Former Trump adviser claims Dems are exaggerating threat to marriage equality for political gain

A former adviser to Donald Trump has claimed Democrats are exaggerating the threat to marriage equality just to raise money and keep the nation “angry, divided and distrustful.”

“Hyperpartisan liberals are working overtime to try to sow fear and discontent,” David Urban wrote in a USA Today column published this week. He was a senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and is a political strategist and CNN commentator.

One of those liberals he was referring to is Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in that race. In an interview in August, she mentioned that the far right had been working for 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. It was overturned in 2022.

“The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage,” she said. “My prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion. They will send it back to the states.” Right now the court is considering whether to hear antigay former Kentucky official Kim Davis’s case against marriage equality.

Related: Marriage equality will be banned in these 31 states if Obergefell is overturned

But Urban doubts the court will take up the case. He quoted conservative attorney Gene Schaerr, who recently told Newsweek, “The notion of destroying marriages and undoing family relationships would be extremely difficult for the court to justify.”

But the court did decide to undo the national right to abortion, and it has a 6-3 conservative majority. To decide to hear a case takes the vote of four justices. Justice Clarence Thomas has said marriage equality should be overturned, and so has Justice Samuel Alito, although he has backtracked on that recently.

Urban also noted that public support for marriage equality has grown and that Trump has said it is settled law. A majority of Republicans support it, he wrote, citing a survey by conservative pollsters. But a recent Gallup poll that he did not cite showed only 41 percent of Republicans favoring marriage equality, compared to 88 percent of Democrats — a record partisan divide.

The Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, guarantees federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages even if the high court overturns its marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, decided in 2015, and requires states to recognize all marriages performed in other states. However, it does not require any state to offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Related: These 19 states won't ban marriage equality if Obergefell is overturned

At any rate, Urban accused Democratic activists of having ulterior motives for raising the issue. “The ‘chicken little’ warnings aren’t grounded in reality,” he wrote. “So why raise the specter of rights being torn away when the law and the culture are moving in the opposite direction? Because fear works. Fear raises money. Fear keeps Americans angry, divided and distrustful.”

“If you keep telling us the sky is falling, eventually people will stop listening,” he added. He predicted that Americans of all political stripes would defend marriage equality, while insisting it isn’t in danger. “We should all try to keep the fear and cynicism that poison our politics to a minimum,” he concluded.