Brian Brown, president of the National
Organization for Marriage (NOM), has called on Florida officials to
ignore a federal judge's ruling striking down the state's ban on gay
marriage.
On Tuesday, gay couples throughout
Florida began exchanging vows as it became the 36th state
where gay couples can marry.
(Related: Gay
couples tie the knot in Florida as ban ends.)
Brown called the ruling – whose
implementation the Supreme Court refused to stop – “illegitimate.”
and called on officials to turn away gay couples wishing to marry.
“It is simply illegitimate for the
opinion of a federal district judge to trump the decision of millions
of Floridians and attempt to redefine marriage in violation of
Federal law,” Brown said in a bog post. “Federal judges are
acting as if the US Supreme Court has ordered same-sex marriage to be
imposed, but in reality the Court has ruled that states have the
right to define marriage. We demand that the US Supreme Court act
immediately to review the pending marriage case before them and
swiftly reaffirm that states have the right to define marriage as the
union of one man and one woman. The US Supreme Court has never ruled
that traditional marriage is unconstitutional. In fact, they have
specifically ruled that states have the right to define marriage.”
“It is a travesty of justice that
states are allowing federal judges to single-handedly decide the laws
of marriage. Florida officials should not go along with this
illegitimate decree and should demand that state and local officials
continue to enforce the marriage amendment that was overwhelmingly
adopted by Florida voters in 2008,” he added.