At Utah rally held by an international anti-gay hate group, activists held up photos of same-sex families, including their young children, to attack and denounce same-sex marriage.
Thursday night at a rally in the Utah state capitol, hundreds of anti-gay activists listened to Mary Summerhays attack same-sex marriage as images of children with their same-sex parents were projected on large screens throughout the hall.
Summerhays, who organized and headed the Stand for Marriage rally, works for Utah Celebration of Marriage, but the rally reportedly was the brainchild of Family Watch Utah, a part of Family Watch International (FWI).
The Salt Lake Tribune described Summerhays’ speech:
“This child has a mother,” she said, as an image of Matthew Baraza and Tony Milner filled the screen. In it, the two men were holding their son Jesse. “These are the faces of the children who will pay the price of redefining marriage.”
Next flashed a photo of Megan Berrett and Candice Green-Berrettwith their baby daughter Quinn.
“I’m sure these girls would make great mothers,” Summerhays said. “But one thing they can never be is a father. One thing they can never make or be is one of each.”
As Summerhays spoke, activists stood under the capitol’s painted dome and held up pre-printed and hand-written signs. “Children deserve a Mom & Dad!!!,” read one. “Traditional marriage blesses children!,” read another. “2 Dads don’t equal a mom ♡” read a third.
Supporters of decency and equality are furious.
“Our families are not your propaganda,” Marina Gomberg, Interim Executive Director of Equality Utah said in a statement Friday. Noting that “loving same-sex parents and children in Utah were used as propaganda,” Gomberg says the images were used as “anti-marriage equality propaganda” to “belittle those families.”
Gomberg calls it “a disgrace to use our families for a misguided and debunked view of what is best for children.” She says it is “one thing to disagree with the freedom to marry, it’s quite another to go after loving parents and their children at a political rally.”
Family Watch International is listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of active anti-gay hate groups, and their anti-gay work has been extensively detailed at Political Research Associates.
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Image by Marissa J. Lang via Twitter