Maggie Gallagher says President Barack
Obama has little influence on the African-American community's view
of gay marriage.
The board chair of the National
Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's most vociferous
opponent of gay marriage, appeared Monday morning on C-SPAN's early
morning call-in show Washington Journal.
Brian Moulton, chief legal counsel for
the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest gay rights
advocate, also appeared on the program.
Gallagher said she welcomed the
president's recent decision to no longer defend the Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA), which he called unconstitutional, because the
administration's legal defense was halfhearted at best. DOMA bans
federal agencies from recognizing the legal marriages of gay and
lesbian couples.
Gallagher insisted Americans don't
look to the president for guidance on the issue.
“I don't think that black churchgoers
or other people are going to be that affected by what the president
says on this issue. This is an issue that people feel they
understand, they're not really looking to the president of the United
States to tell them what to think.”
“It's true that African-Americans,
like people of all ethnicities, disagree on this issue. But the city
council here in D.C. fought extremely hard to prevent the people of
D.C. to have the right to vote for marriage because they don't trust
the community here, in particular probably the large African-American
community.”
The social conservative added that she
was certain voters in Maryland would repeal a gay marriage law, if
approved by lawmakers.
“I'm highly confident that if the
politicians in Maryland pass a gay marriage bill, that the people
will veto it in Maryland, just as they did in Maine and California,”
Gallagher said.