Group Leader Concedes Anti-Gay Side Has "Probably Lost" On Marriage

NEW YORK  – In an interview in the June 4, 2011 issue of World Magazine, Jim Daly, President and CEO of Focus on the Family, a leading funder of anti-gay attacks concentrated on denying same-sex couples the freedom to marry, declared that the opponents of equality are being repudiated by young people and have "probably lost" on marriage, stating:

We're losing on that one, especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age—demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that.

Yet Focus on the Family and its anti-gay colleagues such as the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) still threaten to spend millions of dollars in 2012 to add additional layers of discrimination to state constitutions to impede the country’s progress and prolong as much as possible the exclusion of loving and committed couples from marriage. Organizations such as Focus on the Family and NOM have the key shell-groups pushing discriminatory constitutional amendments in states such Indiana, Minnesota, and North Carolina, where couples are already denied the freedom to marry by statute, and funneling money to local entities and campaigns with similar discriminatory aims and rhetoric.

"Focus on the Family finally got something right—the American people are rejecting their anti-gay toxic rhetoric and punitive politics, and are siding with loving and committed couples seeking the freedom to marry,” said Evan Wolfson, Founder and President of Freedom to Marry. “With six national polls now confirming that a majority of Americans support the freedom to marry, it’s time for Focus on the Family and other anti-gay industry activists to move on and, ideally, redirect their resources toward tackling the real problems gay and non-gay Americans could be confronting together in these tough economic times.”