Mass. group fighting same-sex marriage

BOSTON --When they spotted the mannequins in a Macy's department store window celebrating the city's Gay Pride week, Brian Camenker and other activists at MassResistance jumped into action.

They posted a photo of the window on their Web log and encouraged supporters to call the store in protest. Within days, Macy's had removed the mannequins but left up a list of pride week events.

It was a victory for a group that has taken on gay-themed school texts and nearly persuaded Gov. Mitt Romney to eliminate a state commission for gay youth in Massachusetts -- the only state to allow same-sex marriage.

"People feel that as a society they're under assault -- that you can't walk down the street anymore without having this in your face," said Camenker, 53, of Newton.

MassResistance has drawn criticism from gay-rights activists who say Camenker and his supporters are obsessed with the more extreme elements of gay culture and are trying to deny rights for all gays across the state.

"Brian Camenker and MassResistance is the fringe of the fringe. They are bottom feeders," said Marc Solomon, campaign director at MassEquality, a coalition of gay-marriage rights advocates. "I really don't get it. It's an obsession. He spends more time looking at gay Web sites than anyone I could imagine."

But as Massachusetts lawmakers prepare to consider on Wednesday an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage, Camenker says he represents the state's true silent majority.

"There is a huge group of people who are very upset about what's been going on in the social sphere," said Camenker, who opposes gay marriage but also the amendment because he doesn't believe the state constitution needs to be changed.

Camenker, who is married with two teenage children, has a long history of taking on charged topics in Massachusetts. By the mid-1990s, his Parent's Rights Coalition had successfully championed a parental notification bill giving parents the option of pulling their children from sex-education classes.

In 2000, his group again made headlines, secretly taping graphic sexual talk -- such as whether to use condoms and how to have oral sex -- during a workshop for gay teens. Gay activists denounced the secret taping, which cost two members of the state Department of Education's HIV/AIDS awareness program their jobs because of the explicit nature of the talk. One of the workers later sued and was given her job back.

But the 2003 ruling by the state Supreme Judicial Court, which paved the way for the nation's first legal same-sex marriages, took Camenker's fight to a new level.

Massachusetts Family Institute President Kris Mineau, one of the main backers of a proposal to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, praised Camenker as a "a true cultural warrior."

"He's laid his life, his reputation, his fortune on the line for the last decade fighting for parents rights, fighting the permissive social agenda that's just growing in our public schools," Mineau said.

In April 2005, David Parker was arrested after refusing to leave school property when officials refused his demand to notify him when homosexuality was discussed in his 6-year-old son's class. The case became a rallying cry for the group, which intensified its protests a year later after another Lexington couple objected when a teacher read a storybook about two princes who fall in love to their son's second-grade class.

Both families have sued the Lexington schools, saying reading storybooks with gay themes without first alerting parents violated the same parental notification law Camenker helped push through a decade earlier.

"He has done very good undercover work," Parker said of Camenker. "I think it's a tremendous service to society."

In April, MassResistance nearly persuaded Romney, a possible Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential race, to ax a state advisory commission on gay youth after Camenker showed administration officials a press release announcing an annual parade featuring a cross-dressing master of ceremonies and embracing transgender teens. The release included Romney's name but wasn't vetted by the administration.

Romney, who signed a proclamation hailing a similar parade in 2003, considering killing the commission but decided instead to require it to focus on its main mission of suicide prevention.

Camenker says interest in his group is on the rise, but he would not say how many supporters it has. He also declined to say how much money the Waltham-based nonprofit has raised.

His increasingly public profile even led to a brief appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" where he was skewered during a tongue-in-cheek interview. (Sample question: "How does legalized gay marriage affect your relationship with your wife?")

Camenker said he was unfazed by the lampooning.

"If you look at it, they didn't treat me that bad," he said. "I think they treated the gays worse than me."

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On the Net:

MassEquality: http://www.massequality.org

MassResistance: http://www.massresistance.com