Ryan T. Anderson of the conservative
Heritage Foundation argues in a recent interview that Christians face
stigma in coming out against marriage equality.
Anderson, the author of Truth
Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, and
a vocal opponent of the Supreme Court's June ruling striking down
state laws and constitutional amendments that exclude gay couples
from marriage, argued that coming out gay was easier than coming out
as a conservative evangelical in some circles.
“The day of the Obergefell
decision, the White House was lit up in rainbow colors,” he said
during Thursday's Unfinished
Business: The
Atlantic
LGBT Summit. “Every prominent member of the Democratic Party
is in favor of LGBT legislation. Most prominent, 89 percent of the
Fortune 500 … voluntarily have enacted these protections.”
“What I see here is that if you are a
conservative evangelical at a major law firm or at an Ivy League
university, you have a much harder time coming out of the closet as a
conservative evangelical than you do coming out as gay, lesbian,
bisexual or transgender.”
“[M]y experience at Princeton, and
that was a decade ago, that it was much more of a contentious subject
to say that you were opposed to same-sex marriage than to say that
you were in favor of it,” he added.