justices that we were there and we were there in force.

Earlier in the same program, Gary Bauer of American Values told Mefferd that young people tend to back marriage equality because “many of them have breathed the air of the poisoned culture,” and warned that any decision striking down anti-gay marriage laws “would be a serious disaster for our country.”

Bauer: Among young people many of them have breathed the air of the poisoned culture and they might have a different view on it but I do not believe the average college student, burdened with maybe $100,000 of student debt, looking at dim job prospects, is thinking first and foremost when they get up in the morning: wow, I sure do hope men can marry men.

Mefferd: Right, right. I don’t think that’s probably a front burner issue for any of them either. This is interesting though, what we are hearing now from the news reports, the SCOTUS Blog had a number of people who were writing articles today about this, indicating that Justice Anthony Kennedy thinks, it may be the case, that the case should be dismissed with no ruling at all. Now I don’t know how many people expected that coming out of the court today but what is your take on this idea that they could just keep it to California, they may just decide to dismiss the case altogether?

Bauer: I’m hearing the same thing; it would be something of a surprise. I wouldn’t be dancing a jig if that’s the ruling but it sure is better than the ruling that I fear which is that this propaganda campaign will panic Kennedy and maybe even somebody like Chief Justice Roberts to rule that this is a constitutional right hidden in that same provision that has the right to abort babies and that every state’s vote has been struck down. That would be obviously a disaster not only for folks like us but I believe it would be a serious disaster for our country.