As Kyle noted yesterday, Liberty Counsel is out with two new amicus briefs defending same-sex marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma, in which they argue that "while same-sex couples can enter a union of the wills, it is not possible for them to join in body in the way true marriage has always required."
Liberty Counsel filed one of its briefs on behalf of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a group that pushes "ex-gay” therapy for LGBT people.
The other, filed in Liberty Counsel’s own name [pdf], features many of the group’s standard arguments (including plenty of citations of the bunk anti-gay Regnerus study), but one argument in particular caught our eye. Seeking to head off legal comparisons between bans on same-sex marriage and bans on interracial marriage, Liberty Counsel argues that it is in fact the legalization of same-sex marriage that is similar to banning interracial marriage=.
How is that, you ask? Advocates of anti-miscegenation laws and gay rights advocates, Liberty Counsel explains, both want to place an “agenda-driven obstacle” onto the institution of marriage. In fact, the group implies, marriage equality advocates might be even worse because “they are seeking to replace the institution with their own agenda-driven proposal.”
…Loving, like the other cases addressing restrictions upon the right to marry, was aimed at preserving the right to enter into the union of one man and one woman by removing agenda-driven obstacles that had been improperly engrafted onto the union. Those seeking to overturn laws such as Utah’s and Colorado’s that memorialize marriage as the union of one man and one woman are now trying to engraft another agenda-driven obstacle onto the institution. Actually, they are seeking more than that. They are seeking to replace the institution with their own agenda-driven proposal.
We really don't know what "agenda-driven obstacle" Liberty Counsel thinks same-sex marriage will put on the institution, but maybe it has something to do with LC chairman Mat Staver's fear of "forced homosexuality."
