Fox News contributor Ben Carson is slated to be the keynote speaker at the first Gala dinner of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), becoming the latest Fox figure to appear before an extreme anti-gay group.

In a May 6 email to supporters, NOM President Brian Brown wrote that “it's 1972 for marriage,” referring to the year before the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a woman's right to an abortion and the growing expectation that the Court will take up marriage equality once again by 2015. To protest the frightening possibility that same-sex couples nationwide will soon enjoy civil equality, NOM will hold its second annual March for Marriage in Washington on June 19. Brown's email touted Carson's appearance - previously flagged by GLAAD's Jeremy Hooper - at NOM's gala that same evening (emphasis original):

It was a crisp winter day in 1973 when the United States Supreme Court issued their horrific decision in Roe v Wade. How much would you sacrifice to go back in time to a few months before that fateful decision, to the Fall of 1972, and mobilize the American people BEFORE the Supreme Court issued that infamous decree?

Just about anything, right? Well, when it comes to marriage, we have that chance!

You see, it's 1972 for marriage. Within the next 12 months, it is very likely that the United States Supreme Court will take up the marriage issue again. Many people have bought in to the lie that the courts redefining marriage is somehow “inevitable.” Well, I refuse to believe that, because it's simply not true!

That's why the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is organizing its second annual March for Marriage this summer on June 19th in Washington, DC -- bringing together thousands of marriage activists from all across the country to make sure the elites in our nation's capital hear loud and clear: Marriage matters because every kid deserves a mom and a dad!

[...]

One incredibly courageous leader who is standing up for marriage is Doctor Ben Carson, who will be the keynote speaker at NOM's first ever Gala dinner on the evening of the March for Marriage. He said in a speech earlier this year that the “P.C. police” have “tried to shut him up” because he's willing to state his belief publicly that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Although Brown and NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher have billed NOM as an organization focused exclusively on the marriage debate, the group's anti-gay animus runs deep. Brown calls homosexuality a “sin” that is “deceitful, harmful and degrading to the human soul.” Last year, he traveled twice to Russia to meet with leaders of that country's draconian anti-gay crackdown and assist with the planning of the 2014 World Congress of Families, which will be held in Moscow in September.

Carson himself has lauded Vladimir Putin's Russia, writing in February that thanks to the religious conservatism adopted by the current regime, the country was “gaining prestige and influence throughout the world” while the U.S. was at risk of “becoming godless and moving away from Christian values.” His affinity for the vehemently anti-gay Kremlin leader isn't surprising, given that Carson has compared homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality and called marriage equality “a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.”

Prior to his employment with Fox, Carson spoke before the Illinois Family Institute, a notorious anti-gay hate group once headed by fringe anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera.

NOM is hardly the first anti-gay group to score an appearance from a Fox employee.

Contributor Erick Erickson was the keynote speaker at a recent event for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group working internationally to criminalize homosexuality. Erickson had previously urged readers of his RedState blog to donate money to the group, noting that he had done so himself.

Meanwhile, Carson joined fellow Fox employees Mike Huckabee, Cal Thomas, Todd Starnes, Allen West, and Sandy Rios in speaking at the most recent Values Voters Summit, an annual social conservative event sponsored by right-wing organizations like the Family Research Council, an anti-gay hate group.

Last fall, Huckabee delivered the keynote address at the inaugural convention of Trail Life USA, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) started by a rabid anti-gay activist in protest of the BSA's decision to allow openly gay scouts.

With so many Fox employees maintaining warm ties with even the most stridently homophobic social conservative groups, it's no surprise that American Family Association (AFA) spokesman Bryan Fischer - a man who asserts that gay men were "responsible for the Holocaust" - has lavished praise on Fox for its "very friendly" treatment of hate groups like his own.

Groups like NOM, ADF, the FRC, and the AFA aren't merely seeking to restrict marriage to straight couples only. They specialize in promoting malicious and damaging smears against LGBT people, who might increasingly have public opinion on their side but are far from achieving full civil equality and continue to be disproportionately targeted by hate crimes. Fox, however, has no qualms about cozying up the most egregious peddlers of anti-LGBT bigotry.