Brian Brown, president of the National
Organization for Marriage (NOM), on Wednesday criticized a federal
judge's ruling forcing Kentucky to recognize the out-of-state
marriages of gay and lesbian couples.
In handing down his ruling, U.S.
District Judge John C. Heyburn II declared that Kentucky's laws
banning such recognition “violate the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
(Related: Federal
judge strikes down Kentucky's ban on gay marriage from other states.)
Brown, who
in November predicted victories for opponents of marriage equality in
2014, lamented the ruling and called for Congress to intervene.
“Today yet another federal judge has
entered the competition for lawlessness on the marriage front,”
Brown
said in a blog post. “Today's decision emphasizes the need for
Congressional action to prevent our states' marriage laws from
spiraling further into chaos. Congress needs to explicitly reinforce
the sovereign right of the states to make their own determinations
regarding marriage, and to have those determinations respected by the
federal government – which would include having those
determinations protected from coerced modification through dubious
readings of the 14th amendment such as we have here.”