Last week, we broke the news that National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown traveled to Moscow in June, where he testified before a Duma committee in favor of a ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by gay couples and single people living in countries that allow gay people to marry.
Neither NOM nor Brown mentioned his trip publicly at the time, and NOM didn’t return our request for comment last week. But in an interview with Russia’s Ria Novosti today, Brown confirms that he spoke “extemporaneously” at the Duma meeting, and that he was invited to do so by “Russian activists working with the World Congress of Families.”
Brown said he was invited to speak to the lawmakers by Russian activists working with the World Congress of Families, an Illinois-based conservative group set to hold a global convention in Moscow next year.
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“We’ve been very open that we’re going to work with allies around the world that believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” Brown said.
As we also reported last week, the Illinois-based World Congress of Families has been working hard to promote Russia’s new anti-gay laws through its official “representative in Russia” Alexei Komov and “ambassador to European institutions” Pavel Parfentiev. The WCF has also helped to gather international support for President Putin’s anti-gay crackdown, including promoting an international statement praising a ban on gay “propaganda.”
Brown is a strong supporter of WCF, which in a fundraising pitch this year he called “THE group standing up for family values around the world.”
