Brian Brown, president of the National
Organization for Marriage (NOM), has cheered an appeals court's
ruling upholding gay marriage bans in four states.
In a split 2-1 decision, a 3-judge
panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld bans
in four states: Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.
(Related: Appeals
court upholds gay marriage bans in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky,
Tennessee.)
The court's decision creates a split
between appellate courts, making it likely that the Supreme Court
will consider one, several or all of the cases overturned by the
Sixth Circuit.
In its majority opinion, the court said
that the people, not judges, should decide whether gay couples can
marry.
“We have been awaiting this decision
for some time and welcome it not only as a tremendous victory, but as
a common sense recognition that it is not for the federal courts to
substitute their judgment about whether same-sex 'marriage' is a good
idea or not, but to leave it to the people to make the decision about
this fundamental institution,” Brown said in a statement. “The
justices of the Supreme Court were derelict in their duty when they
refused to review the marriage cases previously before them. They
now have no excuse. We call on the Supreme Court to stand for the
proposition that men and women of good will across this land have the
right under their constitution to preserve marriage in the law as it
has always existed in reality, the union of one man and one woman.”
“The Sixth Circuit was certainly
correct to frame the question before them as 'who decides?' and we
wholeheartedly agree that the American people should decide this
issue.”
Brown went on to dismiss polls which
show that the majority of Americans support marriage equality.
“But the majority is wrong to suggest
that voters have changed their minds. In fact, in the vast majority
of states that now have redefined marriage, it's been judges and not
voters who have done this. The movement to redefine marriage does
not benefit from having momentum, it benefits from the exercise of
raw political power by federal and state judges and politicians bent
of imposing their politically-correct view of the world on the
American people,” Brown said.