he National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown has written his own reflection about his recent debate with Dan Savage, attempting to further craft a bizarre narrative that somehow Dan Savage is the bully. Just as Brown ignored acknowledging same-sex families in the debate, he thanked Savage for the chance to meet “his partner and his child,” as opposed to his husband and their child. Then Brown went on to suggest that the LGBT community is “powerful” while ironically trumpeting Christian ideals of “equality”:
Christian teaching and practice was never rooted in racism, but in the radical equality of all people and peoples before God. The American South, under slavery, was the exception to the rule — which is one reason why, when challenged, the belief that Christianity can justify not only slavery but also racism, failed abjectly and is now a dead idea. That was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s great triumph.
But sexual morality and marriage are quite different. Here we have the broad consistent sweep of the authoritative teaching of Christ and the Christian church he founded, recorded in the Bible, and in Christian teaching and practice across the centuries. Here we have something core to the Christian faith, and as I told Dan Savage, it’s not going to go away just because he doesn’t like it.[…]
Something about that dynamic captures what we all see at work at this point in the gay marriage debate. Power is being exercised by a minority, which denies it has the power it is exercising, and denies what we see happening in front of us: this power is being used to label and demonize all who disagree, no matter how relentlessly civilized we are, no matter that we uphold gay people’s real fundamental civil rights.
Brown’s cognitive dissonance is on grand display here. He concedes that the attempt to defend slavery with the Bible failed, but is unwilling to admit that his own defense of inequality with the Bible could fail just as easily (and does). He accuses the LGBT community of exerting power over Christians, but NOM’s regular talking point is to brag how majorities have voted against the right of the minority in 31 states. He co-opts the civil rights movement to defend his position while his organization accuses the LGBT community of doing the same to create a racial wedge. And he claims that he is the victim being demonized, even though he can’t even bring himself to acknowledge the very families he campaigns against daily. As Brown actually said in the debate (about divorce), “Just because you believe something is wrong, it doesn’t mean that you make it illegal,” and yet that is exactly what he has dedicated his life to doing with same-sex marriage.
It’s not surprising that Brown’s reflection relies upon various anonymous comments from supporters — comments NOM could only get by reposting its own copy of the debate video. He failed to make one cogent argument against same-sex marriage, relying entirely on self-victimization and obvious lies. The debate deserves to be watched widely so that Brown’s obvious spin about how the evening played out doesn’t distract from what actually took place: