NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK – One of the most influential figures in the national movement to oppose gay marriage has had a change of heart, announcing last week that “the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do.”
David Blankenhorn, the founder and President of the Institute for American Values, said Friday in an interview on National Public Radio (NPR) that, in spite of his personal misgivings about expanding traditional marriage, “the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same sex relationships is over.”
“I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world,” Blankenhorn, 57, wrote in an opinion piece that ran, also Friday, in The New York Times.
In 2007, he authored “The Future of Marriage” in support of the institution’s traditional definition, and was presented as an expert witness in Perry v. Schwarzenegger by the supporters of California’s Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that banned marriage for same sex couples.
In the Times piece, Blankenhorn noted, “Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness.”
