A spokesperson for the Family Research Council says that President Barack Obama was wrong to link LGBT rights to the civil rights movement because “homosexuals already have all the same civil rights as anyone else.”

CNN host Soledad O’Brien on Tuesday asked Family Research Council senior fellow Peter Sprigg if there was anything that he liked about Obama’s second inaugural speech.

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“The statement that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, that was the best thing about it,” Sprigg opined. “And it was not too long.”

“Sometimes that’s a dis too,” O’Brien noted. “Like, well, at least it was short.”

The CNN host went on to press Sprigg about his reaction to the way the president compared the iconic 1969 riot riot at the Stonewall Inn gay bar with the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 and the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

“We as social conservatives do not agree with the president’s attempt to link the modern homosexual movement with the women’s rights movement or the civil rights movement for African Americans,” Sprigg insisted. “The irony is that homosexuals already have all the same civil rights as anyone else.”

He continued: “But the fact that all people are created equal as individuals does not mean that all sexual behavior is equal or that personal relationships have an equal value to society at large, that serve the same public interests.”

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“So, you know, many people would say, that’s where you’re wrong,” O’Brien noted. “If individuals are created equal then what individuals do is also created equal, right? If individuals are allowed to marry who are straight then individuals who are gay should also be allow to marry. Like that would follow through. Do you think that he is setting up for some kind of legislative fight on this issue?”

“I do think he was kind of laying down the gauntlet, not really saying, let’s seek common ground, let’s find where we can agree and compromise,” Sprigg agreed. “But saying, ‘This is the agenda that I have and I’m going to pursue it.’ I mean, he won the election, he has the right to do that, but I don’t think it creates the potential for really working together with Congress on a lot of these issues.”

Watch this video from CNN’s Starting Point, broadcast Jan. 22, 2013.

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