Gay rights foe Charles Colson died
Saturday at the age of 80.
According to The Washington Post,
Colson died from a brain hemorrhage earlier this month.
Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of
justice in connection to his involvement with the Watergate break-in
scandal. He said that he experienced a profound religious
transformation as a result of the crisis.
After serving seven months in a
minimum-security prison, Colson became a leading voice of the
evangelical movement.
“He transferred his huge drive,
intellect and maniacal energy from the service of Richard Nixon to
the service of Jesus Christ,” said his biographer, Jonathan Aitken.
Colson co-authored the 2009 Manhattan
Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience.
The manifesto, signed by hundreds of
evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders, outlines
the leaders' three most pressing issues, two of which deal with gay
rights: abortion, marriage and religious liberties.
“We argue that there is a hierarchy
of issues,” Colson told The New York Times. “A lot of
younger evangelicals say they're all alike. We're hoping to educate
them that theses are the three most important issues.”
Last year, Colson railed
against the late Steve Jobs – calling him a communist – for
deleting a Manhattan Declaration app from Apple's iTunes store.