Ralph Reed, who heads the Christian
conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, said during last week's
Road to Majority summit that courts have imposed gay marriage in all
but 6 of the 19 states, plus the District of Columbia, where it is
legal.
According
to Yahoo! News, Reed argued that all looked lost for the
abolitionist movement in 1857 after the Supreme Court in Dred
Scott v. Sanford ruled that African-Americans were not free
citizens. Reed then drew a connection to marriage equality.
“The battle looked like it was lost,
but it really wasn't,” he said. “And that's kind of like where
we are right now. Anybody heard lately that we're losing the
marriage issue? Anybody heard that argument? You notice some
similarities? I'm not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, OK?”
“Only six of [the states], six out of
those 17, six out of 50, had done it by referendum or by state
legislature [before the Supreme Court ruled last year in Windsor].
In every other case, it was imposed by courts. Just like the courts
had to impose Dred Scott. Because they couldn't do it on the
country because the country didn't agree with it. The country, by
the way, doesn't agree with same-sex marriage.”
Reed's assertions are simply untrue.
Eleven states adopted marriage equality either legislatively or
through the ballot box, including Washington, Vermont, Minnesota,
Illinois, Hawaii, New York, Maryland, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island
and New Hampshire. Marriage equality also came to the District of
Columbia through the enactment of an ordinance approved by lawmakers.
Additionally, nationwide polls which
show a majority of Americans support marriage equality date back to
2010. A survey of 4,509 Americans conducted in February by the
Public Religion Research Institute found 69 percent of young adults
under 33 favor allowing gay couples to marry.