Pat Buchanan calls for conservative anti-LGBT 'civil disobedience'

Former Nixon aide and ousted MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan penned a new op-ed column on Tuesday calling on conservatives to continue to oppose marriage equality for LGBT couples and urging them toward "a new era of civil disobedience" if they are not heard. According to Think Progress LGBT, Buchanan even cloaked his argument in language from the civil rights struggle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Many of America’s young have come to accept that homosexuality is a natural preference of a significant minority and ought to be accommodated, and same-sex unions ought to be treated as traditional marriages," Buchanan lamented at right wing website WorldNetDaily.com.

"When Martin Luther King Jr. called on the nation to 'live up to the meaning of its creed,'” he continued, "he heard an echo from a thousand pulpits. Treating black folks decently was consistent with what Christians had been taught. Dr. King was pushing against an open door."

"Priests and pastors marched for civil rights. Others preached for civil rights. But if the gay rights agenda is imposed, we could have priests and pastors preaching not acceptance but principled rejection," he continued. "Prelates could be declaring from pulpits everywhere that the triumph of gay rights is a defeat for God’s Country, and the new laws are immoral and need neither be respected nor obeyed."

Buchanan went on to opine that homosexuality is inherently "immoral" and that the idea of homosexual partners even calling their relationships "marriage" is "an absurdity." Calling upon anti-LGBT Americans to resist anti-discrimination laws the way Americans resisted Prohibition, he urged them to freely break the laws, even as he compared the new laws to civil rights legislation from the 1960s.

"Imagine the situation in America today if priests and pastors were telling congregations they need not obey civil rights laws. They would be denounced as racists. Church tax exemptions would be in peril," he said. "Something akin to this could be in the cards if the homosexual rights movement is victorious – a public rejection of the new laws by millions and a refusal by many to respect or obey them."

He concluded by darkly warning, "The culture war in America today may be seen as squabbles in a day-care center compared to what is coming. A new era of civil disobedience may be at hand."

Buchanan was fired from MSNBC when positions he took in his book Suicide of a Superpower were deemed too racist for mainstream audiences.

[Image via Victory New Hampshire's Flickr Photostream]