The National Organization for Marriage
(NOM) on Friday promoted the views of a gay man who is opposed to
marriage equality.
In a blog
post at NOM's website, the nation's most vociferous opponent of
marriage equality re-posted an op-ed by Doug Mainwaring, a co-founder
of the National Capital Tea Party Patriots.
In I'm
Gay and I Oppose Same-Sex Marriage, Mainwaring argues that
it's “possible to oppose same-sex marriage based on reason and
experience.”
“The notion of same-sex marriage is
implausible, yet political correctness has made stating the obvious a
risky business,” Mainwaring wrote. “Genderless marriage is not
marriage at all. It is something else entirely.”
“Even though I had to repress certain
sexual desires, I found marriage [to a woman] to be extremely
rewarding.”
The marriage ended after the couple
adopted two children.
“[T]he divorce allowed me to explore
my homosexuality for the first time in my life.”
“It took some doing, but after ten
years of divorce, we began to pull our family back together. We have
been under one roof for over two years now. Our kids are happier and
better off in so many ways.”
“Over the last couple of years, I've
found our decision to rebuild our family ratified time after time.
One day as I turned to climb the stairs I saw my sixteen-year-old son
walk past his mom as she sat reading in the living room. As he did,
he paused and stooped down to kiss her and give her a hug, and then
continued on. With two dads in the house, this little moment of
warmth and tenderness would never have occurred. My
varsity-track-football-playing son and I can give each other a bear
hug or a pat on the back, but the kiss thing is never going to
happen. To be fully formed, children need to be free to generously
receive from and express affection to parents of both genders.
Genderless marriages deny this fullness.”
Writing at ThinkProgress.com,
Zack Ford argued that Mainwaring had a “shallow perception of what
constitutes intimacy” which “demonstrates how unqualified he is
to discuss same-sex marriage and families.”
“He has clearly carried an anti-gay
stigma with him throughout his entire life and has just as narrow an
understanding of the lives of gays and lesbians as his fellow
opponents of equality. NOM's attempt to somehow drive a wedge within
the gay community is pitiful, if only because Mainwaring in no way
represents it,” Ford wrote.