Peter Sprigg of the Family Research
Council (FRC) has supported John Boehner's decision to defend
the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
On Wednesday, a five-member panel
appointed by Boehner voted 3-2 along party lines to instruct the
House's nonpartisan Office of the General Counsel to defend the 1996
law, now that President Barack Obama won't.
Obama
decided that his administration would no longer defend the law
that bans federal agencies from recognizing the legal marriages of
gay and lesbian couples and allows states to ignore such marriages
from out of state. The president said he believes parts of the law
are unconstitutional.
Appearing Thursday on MSNBC, Sprigg
chided Obama for his decision.
“I think the speaker did exactly the
right thing because of the failure of the president and the attorney
general to do their job,” Sprigg told host Thomas Roberts.
Sprigg argued that banning gay couples
from marrying was appropriate because they, unlike straight couples,
cannot create life without a third party.
“It makes no sense to extend the
benefits of marriage to a type of relationship that is incapable of
ever creating children,” he said. “That undermines the whole
purpose of the institution and it sends a message to society that
children don't need a mother and a father.”
“Let's be clear,” Evan Wolfson of
Freedom to Marry countered, “many children in this country are
being raised by their gay parents and those kids are being harmed by
Mr. Sprigg and his groups and these kinds of discriminatory laws that
don't respect their family and allow their parents to have the best
structure of support for their kids.” (The video is embedded in
the right panel of this page.)