State Department: ‘We Will Review’ Complaint Against NOM’s Brian Brown — Report

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department says they “will review” a complaint lodged against National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown for his trip to Russia. Brown reportedly spoke to the Russian Duma (parliament) warning them against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and adoption by LGBT people and same-sex couples. Fred Karger, an LGBT activist, long-time Republican political operative and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, filed a complaint this week with the State Department and the Department of Justice, based on the Logan Act which makes it a felony for Americans to work with foreign governments against the interests of the American people.

“According to the website of the Duma’s Committee on Family, Women and Children, Brown addressed lawmakers on June 13 to advocate for proposed legislation that would ban Russian children from being adopted by same-sex couples,” the Russian news organization RIA Novosti reports:

“We will unite. We will defend our children their normal civil rights,” Brown said according to a Russian transcript of his speech posted on the committee’s website. “Every child must have the right to normal parents: a mother and a father.”

Brown told RIA Novosti in a telephone interview Wednesday that he spoke extemporaneously at the meeting, and he called Karger’s suggestion that the speech may have violated US law “absurd.”

“It is laughable how little he understands that in America we’re free to stand up and speak for things like traditional marriage around the world,” Brown said.

Brown, of course, was not in America at the time he was speaking with a foreign government.

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.
He said Karger’s appeal to top US officials would not deter his work abroad.

“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.

Brown neglected to mention that while he publicly boasted about his work in France, which failed to stop same-sex marriage from becoming legal, he kept his trip to Moscow totally hidden from America.

A State Department spokeswoman said Wednesday that she could not confirm whether Karger’s letter had been received but added that “if and when we do receive it, we will review it and respond appropriately.”

Officials at the Justice Department could not be reached for comment Wednesday due to the continuing shutdown of the US government over a federal budget dispute.

Karger notes that if convicted, Brown could face three years in a federal jail.

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