By Gudrun Schultz
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A crowd of gay couples plan on crashing the White House Easter Egg Roll next Monday, to “help” President Bush’s appreciation for the needs of gay families.
The Family Pride Coalition has organized some 200 gay families to attend the event, who say they will wear rainbow leis to identify themselves. The group has insisted they are not staging a protest.
“We’re not protesting the president’s policies on gay families. We are, however, helping him understand that gay families exist in this country and deserve the rights and protections that all families need,” Jennifer Chrisler, the executive director of Family Pride, told the Herald Tribune.
Mark Tooley, who directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, disagrees.
“It’s facetious and not very persuasive for Family Pride to say they’re not making a political statement,” Tooley said in an interview with the Herald last week.
President Bush has spoken out in defence of traditional marriage, in 2004 supporting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and last year stating his belief that children are better served by growing up in families with a father and mother, in an interview with the New York Times.
While “children can receive love from gay couples,” he said he believed “studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman.”
At a news conference last month the president said that “society’s interest” is met by “defining marriage as between an [sic] man and a woman.”
See related LifeSiteNews articles:
Bush Discusses Abortion and Gay Adoption with New York Times
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jan/05012803.html
Bush Refuses to Proclaim June as Gay Pride Month
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jun/04061106.html
U.S. Gay Activists Seek to Force Homosexual “Marriage” Through Courts, Bypass The People
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/nov/04110509.html