Brian Brown, the president of the
National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's most
vociferous opponent of gay marriage, has chided President Barack
Obama for mentioning 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.
He cited Stonewall, the birthplace of
the gay rights movement, and stated that “if we are truly created
equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as
well.”
According to NBC
News, Brown noted that millions of Americans had voted to ban
marriage equality in saying: “Same-sex marriage is not a civil
right.”
“To try to compare in any way the
attempt to redefine marriage with the Civil Rights movement is simply
false,” Brown said. “I think that the president's forgetting
about the most important group affected by this and their civil
rights, and that's children having the civil right to have both a mom
and a dad.”