A leader of the anti-gay organization Concerned Women for America has admitted her testimony to the Texas Senate over a bill that would shield clergy and churches from same-sex weddings was not true.
Last week lawmakers on a Texas Senate committee heard testimony on SB 2065, a bill designed to shield clergy members and churches from performing same-sex weddings. While the First Amendment already provides this protection, this bill would allow clergy members who are employed by the state as justices of the peace or county clerks to refuse to marry same-sex couples. Texas lawmakers are engrossed in a battle against their LGBT constituents, and this month over two dozen anti-gay bills before them, including one that would literally defund same-sex marriage in the Lone Star State.
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On Monday, May 4, Beverly Roberts, an Area Director for Concerned Women for America, delivered testimony before Texas Senators. Concerned Women for America (CWA) is a right wing religious anti-gay, anti-abortion activist group that opposes same-sex marriage, a woman’s right to choose, the teaching of evolution in schools, feminism, pornography, stem cell research, and advocates for school prayer.
“The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens – first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society – thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation,” its website states.
“I have a question for you,” Roberts, in red in the photo above and video below, told the Texas Senators as she began her testimony. “Is it necessary for a couple to be married by a minister to be legally married?” she asked.
“If not, why are homosexual couples in states where same-sex marriage is legal, demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies?”
“Should we not consider these to be hate crimes?,” Roberts continued. “Are these not instances of targeted bigotry? Are these couples not engaging in the same bullying tactics they profess to deplore? Why are they attacking a minister when they don’t even need him to perform their marriage? So again I ask you, who are the bullies, the bigots and the haters?”
The New Civil Rights Movement reached out to Roberts via email on Monday, asking her to point us to “the story or stories you testified about,” as, to our knowledge, there are no actual instances in reputable news reports of same-sex couples demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies.
In an email response received Monday night, Roberts effectively admitted that her testimony was false.
“My testimony did not relate to a specific instance,” Roberts told NCRM in her email, adding it was “to put a law into place ahead of a possible Supreme Court Ruling requiring all states to perform same-sex ‘marriages.'”
“We know that, given the tactics of the LGBT community, it would not be long before they started suing churches and ministers who decline to do their ceremonies,” Roberts wrote. “They just move incrementally as they force their agenda on the rest of us and we have begun to fight back.”
And yet, Roberts clearly asked Texas Senators, “why are homosexual couples in states where same-sex marriage is legal, demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies?” while being unaware of any same-sex couples who, to her knowledge, have demanded that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies. All she could offer NCRM was, “We know that, given the tactics of the LGBT community, it would not be long before they started suing churches and ministers who decline to do their ceremonies.” That is not an instance of it having happened.
In her email Roberts included a link to an article in the Washington Times about last year’s story from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where right wing blogs and websites falsely claimed one same-sex couple had demanded ministers who own a wedding chapel marry them, but those reports were proven false long ago, as NCRM reported in, “Almost Everything You’ve Been Told About The Idaho Wedding Chapel Story Is A Lie,” and “Entire Hitching Post Controversy Is False: ACLU Finds Chapel Falls Under Religious Exemption.”
It’s important to note that Roberts pointed to the Washington Times story not as an example – although it would have been false – of same-sex couples demanding that ministers perform their marriage ceremonies, but rather, as she wrote in her email, in relation to “the ordinance that I was using as an example for what is to come.”
After Roberts’ testimony, and the testimony of others, including pastors who compared same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia, as John Wright at Towleroad reported, the committee passed the bill 5-1. Yesterday, the Texas Senate passed the bill, 21-10. It is awaiting a vote by the Texas House.
The New Civil Rights Movement reached out again to Roberts today asking if she had anything additional to add. We have not received a reply.
Related:
Lawmaker Totally Certain His Unconstitutional Bill Will Override Supreme Court Marriage Ruling
Texas Anti-Gay Lawmaker And Gay Son Suffer Fallout Over Anti-Discrimination Bill
Texas Attorney General Sues Feds To Stop Same-Sex Spouses From Taking Care Of Each Other
Image: Screenshot via Lone Star Q/YouTube
Video from an article at Towleroad by John Wright