"I said to [the National Organization for Marriage], 'You think I’m controversial because I don’t look white,'” Ken Hutcherson, senior pastor of the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Wash. said this week, charging NOM with racism and blaming the group’s tactics and strategies for the gay marriage win at the ballot in his state on Election Day. “I don’t talk white. I don’t act white. And I am not that milquetoast-looking kind of guy that’s is going to be calm about everything. I’ve got a passion on what’s right. I’ve got a passion, and I will stand on what I think biblical principles are. If that’s controversial, then we’ve got a problem, and we’ll never win another election on anything.”
Hutcherson, a former Seattle Seahawks linebacker who has been the leading voice for evangelicals and against gay marriage in Washington, said that NOM sidelined him, and, when asked it if was because of racial bias, he replied, “You want a percentage between 1 and 100? About 90 percent.” He believes NOM's leaders, Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher, saw him as too extreme. “We had some of the national organizations come in here and they wanted to do it their way,” he explained. "They wanted to choose their leadership. And because of that we had a very big division of unity in the state brought on the national organizations, and we never recovered from that.” (Scroll down to listen to the full interview)
Regarding NOM's strategy to "drive a wedge between gays and blacks," which was exposed when documents were made public earlier this year, Hutcherson said, "I was totally against that approach, because it’s wrong. That’s not what we do to win, is to show our prejudice."
Hutcherson, appearing on my SiriusXM OutQ radio program, said NOM ran a weak campaign that was too “loving” and didn’t speak to religious conservatives to get them out to vote.
“I think they went weak, extremely, to the point where the national organizations wanted to be a little bit more loving,” he explained, “to look more to point of putting no bad taste in anyone’s mouth.”
Hutcherson contends that because NOM didn’t stick to “biblical principles” and instead ran TV ads that focused on the alleged effects of gay marriage “on children and schools,” religious conservatives stayed home -- despite polling showing evangelicals turned out in force in Washington and nationwide.
“The National Organization for Marriage tried to win the moderates,” Hutcherson said. “And if you’re going to win the moderates then you got to stay away from what they call hard-line biblical principles.So they tried to come with the psychological and sociological argument. That doesn’t win. What wins is that fact the we need to stand on the what the Bible says and get the values voter out.”
Hutcherson scoffed at national polls showing a shift in public opinion, with a majority of Americans now supporting marriage equality. He also said he wouldn’t reveal too much of his plan moving forward right now, but did say that “our biggest recourse we’ve got to do is change the legislature” in Washington state.
Listen to the full interview here:
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