Joseph Backholm, the executive director
of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, has likened gay
marriage to bloodletting, media watchdog RightWingWatch.org
reported.
Backholm also helms Protect Marriage
Washington, the coalition of groups working to repeal Washington
state's recently approved law legalizing gay marriage in the state.
During an appearance Thursday on The
Janet Mefferd Show, Backholm told host Janet Mefferd that
marriage equality would eventually be proven “untrue” like the
medical practice of bloodletting.
“Redefining marriage in this way,
saying that there is no difference between men and women, that it's
not important for children to have both a mother and a father, that's
not just bad policy, it's wrong in the eternal sense. So because
it's untrue, it will ultimately be proven as untrue and we will come
around to recognize the error of our ways. We used to believe in
bloodletting as good medical practice, culture has embraced a lot of
things temporarily until they realized it's based on things that are
not true. This is one of those, it has to be temporary, not just
because I want it to be temporary, but because it's untrue in the
eternal sense.”
Backholm also rejected comparisons
between the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement.
“[T]he reason these are different,
today's argument about the redefinition of marriage would be like the
civil rights movement if the civil rights movement was an attempt to
have black people be referred to as white people,” he said.
(Related: Washington
gay marriage foes promote claim that gay parents molest their kids.)