Kyle Bristow
As faithful LON readers know, the past week has been hectic for supporters of marriage equality in Michigan.
- First, late last Friday we reported federal Judge Bernard Friedman ruled DOMA unconstitutional.
- Hours later on Saturday morning, progressive county clerks in four Michigan counties began issuing marriage licenses and performing weddings for same-sex couples. Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum earned the distinction of officiating at the first same-sex marriage in the state shortly after 8 a.m..
- Later that same day (Saturday), the federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily granted Attorney General Schuette’s plea to halt all such weddings.
- The following Tuesday, marriage equality activist group Equality Michigan held a press conference while delivering their petitions urging the governor and his attorney general to drop their appeal.
- The appeals court later extended the ban until the appeal is decided.
- On the same day, Clarkston attorney Bristow filed the TYN amicus brief arguing basically that cultures should have the right to discriminate against the LGBT community because they have long done so.
- The following day, Governor Snyder said the state will not recognize the 323 marriages performed until or unless there is a final court ruling that requires the state to do so.
You can read the full text of Bristow’s filing below. Here is a brief excerpt:
Either government can reasonably regulate marriage, or it cannot - there is no middle ground. If a state cannot be permitted to define marriage as simply as constituting one man and one woman, then our culture will be taken down a very slippery slope that will see pedophiles, polygamists, zoophiles, those in incestuous relationships, and every other sexual deviant with proclivities now known or to be invented to challenge laws that, likewise, prevent them from marrying whom — or what - they wish.
This is the same Kyle Bristow who headed the Young Americans for Freedom chapter when he was a student at Michigan State University(see video below). ” target=”_blank”>YAF was the first campus group designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in part for threatening to host a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” and for bringing in speakers such as British National Party chairman Nick Griffin, identified by SPLC as a Holocaust-denier and white supremacist.
Since graduation from MSU, Bristow kept a relatively low profile while studying at the University of Toledo Law School, though he also wrote a novel called “White Apocalypse.” The book details the so-called “Solutrean Hypothesis” that argues whites were actually the first indigenous people in North America.
A lengthy article in the Toledo Blade that came out when the book was published in 2011 included a quote from Bristow during his MSU days when he said, “YAF members find homosexuality and other forms of sexual deviancy to be disgusting. The Boy Scouts, military, and the American public need to be protected from these degenerates.”
The video below was captured seven years ago by Spartanedge reporter Jessica Lipowski (as I ran the camera).
