Peter Sprigg of the Christian
conservative Family Research Council (FRC) on Tuesday criticized
President Barack Obama's inclusion of gay rights in his inaugural
address.
Obama strung together the gay rights
movement with the civil rights movement and the suffrage movement,
marking the first time a president has addressed gay rights in an
inauguration speech.
“We, the people, declare today that
the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal –
is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears
through Seneca Falls, and Selma and Stonewall,” Obama said. “Our
journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated
like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal,
then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
Stonewall is the Greenwich Village gay
bar where a police raid was met with resistance in the early morning
hours of June 28, 1969, triggering the modern gay rights movement.
Appearing on CNN, Sprigg, who
has called for laws making gay sex a crime, criticized the
president, saying “homosexuals already have all the same civil
rights.”
“The irony is homosexuals already
have all the same civil rights as anyone else,” Sprigg said. “But
that fact that all people are created equal as individuals does not
mean all sexual behavior is equal or that all personal relationships
have an equal value to society at large.”
Sprigg said Obama was “laying down
the gauntlet” for his agenda in his speech.
(Watch
the entire segment at CNN.)