In a fundraising email, Brian Brown,
president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), claimed
that the Equality Act seeks to make support for heterosexual marriage
illegal.
“Legislation pending in Congress
would make showing support for marriage as solely the union of one
man and one woman to be illegal,” Brown wrote to supporters.
Reintroduced in March with bipartisan
support, the Equality Act is a federal bill that seeks to prohibit
discrimination against people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender.
(Related: Pete
Buttigieg endorses LGBT protections bill Equality Act.)
NOM was pivotal in passage of
California's Proposition 8, a voter-approved constitutional amendment
that defined marriage as a heterosexual union, and similar bans in
other states. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 struck down such bans,
saying that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to
marry.
“Under HR 5, the grossly misnamed
'Equality Act,' holding the view that marriage should only be between
a man and a woman would constitute sex discrimination against someone
who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender,” Brown wrote.
Writing at Right Wing Watch, Peter
Montgomery responded by noting that “none of this is true.”
“If the law were passed, the First
Amendment would allow Brown to continue to send emails like the one
he sent this week and work to get the Supreme Court to overturn its
marriage equality ruling,” Montgomery
wrote.