In March, a leaked internal document from the National Organization for Marriage revealed the anti-gay group planned to “interrupt the attempt to equate gay with black and sexual orientation with race.”
NOM’s plan is now clearly in full swing, and at a press conference yesterday, the anti-gay organization’s “religious liaison” and founder of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP), Reverend Bill Owens, lambasted President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage and criticized the president for “condoning” child molestation:
OWENS: The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women. […] For the president to bow to the money as Judas did for Jesus Christ is a disgrace and we are ashamed […] Another very important point I think that needs to be made is if you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys, you will note that all of them will say that “I was molested as a child — a man molested me in my home,” wherever. They will say they were molested. And for the president to condone this type of thing knowing the full facts is just irresponsible.
Listen:
This kind of homophobic vitriol is nothing new for Owens. Earlier this month, he compared homosexuality to bestiality. Now, Owens is arguing that by supporting same-sex marriage, the president is, in effect, condoning child molestation. Owens believes that allowing every American to enter into a committed lifelong partnership with the person he or she loves will doom society into a cataclysmic slippery slope where gay child molesters molest children thereby making them grow up to be gay child molesters.
Of course, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. A psychiatric disorder, pedophilia refers only to a sexual interest in children. A gay man is no more likely to abuse a child than a straight man, as psychologists have stated for years. Owens’ fear that children are more endangered around gay men stems from the same inane homophobia that compels Mike Huckabee to claim that Boy Scouts are somehow safer without gay troop leaders.
To see what NOM is trying to do here, one need only look at that leaked internal memo: “Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage.” Bill Owens is that spokesperson, even though CAAP only boasts about a dozen members. CAAP’s only purpose since its founding has been to attack same-sex marriage. According to Owens yesterday, there is “not one issue more important than holding the family together.”
CAAP may purport to speak for the entire black community in its mission to force the president to rescind his endorsement, but recent polling shows that a majority of African Americans supports same-sex marriage.