The National Organization for Marriage
(NOM) on Tuesday criticized First Lady Michelle Obama for including
NBA free-agent Jason Collins among her State of the Union guests.
Collins, 35, came out gay in April in a
cover story for Sports Illustrated, making him the U.S.'s
first openly gay professional athlete.
In a post titled A Quick Guessing
Game, NOM suggested 7 athletes worthy of the honor, including NFL
player Eli Manning and NFL free-agent Tim Tebow.
“No, instead of any of these, the
President has chosen to bestow such honor and admiration on Jason
Collins – and presumably solely for his coming out last year as
the first openly gay player in the NBA,” NOM wrote.
“For what it's worth, in today's
gay-affirming culture – where being gay or lesbian is celebrated
constantly in the entertainment world and highlighted seemingly daily
in the news – we don't think that 'coming out' is particularly
heroic.”
“We assume that Jason Collins has
done some fine things as a person to better society and help those in
need. We'd be more interested in learning of those efforts than in
having his sexuality shoved at us by the man that Newsweek
dubbed 'the first gay President.'”
Writing
at Equality Matters, Luke Brinker noted: “NOM's homophobic
tirade against Collins' attendance is merely the latest sign that
despite the organizations insistences, the marriage debate is far
from its sole focus. NOM has made perfectly clear that it takes
issue with gay people themselves, not merely their right to marry,
having denounced homosexuality as 'evil'
and 'a sin.'”