Anti-gay activist Gallagher's presence exposes Beck's Regiment as a political movement

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

As Joe Strupp reports, Maggie Gallagher is a member of Glenn Beck's Black Robe Regiment. Gallagher's presence puts the lie to Beck's (already tenuous) claim that the Regiment is concerned only with bringing Americans closer to God, not with politics.

Unlike the other members of the Regiment who have been identified, Gallagher isn't a pastor; she's an anti-gay activist, pure and simple. Her reason for professional existence is to prevent same-sex marriage. Beck's decision to involve her makes it clear that he isn't building a religious movement, he's assembling a political one, a new Christian Coalition (that includes a few non-Christians).

Gallagher founded the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and serves as the chairman of its board; she also serves as the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. Both groups have as their goal “protecting marriage;” both also seem to think that the best way to do so is to deny the right to marry to gay men and lesbians.

Gallagher has supported both statutory and constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. In 2004 congressional testimony, she called for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Under Gallagher's leadership, NOM spent nearly $2 million in support of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

And of course, Gallagher has a long record of anti-gay rhetoric, including:

  • “Polygamy is not worse than gay marriage, it is better. At least polygamy, for all its ugly defects, is an attempt to secure stable mother-father families for children.”
  • “Winning the gay-marriage debate may be hard, but to those of us who witnessed the fall of Communism, despair is inexcusable and irresponsible. Losing this battle means losing the idea that children need mothers and fathers. It means losing the marriage debate. It means losing limited government. It means losing American civilization. It means losing, period.”
  • “Like Canadian courts, the California court grounded same-sex marriage in a larger human right to form families of choice and to have the government sanction all family forms as having equal dignity. Polygamy anyone?”
  • “What about polygamy? Is that the natural next step? When people ask me this, my stock answer has become, 'I don't know, go ask the guys in the Harvard Law School faculty lounge.' Because if the California decision stands, there simply is no longer any case to be made we have begun to win the war for judicial restraint. If a court can rule that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right (i.e., one deeply rooted in our nation's traditions) then it can make up anything”