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Published 2:19 pm on July 01, 2009

National Organization for Marriage plots course in gay marriage debate

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By Peter Elliott
Contributing Editor

Brian Brown has as much of a background – and as much at stake – in the ongoing debate over gay marriage as anyone.

Brown is the executive director of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) which strongly advocates in favor of traditional marriage. NOM has a noticeable television advertising presence in states where gay marriage is an issue and flexes its political muscle with legislators and voters alike.

Brown discussed a wide range of gay marriage-related topics with Everyday Christian including future battlegrounds and counter-arguments to gay marriage proponents.

D.C., Maine hot button issues

Washington, D.C. will likely need a referendum for gay marriage opponents to block it from becoming the law in the nation’s capital.

On Tuesday, D.C. Superior Court judge Judith Retchin dismissed a motion designed to block the recognition of out-of-state gay marriages as approved by the D.C. Council in May. Congress, which has ultimate jurisdiction over the move, is not expected to oppose it and let it become law July 6th.

The next step for opponents, led by Bishop Harry Jackson and the Stand 4 Marriage D.C. group, will be to push for a referendum similar to California’s Proposition 8 which strictly defined legal marriage as between one and one woman. Retchin also upheld a decision by the D.C. election board that the gay marriage issue was not a valid subject for a ballot question because it violated the District’s Human Rights Act.

Jackson said Tuesday his group will file with the Board of Elections and Ethics to try and get a ballot initiative off the ground.

Gay D.C. Councilman David Catania hailed the decision as a victory. He is the leading advocate on the council pushing to legalize gay marriage and said the decision as important precursor in that effort.

Brown countered that his hope was after expected litigation that a ballot initiative could be in place for November 2010.

“It’s unfortunate the Board of Elections doesn’t want to extend the right to vote on such an important issue,” Brown said.

The symbolism of D.C. approving gay marriage would be a powerful feather in the cap of gay marriage advocates, yet another immediate and more significant dispute is brewing in Maine.

Signatures are being gathered as part of a people’s veto to force a referendum on the legislature’s decision to approve gay marriage in May. A vote could come as early as November.

Brown disputed press accounts elsewhere which stated gay marriages can begin in Maine come September and acknowledged the national impact Maine will have in shaping the debate. Maine is sixth state to approve gay marriage and the third New England state, joining New Hampshire and Vermont, to do so since the beginning of 2009.

“There’s no doubt Maine is a critical state to focus on right now,” Brown said. “As an organization we want to help the people there push the process along as best as possible. The most important thing to keep in mind is that same-sex marriage cannot go forward as long as long as there are enough signatures on the petitions.”

The upholding of Proposition 8 by the California Supreme Court earlier this year and the approval of gay marriage by the Iowa Supreme Court has helped boost support for traditional marriage in Maine and elsewhere, Brown said.

“I think the victory in California and the loss in Iowa from the standpoint that the voters didn’t have a say makes a big difference,” he said. “It creates a level of motivation that is helpful.”

Challenges to Proposition 8

The national specter of Maine’s vote will be familiar territory for Brown. NOM was active in fundraising and advocacy in California in the run-up to the victory of Proposition 8.

Brown said California was instructional in building a coalition of support across cultural and political lines.

“We had people tell us that there was no way we could go into California and win, that it was way too liberal of a state,” Brown said. “The common assumption is that this is a typical left vs. right issue and it’s not. We had a large majority of African-Americans and Hispanics who voted with us in California which also voted heavily Democratic. This is an issue we can prove to people as preposterous if we can get the information to the voters.”

Currently Proposition 8 is being challenged by a gay couple in federal district court in San Francisco represented by Theodore Olson and David Boies. Olson and Boies respectively represented George W. Bush and Al Gore in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case that decided the disputed 2000 Presidential election.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said Tuesday he would not suspend Prop 8 enforcement while the case was being litigated, pointing to the serious nature of the impact it could have and the ambiguity it could inject into the law.

“The arguments being presented in the case are not new,” Brown said. “Many gay rights groups are not all that enthusiastic about because of the possibility that in one fell swoop you could have the (federal) Defense of Marriage Act upheld and gay marriage limited by the (U..S.) Supreme Court. Considering the current makeup of the court, that would seem likely if the case got that far.”

Civil rights issue

The coalition of African-American pastors in D.C. opposed to gay marriage and the demographics for the California vote help trump the notion that it is a civil rights issue, Brown said.

“The argument the other side makes is that if you’re opposed to same-sex marriage then you are against civil rights and therefore are a bigot is false,” Brown said. “It’s a not a civil right to redefine what marriage is. If you say that the relationship between a man and a man and woman and a woman is the same as a man and a woman, it’s just not true.

“Husbands and wives bring so many obvious things to the table in terms of relationships and parenting. There is a huge difference. … In trying to define this as a civil rights issue, this is why you have African-American pastors and people who were actually involved in the civil rights movement standing up and saying not to cheapen the legacy of struggle they led by lumping this in as a civil rights issue.”

The fact that Christian leaders are part of multicultural opposition is not an accident, Brown added.

“When you think about freeing people from slavery going all the way back to William Wilberforce and abolitionism all the way down to Martin Luther King and the deep-seeded belief in the relationship between God and man, you can’t compare that to the concept of same-sex marriage.”

Religious, secular arguments against gay marriage

Brown said for traditional marriage advocates to get their point across appeals must be made on religious and secular levels alike.

Making those arguments on a religious level is easier, he acknowledged, regardless of the faith.

“We represent many different religious faiths,” Brown said. “We work hard to address multiple faiths. Same-sex marriage is an issue that doesn’t register across a number of different theologies.

“If you believe there are two halves of humanity created to address what children need within a family that means a mother and a father. If you take religion out of the argument, even atheists understand that a man and a woman raising children is not the same as a man and a man or a woman and a woman.”

That is where, too, the issues of social impact come into play if, for example, a business or a religious organization doesn’t want to participate in a gay wedding and fears being sued over it, Brown said. Concerns about how gay marriage is addressed in public schools and how family related issues are dealt with in the public arena are paramount, he added.

Brown pointed to Massachusetts, which recently marked five years as being the first state in the nation to legally recognize gay marriage.

“(In March 2006) you had Catholic Charities, one of the oldest and most venerable organizations in the state, stopping its adoption services because it refused to let gay couples adopt. This wasn’t on religious grounds, this was because the state said it was violating civil rights by making that choice.

“You had a faith-based organization doing good work for a long time shutting its doors on this issue because it was viewed as discrimination when it made a choice based on its principles. These are the types of issues we’re facing if we just let this go.”

Links:

National Organization for Marriage: http://www.nationformarriage.org/

Court dismisses D.C. vote on gay marriage: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/49549167.html

Federal judge taking long look at Prop 8: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/01/BANM18GRLU.DTL&feed=rss.gay

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