Brian Brown, president of the National
Organization for Marriage (NOM), opposes gay marriage because a
square isn't a circle.
Brown challenged gay activist Dan
Savage to a one-hour debate on the subject after
Savage gave a speech at a high school journalism conference. In the
address, Savage called “bullshit” on the Bible's anti-gay message
and several students walked out.
Footage of the debate, which took place
on August 15 around Savage's dining room table and was moderated by
Mark Oppenheimer of The New York Times, was released on
Wednesday.
In his opening remarks, Savage argued
that the Bible's irreconcilable conflicts on marriage leave it
ineligible as a moral authority on the subject in a modern society.
“I think that conservative Christians
can learn to tolerate legal civil same-sex marriage the way they have
learned to tolerate legal divorce, which violates Catholic teaching,
interfaith marriages and non-religious marriages,” Savage said.
“Imposing your interpretation of the Bible on someone else is not
religious freedom, as you have attempted to redefine it, that is
religious tyranny.”
Brown reiterated throughout the debate
that gay marriage supporters were falsely accusing opponents of being
bigots.
“What I see attempted here, and
sometimes in other things that you've said that I think are much more
colorful than what you've just laid out, is the notion that we are
deserving – that those of us who know that marriage is the union of
a man and a woman – that we are deserving of treatment less than
others because we are bigots and we deserve what we get. And I don't
think that's true. And I don't think that that helps further the
debate. And I think that the attack on Christianity … I don't
think people look at that and say, 'Hey, you know, Dan Savage has a
point.' If anything, it makes people say, 'Why are you doing this?
Why are you doing this? This doesn't further your argument.'”
Brown added that there was no evidence
that could change his mind on marriage equality because “this is an
area of basic reason. It would be like saying, 'What would convince
you that a square could be a circle?” (The video is embedded on
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our video library for more videos.)
(Related: Mike
Huckabee, Tony Perkins call Dan Savage an anti-Christian bully.)