A leading conservative author says the Obama administration is destroying families and silencing churchgoers, and calls on gay rights opponents to embrace civil disobedience as a form of protest, Right Wing Watch reports.

On Tuesday, the Family Research Council sponsored a panel called, “Marriage and Civil Rights: How to Respond Rightly If the Court Gets It Wrong.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Former Cincinnati mayor and George H.W. Bush appointee Ken Blackwell spoke on the recorded panel. Blackwell’s bestselling book titles include The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency. In his remarks this week, Blackwell encourages sympathetic viewers to embrace 1960’s-style activism in defense of Christian morality.

“What we’ve known from the great Civil Rights movement, what we’ve known from our pushback against the wrongheaded court decision in 1973,” Blackwell says, referencing successful state-level campaigns that undermine Roe v. Wade, “is that you take direct action” and engage in “resistance” to accomplish desired policy outcomes. “But we do it in a responsible way,” Blackwell continues, “in a prayerful way.”

“We are now at one of those pivotal moments in our nation’s history,” Blackwell goes on. “It’s because any survey of human history will let you know that every totalitarian regime throughout human history, every authoritarian regime, every big welfare state regime, from the Bolsheviks, to the Chinese, to an administration that is growing the state right here in America, there are two things that they do. They destroy or weaken the family because the family, within our experience, is the incubator of liberty. Two, they silence the church and those in the pews of the church.”

Blackwell urges his audience not to fear words like “resistance” and “civil disobedience” because of “criminal activity that we see on our TVs at night and responses in Baltimore or Ferguson, or what have you.”

The question American conservatives need to ask themselves, according to Blackwell, is: “How consistent is it with our Christian practice and belief and how consistent is it with American tradition for citizens to resist bad decisions?”

ADVERTISEMENT

Blackwell is the Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying and advocacy group. He also sits on the boards of “various high-profile organizations,” according to Blackwell’s official biography, including the National Rifle Association, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

“The Supreme Court is on the verge of deciding some of the most momentous cases in recent times,” reads the description of the Family Research Council’s Tuesday panel. “One of those cases involves whether the Constitutions require states to recognize as marriage relationships that have never been called such throughout history. This attempted redefinition of society’s foundational institution has been advanced using much of the same language as the Civil Rights movements of the 20th century. Are these things the same? Is self-identification as being a homosexual the same as having a particular racial or ethnic heritage? And if the Court rules against marriage, what is the appropriate response? [The Family Research Council] has assembled an all-star panel of civil rights leaders to discuss these important topics and answer your questions about the relationship between race and human sexuality.”

In addition to Blackwell, who is black, panel speakers included Catholic deacon and conservative book writer Keith Fournier, who is white, and Alveda King, a Christian anti-abortion activist, who is black.

ADVERTISEMENT

Until last month, reality TV star Josh Duggar worked as Executive Director of politically-focused Family Research Council Action. After he admitted in May to having molested several girls including some of his sisters, Duggar resigned from his lobbying job. As of press time, however, Duggar’s LinkedIn profile still lists the Family Research Council as his employer.

Watch Ken Blackwell preach civil disobedience as an effective organizing tactic for Americans opposed to gay marriage: