As federal judges struck down gay marriage bans left and right at home, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown appeared at meetings and marches for various anti-gay rights causes in France, Trinidad and Tobago, Russia and Australia—a surprising uptick in travel for the stateside activist. The result: This June, Brown’s group began discussing rebranding itself as the “International Organization for Marriage,” according to materials from a “March for Marriage” meeting in Washington, D.C.
Brown is just one of many in the American “traditional marriage” movement who are aggressively pushing their message abroad now that they face an increasingly tough sell at home. In so doing, he is making common cause with foreign activists whose anti-gay rights crusades are more robust—and more resoundingly successful—than America’s homegrown one. Among them are Americans who actively worked behind the scenes to support the passage of Russia’s law preventing gay people from adopting, as well as Uganda’s law that punishes homosexuality with up to a lifetime in prison.
The U.S. involvement in anti-gay rights international activity has become so intense that one of the premier gay rights groups in the country, the Human Rights Campaign, started up a special “global engagement program” last year to track their activities and help gay rights activists abroad. The program has a $1 million budget for its first year and five full-time staffers, and on Monday released its most comprehensive report on the internationalization of the American anti-gay rights movement.
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