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Urging Christian leaders to unite on same-sex marriage, Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said in Richmond on Thursday that the fight to keep marriage between a man and a woman is far from over.

“They want us to believe that the battle is already lost so we won’t stand up and fight,” Brown said at a Clergy and Christian Leaders Summit, hosted by the Virginia Christian Alliance, at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

Citing an order by the U.S. Supreme Court to halt same-sex marriages in Utah as a federal court ruling allowing them is pending appeal, Brown said “the stay gives us hope that it will be overturned” and that “it is not all lost.”

Speaking before an audience of about 50, Brown said same-sex marriage advocates “want you to retreat from speaking; they want to muddy the waters and marginalize folks like me as too extreme.”

Brown said that even if the U.S. Supreme Court eventually declares bans of same-sex marriage unconstitutional, to Christians, marriage will always remain between a man and a woman.