Conservative celebrity Ann Coulter is
no longer implying that she was just joking about gay marriage during
a gay GOP fundraiser.
In a Monday appearance on CNN's Larry
King Live, the 48-year-old Coulter said she opposes marriage
equality.
“[Gay men and lesbians] do have civil
rights. Oh, yes they can [marry]. No one can marry someone of the
same sex. Neither can you. Neither can I. Don't say this is equal
rights. That's absolutely not the purpose of marriage.”
After being labeled a “deserter” by
social conservatives for her decision to speak Saturday at Homocon
2010, the first annual convention of gay conservatives sponsored by
gay GOP group GOProud, Coulter told the group that marriage is not a
civil right.
Marriage “is not a civil right –
you're not black,” she said.
After explaining that gay people are
among the wealthiest demographic groups in the country, she added:
“Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, 'Why can't we be
oppressed like that?'”
Coulter suggested she was only joking,
telling POLITICO.Com: “The people who get gay jokes are gays.”
“Let me tell you how black people
think about this,” she interrupted Marc Lamont Hill, an
African-American professor at Columbia University, during her Larry
King Live appearance.
“The issue is: Blacks were brought
here in slave ships. They were enslaved. The laws of states
discriminated against them for a hundred years. Civil rights is a
black issue. Now everybody in America wants to be black – the
feminists, the gays, the illegal immigrants. What civil rights are
they being denied?”
Leaders of GOProud were livid at the
suggestion that Coulter had made them look foolish.
“Dear Gay Left,” Chris Barron,
chairman of the group tweeted to his 560 followers, “save your
'outrage' over Homocon. We could give a shit what you think.”