Brian Brown: Even If We Lose At SCOTUS, NOM Will Continue To Operate

The Associated Press asked Brian Brown about the inevitable.

Brown, in a telephone interview, said his best-case scenario hinged on a future ruling by the Supreme Court upholding the right of states to set their own marriage laws, rather than imposing same-sex marriage nationwide. Such a ruling would strengthen the position of the 31 states that currently ban gay marriage and might encourage grass-roots efforts in some of the other states to reimpose bans, Brown said. "We'd put this back in the hands of the democratic process," Brown said. "We would have the people deciding for themselves." If the Supreme Court ruled the other way, legalizing gay marriage nationwide, "We won't go away," Brown said. He envisioned a resistance campaign comparable to that waged by the anti-abortion movement since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision established a nationwide right to abortion. "In the next year or so, we'll either have a massive victory at the Supreme Court, or we'll need to fight for 10, 20 years to undo the damage that the court has done," Brown said.

Also quoted in the above-linked article is former NOM chairman Maggie Gallagher, who has said she expects SCOTUS to rule in favor of national marriage equality. Gallagher: "The way you keep a movement going is to define achievable victories. The marriage movement is in the process of trying to figure out what that is."

NOM's hate march is Thursday.