NOM Spokesman: Marriage Equality Will Ban Preaching

Jennifer Roback Morse, the head of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute, that marriage equality would make it unlawful for Christians “to preach the Bible.” Morse, who previously asserted that gay rights supporters stole the rainbow and that the symbol should be reclaimed by the Religious Right, made her remarks to a group of students at Wheaton College, Illinois, a Christian liberal arts school. Even though the claims of fear-mongers like Morse that the marriage equality laws in five states and the District of Columbia would ban preaching have proved to completely unfounded, Morse alleged that Christians would “lose the ability to evangelize”:

First among her qualms—and no doubt foremost for her audience, considering the college’s unapologetic Christian Evangelical orientation—is the conflict same sex marriage has with Biblical teaching.

“Scriptures are full of marriage,” Morse said. “Marriage is all throughout the Bible.”

She said that a redefinition of marriage would mean that Christians “will lose the ability to evangelize…we will lose the ability to preach the Bible.”

Morse stressed that redefining marriage undermined what she called the “essential public purpose of marriage.”

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But, she argued, if men and woman were interchangeable, as advocates of same sex marriage seem to suggest, there would be no point in having a father. “Fathers will be marginalized,” she said. “They will be considered non-essential.”

Morse said that the redefinition of marriage without consideration of biological realities—and courts making the determination that a same sex partner is a parent—will allow a father to become completely separated from his child. “The woman can make the unilateral decision that a child can never have a relationship with his father…because she wants it,” Morse said. “That’s not enough of a reason.”

Finally, Morse concluded that the redefinition of marriage was tantamount to a restructuring of the traditional family. “In the process of redefining marriage, we’re redefining parenthood,” she said.