SC anti-gay activist acknowledges that marriage equality will come to the Palmetto State

Oran Smith of the Palmetto Family Council (center) celebrates in 2004 with SC state legislators when the state legislature introduced anti-marriage equality bill which was passed two years later via referendum. Smith is singing a sadder tune now.

It's hard to believe but in my eight years of blogging, I don't think I have ever written a lot of posts on the anti-gay religious right group in my state of South Carolina, the Palmetto Family Council.

This is probably because the council is a low-key, ineffective organization which takes for granted the fact that it is located in a Bible Belt state.

The lgbt community and the Palmetto Family Council generally don't grapple over equality issues, except for in 2006 when the organization successfully led the charge to pass a statewide anti-marriage equality amendment.

However, this success was not necessarily due to anything done by the Palmetto Family Council, but the momentum against marriage equality back then. And as that momentum shifts in the favor of marriage equality, it turns out that the Palmetto Family Council is already accepting the inevitable outcome that marriage equality will come to the Palmetto State.

In a recent interview with the fake news site, One News Now, Palmetto Family Council president Oran Smith acknowledged this:

"[Alan Wilson] asked the state Supreme Court to rule on whether that was proper for two or three probate judges to be giving out these marriage licenses or taking applications, and the court responded to him that no -- it was not appropriate," Smith reports. "We don't have a final decision from the federal courts, so they were restrained from doing that and stopped issuing the licenses and the applications."

South Carolina is in the fourth federal Court of Appeals district to invalidate marriage amendments, so the final ruling is expected soon.

"I think South Carolina, like all the rest, will bow to that decision," the family advocate laments. "And we're then probably stuck with gay marriage in South Carolina until we have some other further progress in some other way," such as federal court decisions in Louisiana and Puerto Rico upholding one man/one woman marriage in the cases that are making their way through the circuit courts to the Supreme Court. That is, if the nation's high court decides to hear those cases.

Sorry Oran, but I think you've lost this one. Get over it.

Photo taken from the Palmetto Family Council's webpage. Take a gander at the link to see the arguments the organization used against marriage equality. And try not to bash yourself over the head while repeatedly muttering, "I can't believe they got this through the legislature with those slack-assed arguments.