The president of an anti-gay organization has compared the group's recent protest against same-sex marriage to the Civil Rights movement in America.
Speaking on the conservative-leaning "Janet Mefferd Show" on March 26, National Organization for Marriage (NOM) President Brian Barber said NOM's March for Marriage event on Tuesday was an inspiring experience.
"I was not alive during the Civil Rights Movement, but this is what it must have felt like," Barber said. "People were just so ecstatic to stand up and they did it in a loving, respectful way. But they weren’t going to be silenced."
Slate reports that a diverse crowd of over 5,000 people showed up for the march, which was more than what Barber and the organization had hoped for.
NOM's mission is "protecting marriage and the faith communities that sustain it," according to its website. The March for Marriage was meant to show support for California's Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), laws that seek to define marriage as between a man and woman only.
Right Wing Watch notes that the anti-gay marriage camp, and Barber specifically, have drawn similar parallels between their efforts and the past efforts of Civil Rights leaders in the past.
"I believe that this fight is the beginning of a new civil rights movement, and I don't say that in any shallow way," Barber said during an anti-gay marriage protest back in 2010.
It should be noted that gay rights advocates have also been known from time to time to compare the marriage equality movement with the Civil Rights movement.