Jennifer Roback Morse heads the Ruth Institute, an organization that was formerly associated with the National Organization for Marriage.
Perhaps it goes without saying that Morse wasn’t tickled by President Obama’s discussion of gay rights during last week’s State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, Morse didn’t herself neglect to say that coming out “does not require as much courage” as deciding to “walk away from the gay lifestyle.”
During an interview with the “Issues, Etc.” podcast on Thursday, Morse said:
“Obama talked about the courage required for a young guy to come out to his parents, completely omitting the fact that right now coming out does not require as much courage as is required by a person who says, ‘You know, I feel same-sex attraction, but what I want to do is not act on it, what I want to do is live up to my church’s teachings, what I want to do is walk away from the gay lifestyle that I’ve been living, that’s what I want to do.’ Now, that person, that takes a lot of courage to talk like that in today’s world, but Obama didn’t mention any of those people.”
As for Obama’s mention of parents reconsidering their beliefs in order to accept their gay children, she said that was “tacitly putting every adult in America, every Christian in America, every Lutheran, every serious Jewish person, at war between their religious beliefs and their love for their children.”
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“Well, our religion teaches that if you love somebody, you have to live in the truth with respect to them and you have to help present them the truth. You aren’t doing anybody any favors by accommodating their desires even if their desires are not necessarily good for them.”
Morse was also jolly cross to learn that President Obama invited Jim Obergefell— the lead plaintive in the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage — to the State of the Union address, even though her grasp on Obergefell’s story is sketchy at best. (He married his partner of 20 years on an airport tarmac shortly before he died of ALS.)
Well. Morse is certain the relationship won’t last.
“[Obama’s] trying to say, obviously he’s trying to treat Obergefell as a hero, as a Rosa Parks type figure or something like that. I would have been more impressed if he could have invited the Goodridges [the plaintiffs in the landmark 2003 Massachusetts marriage equality ruling] … but the Goodridges are no longer married to one another. So it will be interesting to see if Mr. Obergefell remains married to his true love there for whom we redefined marriage for the entire country.”
h/t: Right Wing Watch
