The National Organization for Marriage is asking GOP congressional leaders to leave one seat empty at the State of the Union address tonight to represent millions of Americans who voted against gay marriage on ballot initiatives—only to have their votes “stolen” when the Supreme Court declared it a constitutional right.
NOM president Brian Brown made the request today, condemning the White House for inviting lead Supreme Court marriage case plaintiff Jim Obergefell to sit in the House chamber this evening.
NOM says that 50 million Americans in 31 states voted to define marriage as only between a man and woman. But their votes were “obliterated” by the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“It’s an outrage that President Obama is honoring the extermination of true marriage in our nation’s laws as a result of an anti-constitutional, illegitimate ruling of the US Supreme Court,” Brown said. “President Obama is trying to honor something that is completely dishonorable because it strips from the law the truth of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and substitutes a fiction from the left that marriage can be anything you want it to be.”
“If the President wanted to do justice concerning this ruling, he would have invited all the people of faith who have been victimized by it – bakers, florists, photographers, nonprofit groups, etc. — and apologized to them and the American people for the supreme lie that is same-sex ‘marriage,’” he added. “The Obergefell ruling has exposed the falsehood that there would never be consequences for redefining marriage, our most fundamental and important social institution.”
Of course, condemning Obama for his choice of guests is the kind of puerile argument that Breitbart News might make. Any president is going to invite whoever advances his agenda.
But NOM’s request to Republicans for an empty seat offers a much-needed reminder to reporters about undemocratic efforts by gay activists to force their views down the throats of opponents, particularly religious Christians. Still, the scrappy organization should have contacted Republican leaders in advance instead of putting out a press release today.
Regardless, the NOM statement, although an obvious press stunt, is a good reminder about how, contrary to popular mythology that they were in sync with popular opinion, gay activists achieved their landmark victory by trampling on the rights of millions of Americans.