Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values, thinks that the American people will revolt if the Supreme Court makes a sweeping ruling in favor of marriage equality.
Speaking over the weekend with Mission America’s Linda Harvey, Burress said he feared that the Supreme Court “will force same-sex marriage on all fifty states,” adding that “the nation is not going to stand for this.”
Burress added that in the event of such a ruling anti-gay activists will be forced to reorganize and launch a new campaign to amend the Constitution: “I really believe if the Supreme Court was to rule the wrong way, I think you’re going to see an uprising and a demand for a constitutional amendment that takes this matter out of the hands of the courts and puts it back into the states.”
Burress went on to attack Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican who endorsed marriage equality after his son came out as gay, pledging to defeat to him if he runs for re-election and unite Portman’s conservative opponents around a single primary challenger.
“We did a poll of just conservatives, the values voters, dealing with just Portman,” Burress said. “Seventy-two percent of them said that they would not support Portman. If he runs, he will lose.”
He claimed that marriage equality is losing support among voters: “The reason they are losing support is because people are understanding this is not about same-sex marriage or same-sex unions anymore, it’s about persecution, it’s about suing people, it’s about forcing people to comply with what they want or else we’re going to put you out of business and if you don’t comply then we’ll put you in jail.”
