Providence, R.I., Jul 21, 2010 / 04:08 am
Homosexual activists’ behavior at rallies by a touring pro-marriage event has ranged from “silly” to “crazy” and “disgraceful,” one event leader reports. Some activists disrupted a Rhode Island rally and mocked religion and children, while others intimidated a nursing mother at a New York rally.
The National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) Summer for Marriage Tour stopped in Albany, New York last Saturday and in Providence, Rhode Island on Sunday.
NOM president Brian S. Brown reported in a letter to supporters that during a speaker’s presentation at the Albany Capitol event, several activists with colored umbrellas started walking up on stage. When gay “marriage” supporters were told the event had a permit for the space, they refused to leave. Though rebuked by Capitol police, “they hung around, holding their rainbow-colored umbrellas and balloons,” he said.
Though Brown described the action on Twitter as “Silliest. Protest. Ever,” he charged in his letter that the activists showed themselves to be an “intolerant bunch” in their behavior towards a Hispanic mother who attended the rally with her three young children.
“During the rally she moved to the back to nurse her baby. A bunch of male protestors followed her with their rainbow umbrellas and stood directly in front of her, blocking her view of the stage. She asked them to move, or at least turn around while she fed her baby, and they refused. Classy.”
NOM interviewed the mother and published the video on YouTube.
“They were here to make sure I wasn’t going to enjoy (the rally),” she commented in the video. “I was scared, in the beginning, and after a while, I figure the goal was intimidating my family … which I think they did the job, but I felt that was more than (them) just standing there.
“This is what they are doing to our traditional families: intimidating so we can back off, and I wasn’t going to back off ... We need to stand for our families and we are not going to back off.”
At the Sunday rally at the Providence Capitol, homosexual activists told police that they planned to assemble peacefully behind the NOM event on the Capitol lawn to demonstrate their support for same-sex “marriage.”
However, according to Brown, the activists “came around behind our rally and tried to shout over us. Then they came right into our crowd, getting in people’s faces and shouting at our marriage supporters.
“At one point while I was delivering my remarks, three protestors physically surrounded me and got right up in my face, trying to shout me down as Capitol police did nothing,” he reported, saying police were “totally unprepared” and had to call in state troopers to restore order.
According to an event video produced by NOM, one speaker at the rally said during the disruptions, “Activists have come to our rallies and silence us. The moment we allow them to silence us is the moment our civil rights have been taken away.”
“Throughout the event, the protestors were disgraceful. Mocking religion. Mocking children. I mean, what kind of adult goes up to a 7-year-old child and sneers, ‘Mommy raising you to be a good little bigot’?” asked Brown.
“These are the people who want to control our culture's understanding of marriage, family, and tolerance,” he asserted.
Brown called his own supporters at the Providence event “outstanding,” saying they were peaceful and left “more determined than ever to stand firm for marriage in Rhode Island.” A sign-up table was “absolutely flooded” with supporters after the event.
Organizers of a homosexual advocacy counter-rally in Trenton, New Jersey told their members not to “taunt” or “harass” attendees of the NOM rally scheduled for Monday, which Brown thought was a sign they realized the “unseemly behavior” on Sunday was a “disaster” for their cause.
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The website of the NOM’s Summer for Marriage Tour is http://www.marriagetour2010.com