Those resolutions being proposed in state legislatures urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn marriage equality aren’t happening organically. Instead, they’re the result of an orchestrated campaign by MassResistance, one of the most virulently anti-LGBTQ+ groups in existence. It has often equated homosexuality and bisexuality with pedophilia and bestiality, and it has long demonized transgender people.
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The group hasn’t been in the news much in the past few years, but its presence has resurged with the anti-marriage equality resolutions. “MassResistance has drafted text for state legislature resolutions that call on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its infamous and illegitimate Obergefell ruling,” says a post on the group’s website. “That 2015 decision forced the idea that the U.S. Constitution requires states to allow same-sex ‘marriage.’” Yes, MassResistance is still putting “marriage” in quotes when it comes to queer couples.
The resolutions have so far been introduced in five states — Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Idaho is the only state to pass one to date; the resolutions failed in Montana and South Dakota and remain pending in the other states. MassResistance expects one to be introduced in Iowa as well. They are nonbinding — it would take a case getting to the high court for it to reconsider the marriage equality decision — but MassResistance sees the measures as “an important public message” that “can create positive momentum across the country,” according to its website.
But just who is MassResistance? Here we take a look at the group’s history.
The beginnings of MassResistance
The organization now known as MassResistance was founded in 1995 as the Parents’ Rights Coalition. It’s based in Waltham, Mass. — yes, in one of the most liberal and LGBTQ-friendly states in the nation. It has chapters in numerous other states and has worked with anti-LGBTQ+ activists around the world. Brian Camenker has been its director since its founding. In 1996, as president of another group, the Interfaith Coalition of Massachusetts, he led efforts to draft a bill requiring that parents in the state be notified if their children’s schools are offering sex education.
But MassResistance was just getting started. Things really ramped up in 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. The Parents’ Rights Coalition changed its name to Article 8 Alliance, a reference to Article 8 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, a part of the state constitution establishing the people’s right to recall elected officials. But the course opponents of marriage equality took was to try to amend the Massachusetts constitution to nullify the ruling, an effort backed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. MassResistance refers to this period as the “‘gay marriage’ crisis.” At any rate, the state did not amend its constitution, and same-sex couples began marrying when the ruling went into effect May 17, 2004.
“We adopted the name MassResistance in 2006 when our role as the true resistance to tyrannical government became clear,” the organization’s website says. “Since we were in the first state to see homosexual activism in the schools and ‘gay marriage,’ we thoroughly understood the threat of sexual radicalism, curtailed freedom of speech, uneven application of the law, judicial activism, and post-constitutional government.”
MassResistance often targets schools
During 2006 and 2007, MassResistance sought to have the 1996 law on sex education amended so that parents would be notified of any discussion of gay and lesbian issues in schools. “The group proposed language that lumped sexual orientation (which includes heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality) in with criminal behaviors like bestiality and polygamy,” notes the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has labeled MassResistance a hate group. “During legislative testimony supporting the amendment, Camenker falsely claimed that no homosexuals died in the Holocaust and that the pink triangle the Nazis forced imprisoned gays to wear actually signified Catholic priests. The amendment did not pass.”
MassResistance has often attacked GLSEN (formerly the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), including with a claim that it was distributing a booklet with instructions on gay sexual activities to students in fifth through ninth grades. This allegation was featured in a 2011 documentary from another anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, the Family Research Council, with FRC leader Tony Perkins calling it “the most vile assault on teenagers ever concocted by homosexual activists.” However, the booklet, on how to have safer sex, was produced by the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and was intended for gay men 18 and older. Fenway Community Health took a few to a 2005 GLSEN conference held at a high school, then acknowledged it was a mistake (the conference banned sexually explicit material) and said apparently no students picked up the booklet.
MassResistance has a history of opposing antibullying and safe schools programs by claiming they’re “promoting” homosexuality. It has also condemned the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, started under Massachusetts Gov. William Weld in 1992, and now an independent agency called the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth. When the T was added in the early 2000s, MassResistance denounced the commission as “pushing transgenderism.”
MassResistance conspiracies: Gays control the FBI and CIA, provoke bashings, and more
Camenker went on a conservative radio show in 2012 to claim that LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts at the FBI and CIA meant that queer people had taken control of those agencies and would use them against Christians — well, right-wing Christians. One weapon, he said, would be the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal law passed under President Barack Obama in 2009. “When an individual describes himself as being gay or lesbian, transgender or something, invariably that person is hostile to the pro-family position and is vigorous about pushing the entire agenda,” Camenker said on the Crosstalk show. “We’ve seen that in the schools, we’ve seen that all over the place. We’re really scared about the FBI being this out homosexual organization.” But anti-LGBTQ+ churches and organizations remain in operation — the U.S. still has freedom of speech and religion — and Camenker’s probably very pleased with Donald Trump’s anti-diversity efforts.
During the first Trump administration, however, even far-right Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wasn’t anti-LGBTQ+ enough to satisfy MassResistance. In 2018, the group denounced Pompeo for declaring Pride Month at the State Department and issuing a statement in support of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. “He gave credence to the radical ideology deeming all forms of sexual and ‘gender’ expression ‘human rights’ and that any disagreement is irrational or hateful,” said a post by Amy Contrada on the MassResistance website.
Among MassResistance’s other “greatest hits” was Camenker’s discussion with fellow anti-LGBTQ+ activist Linda Harvey on her Mission: America radio show in 2013. He claimed that antigay crimes are often caused by “revulsion” at, for instance, the sight of two men kissing, and he asserted that there are few elite gay athletes because of “the psychological issues that are going through you in the homosexual lifestyle.” He said elite athletes need a high level of stability and alertness, and apparently LGBTQ+ people don’t have that. Oh, maybe they just need a better environment in which to come out?
MassResistance has also promoted so-called conversion therapy and objected to state laws preventing its use on minors, and it has denounced the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The group was a big supporter of Roy Moore, the homophobic and now-disgraced Alabama politician who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate and lost his post on the state's Supreme Court. MassResistance members have recently taken on such popular far-right causes as protesting drag queen story hours, trying to get LGBTQ-themed books out of public libraries, and generally demonizing trans people as delusional and dangerous.
Back to marriage equality
As noted previously, those resolutions are nonbinding. For the Supreme Court to reconsider marriage equality, a case would have to come to it. But the infamous Kim Davis is trying to set one up.
In 2015, Davis, as clerk of Rowan County, Ky., refused to comply with the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which she said went against her religious beliefs. Her office was responsible for issuing marriage licenses, but she shut down all marriage license operations to avoid serving same-sex couples. She even went to jail briefly for defying a judge’s order to resume issuing licenses without discrimination. Eventually, she decided to allow her deputies to serve same-sex couples, and then Kentucky changed its marriage license form so that it does not include the county clerk’s name. This satisfied the religious exemption that Davis said she wanted. She was voted out of office in 2018.
But the drama wasn’t over. One of the couples to whom Davis denied a license, David Ermold and David Moore, sued her and won. They have been trying to collect the damages a jury awarded them, and last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that yes, Davis has to pay. She and her lawyers at Liberty Counsel hope to get the case to the Supreme Court and overturnObergefell, a possibility with the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, and given that far-right Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have expressed a desire to overturn it. But maybe a couple of the court’s four other conservatives would side with the liberals.
If Obergefell does fall, states could still offer and recognize same-sex marriages. The Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, writes the rights to same-sex marriage and interracial marriage into federal law, assuring that the U.S. government will recognize these marriages and that all states will recognize those performed in other states. It forbids anyone acting under a state law to discriminate based on the gender or race of a married couple. However, it does not require any state to allow same-sex marriages to be performed, so there would probably be a patchwork of laws among states. And who knows, the Republicans in control of Congress could try to repeal the Respect for Marriage Act, but a few Republicans voted for it, and marriage equality is popular. Even Trump has said he considers it settled law, although who can trust him?
At any rate, Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson has said it would be hard to get a case to the Supremes. “There would have to be a constitutional case that got litigated,” she recently told The Washington Post. “There would have to be conflict among circuits that allow the case to wind up to the Supreme Court. That is the kind of thing that takes years.”
In the meantime, though, it pays to keep an eye on MassResistance and its ilk.
