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.”