Brian Brown, the head of the National Organization for Marriage and the International Organization of the Family, has been retooling his domestic operations in the years since the Obergefell marriage equality decision, recently announcing a “First Freedom Initiative” that will focus on combatting supposed threats to religious liberty posed by marriage equality being the law of the land.
But that doesn’t mean that Brown has given up on overturning Obergefell and taking away same-sex couples’ right to get married. Brown told the “Issues, Etc.” podcast on Friday that while Congress really should be “standing up to the courts” on marriage, that seems unlikely so instead he’s banking on getting “another court decision by a friendlier court that can overturn Obergefell.” Brown pointed to “one important success” in pursuit of that goal, which was the confirmation of the “good justice” Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Brown said that “the Supreme Court is not our ruler, so we don’t view the Obergefell as legitimate law, it’s illegitmate law,” comparing the decision to the Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade decisions, which were “lies put into law”.
He explained that post-Obergefell, “a lot of our focus is making sure that the ramifications of that are contained, and working to the point where we can get another court decision by a friendlier court that can overturn Obergefell. And that may take some time, although one important success over the last year was the appointment of a good justice to the Supreme Court, and ultimately Obergefell is going to be overturned by getting a decision to the Supreme Court.”
“Given the nature of where our constitutional law is today, I don’t see a likely outcome of Congress standing up to the courts and saying ‘You’ve gone too far.’ That’s unfortunate, it should do that, but that’s not going to happen, so we’re going to need another court decision,” he added. “And that can happen, and I’m hopeful that will happen not only on Obergefell but also on Roe v. Wade.”
