Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, told syndicated radio host Steve Deace, the FAMiLY Leadership Summit on Saturday he remained hopeful that the Supreme Court decision favoring same-sex marriage will one day be overturned.
In the meantime its effects need to be contained.
“We need to contain the effects of the decision. This is not idle war. Another problem we are going to face is some candidates are going to say ‘we need to focus all our efforts on religious liberty now, and not worry about overturning.’ When I say contain, until we overturn this decision the First Amendment and religious liberty will not be completely protected. It is a direct threat, the decision has to be overturned,” Brown said.
“But there are immediate things we can do to contain some of the damage. One of those is the First Amendment Defense Act before Congress. Senator Cruz and others have been strong proponents of this. What would it do? It would stop the federal government from discriminating against our churches, our schools, businesses, for licensing, for any way the government can discriminate against because we live out the truth that marriage is union between a man and a woman. With the federal government, I think that would contain that,” he stated. “We need to be immediately contacting our Senators and Congressmen. We are already up to, I think, 134 co-sponsors in the House. We’ve got a third of the Senate, that’s relatively quick.”
Brown said while he’s an optimist he’s also a realist. He knows the decision won’t be reversed overnight. It might take years.
“At the point when you think things have gotten the worst. At the point where you have started to accept the idea that maybe what we are doing is impossible, number one, we know through our Lord all things are possible. Number two, have a smile on your face, as bad as things are convert your righteous anger to action. Understand that God put you in this moment in history for some reason. Very few people in the course of human history get to stand up for such obvious, such moral truth, such good as the fact that there is something true and beautiful as the union of one man and one woman. There are very few people in human history who get to stand up against overwhelming odds and possibly be persecuted,” Brown encouraged the audience.
“If you are the Kleins (Christian bakers in Oregon fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple) rejoice, rejoice that you’re being persecuted. If you are standing with the Kleins, rejoice because my view is when the American people see people stand up, when they actually see people who are suffering for the truth of marriage, then we’ll start seeing people change their opinion and then we’ll start seeing people stand up and vote. In the very process of persecution the American people will stand up and say, ‘we’ve got this wrong.’ We are on the right side, we are going to overturn this decision,” Brown added.
