The leader of a National Organization for Marriage (NOM) affiliate has demanded that opponents of marriage equality reclaim the rainbow from “the gay lobby.” Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, the founder and head of the Ruth Institute, which describes itself as “a project of the National Organization for Marriage,” told the right-wing American Family News Network’s OneNewsNow that the rainbow should be the symbol of Prop 8 supporters and Religious Right activists because “the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with man.” According to Morse, who was also a speaker on NOM’s “Summer for Marriage” bus tour, the rainbow has been wrongly appropriated by the LGBT community. Morse appears to channel the famous 2009 NOM “The Gathering Storm” TV-ad which said “a rainbow coalition of people of every creed and color” are uniting to stop the “gathering storm” of gay-rights advocates.
“Proposition 8 was passed by a great grassroots coalition that included people from all across the religious traditions, and also people of every race and color,” Morse recognizes. “We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow.”
She tells OneNewsNow that she wore a rainbow-colored scarf to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on Proposition 8 as a statement to signify that supporters of traditional marriage still own the symbol.
“We can’t simply let that go by. Families put rainbows in their children’s nurseries. Little Christian preschools will have rainbows…Noah’s Ark and all the animals…. Those are great Christian symbols, great Jewish symbols,” the Ruth Institute president points out.
The Ruth Institute’s projects include “bringing lectures and debates to pro-life, pro-marriage student groups around the country, at minimal cost to the students” and assisting “students in organizing pro-life, pro-family clubs on their own campuses.”
The main campaign of the Ruth Institute is “Gay Marriage Affects Everyone,” a seminar led by Morse on the dangers of same-sex marriage. Among the ways “gay marriage affects everyone,” writes Morse, include the notions that “same sex marriage will marginalize men from the family” and “increase the power of the state over civil society.”
