A day after President Donald Trump
nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Brian Brown,
president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), said that
he's confident Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Obergefell,
the 2015 case in which the high court found that gay and lesbian
couples have a constitutional right to marry.
Trump on Monday announced he had
nominated Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced
his retirement from the bench last month.
LGBT and civil rights groups have
condemned Trump's pick. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, said that in nominating
Kavanaugh, Trump had “followed through on his threat to nominate a
justice who would undermine LGBTQ equality.”
(Related: LGBT
groups condemn Trump's SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh.)
While Trump has said that he did not
ask any of his Supreme Court candidates how they would vote on any
issues, conservative groups opposed to abortion and LGBT rights
vetted Kavanaugh and are supporting his nomination.
Brown told supporters that NOM – the
nation's largest organization opposed to marriage equality – would
be lobbying for Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“If as a Supreme Court justice,
Kavanaugh rules as he says judges should rule ('Don’t make up new
constitutional rights that are not in the text of the Constitution')
then I am confident that he will join an opinion to overturn gay
‘marriage’ and restore traditional marriage to our nation’s
laws,” Brown said. “Obviously, there is no provision in the text
of the Constitution that requires gay ‘marriage.’ Such a
philosophy also suggests that he would be inclined to overturn Roe
v Wade since there is no right to abortion in the Constitution
either.”
Brown said that NOM's efforts would
include targeting Democrats from red states.
“We need to conduct more outreach in
critical states represented by Republicans who might waver, and by
Democrats in states carried by President Trump. We’ll be targeting
half a dozen states for additional organizing work, and we need
financial support to do so,” Brown said.
Brown has previously stated that an
additional conservative on the high court would lead to reversing
Obergefell.
(Related: NOM's
Brian Brown: Gay marriage bans may soon “come back to life.”)