“Even supporters of abortion don’t go around saying that people who believe that life begins at conception are evil people,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization of Marriage. “But this is not the case here, and the problem is that the establishment gay marriage groups have not condemned this view that those of us who favor traditional marriage are bigots and therefore should be abolished.”
Brown’s group has fought to keep the names of its donors secret for just that reason. He has been threatened and targeted, he said, and pointed to an incident last year in which a gunman attempted to shoot up the headquarters of the Family Research Council while holding a bag of food from Chik-fil-A, the conservative Christian company that was a target of boycotts over its owner’s anti-gay views. Brown noted that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the FRC is a “hate group, in the same category as the KKK.”
Another difference between earlier American civil rights conflicts and this one, he said, was that slavery, or discriminating against someone on the basis of race, was considered immoral around the world for centuries while the practice was ongoing in parts of the U.S. Hardly anyone in politics, on the other hand, was pushing for gay marriage “until about 10 years ago, but the people who don’t totally want to redefine a definition of marriage that has lasted for thousands of years need to be shunned.”
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