NOM BLOG

Maryland: In the End, The Churches Won

 

Blair Lee, CEO of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring, MD writes in the Maryland Gazette on March 18th about "Gay Marriage on the Rocks."

He points out the gay lobby, supposedly speaking for the oppressed, is actually so powerful that not a single lobbyist could be hired to defend marriage. But the churches won anyway:

"This was supposed to be gay marriage's moment in Maryland. All the legislative roadblocks were cleared, and a governor who opposes gay marriage said he'd gladly sign the bill (go figure)...

Meanwhile, the well-organized, deep-pocketed gay lobby was applying a full court press.

They hired a top State House lobbying firm, flooded senators with e-mails, filled the Senate galleries and demonstrated outside the State House. A wildly sympathetic press corps put a human face on the bill with heart-rending stories of upstanding gay couples, while The Post and The Sun endlessly editorialized about the bill's merits and "inevitability."

Academics, clergy, the ACLU and gay couples testified passionately for the bill, while the legislature's eight openly gay members (the most in the nation) worked from within. Every statewide elected official supported the bill, as did every member of the Montgomery delegation backed by the County Council. (If Montgomery's lawmakers fought as hard for state aid as they do for gay marriage, the county wouldn't have a $300 million deficit.)

Meanwhile, the bill's opponents, caught off-guard, mounted a weak, disorganized defense. In fact, so powerful and intimidating is the gay lobby that no State House lobbying firm dared represent the coalition of churches opposing the bill.

...Six days a week Americans hear the "gay is good" message broadcast from every media outlet. One day a week, in church, they hear the other side.

Yet, despite these odds, organized religion has trumped the gay lobby in every showdown where the people were allowed to decide.

In the five gay marriage states it was the courts, not the voters, who ruled, and in the last election all the Iowa judges who legalized gay marriage were turned out by the voters.

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