What's Next For Marriage Groups?

Oh, you thought they were done? Here's a look at a few of the advocacy groups, on both sides, fighting for their views of marriage and what they're planning next. 

Freedom To Marry

Launched: 2003 by Evan Wolfson (above)
Mission: Campaign to win marriage equality nationwide.
Strategy: In states that banned gay marriage, Freedom to Marry beefed up field campaigns to grow groups of first responders, business leaders and clergy who support marriage equality; flooded national media with stories of real families who are harmed by discrimination and highlight that the sky is not falling in states that allow gay marriage; created national TV and print ads before oral arguments; and online campaigns to show broad support for the freedom to marry. Last year’s budget was $12M.
Statement after ruling: “Today’s ruling is a transformative triumph decades in the making, a momentous victory for freedom, equality, inclusion, and above all, love. For anyone who ever doubted that we could bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, today the United States again took a giant step toward the more perfect union we the people aspire to. Today the Liberty Bell rings alongside wedding bells across an ocean of joy.”
What’s next: Starting to wind down its work and document lessons learned. Freedom to Marry will also begin airing a nationwide TV ad—"Love Won, We All Won." The ad can be viewed here.

Human Rights Campaign

History: Launched in 1980 as one of the first US gay and lesbian PACs. 
Executive director: Chad Griffin (above)
Mission: Represents over 1.5 million people who support equality for the LGBT community.  
Strategy: A decade ago, the organization expanded beyond political lobbying work. Programs such as the Workplace Project and the Family Project became part of the newly created educational arm, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. All of HRC’s research, communications, marketing and public relations functions were also expanded.
Reaction to SCOTUS ruling: “Today’s ruling makes perfectly clear that there is no legal or moral justification for standing in the path of marriage equality. Couples from Mississippi to North Dakota to Texas shouldn’t have to wait even a moment longer to be treated equally under the law.”
What’s next: Focusing on federal LGBT non-discrimination protections and making sure LGBT Americans cannot be fired, evicted or denied services.

National Organization for Marriage

President: Brian Brown (above)
Launched: 2007
Mission: Defends marriage and faith communities that sustain it at the local, state and national levels.  
Strategy: Funds research, public education and strategic projects that promote marriage as between one man and one woman and helps protect the religious liberty of traditional faith communities; urges consumers to avoid companies like Starbucks and General Mills for their support of gay marriage; forms community partnerships, especially within ethnic and racial minority communities, that educate and defend marriage; and created the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance to protect the views of people in support of traditional marriage. 
Statement after ruling: “It represents nothing but judicial activism, legislating from the bench, with a bare majority of the Justices on the Supreme Court exercising raw political power to impose their own preferences on marriage when they have no constitutional authority to do so.” 
What’s next: Push for the First Amendment Defense Act, which prevents federal agencies from denying a tax exemption, grant, contract, license or certification to an individual, association or business based on their belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

Family Research Council

President: Tony Perkins (above)
Founded: 1983
Mission: Advances faith, family and freedom in public policy and culture from a Christian worldview.
Strategy: Partners with scholars and pastors to spread its message and works closely with student groups to shape the next generation.
Reaction after SCOTUS ruling: “Five justices on the Supreme Court have overturned the votes of 50 million Americans and demanded that the American people walk away from millennia of history and the reality of human nature. In reaching a decision so lacking in foundation in the text of the Constitution, in our history and in our traditions, the Court has done serious damage to its own legitimacy. No court can overturn natural law. Nature and Nature’s God, hailed by the signers of our Declaration of Independence as the very source of law, cannot be usurped by the edict of a court, even the United States Supreme Court.” 
What’s next: Continue to speak about its definition of what marriage is: the union of one man and one woman.