The co-founder of the National Organisation for Marriage has claimed that the group will stop same-sex marriage – even if it takes a century to do so.

Robert George, a Princeton law professor who is the organisation’s chairman emeritus, made the claim in an email for the group.

According to Joe My God, he said: “We have to resolve that we will stand for marriage and fight for however long it takes – it might be 20 years, it might be 50 years, it might be 100 years – to rebuild the marriage culture and to restore in law, where it has been displaced, a sound understanding of marriage.

“As a result of this, we will draw ridicule. We will bring scorn upon ourselves, because powerful people in institutions reject our understanding of marriage.

“They reject what everyone understood marriage to be until yesterday. And they claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a bigot, or a hater, or is motivated by irrational animus, or archaic religious beliefs.

“Yet we must suffer that, be willing to suffer that opprobrium, perhaps discrimination, perhaps the loss of friends, perhaps even conflict within the family, for the sake of rebuilding marriage, because so much for people depends on it, and especially for the poor.”

Sadly, the anti-gay group might not live out a century – tax documents released this week showed that their funding plunged by 50 percent in 2013, and that half their remaining funds were from two key anonymous donors.

The Human Rights Campaign reported that the group ended the tax year more than $2.5 million in debt.