On March 30, an MSNBC news anchor accused the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) of "race-baiting" for (among other charges) writing in a 2009 in-house document, "We ... need to ... interrupt the attempt to equate gay with black, and sexual orientation with race; we need to make traditional sexual morality intellectually respectable again in elite culture."

"Maggie," anchor Tom Roberts asked NOM's Maggie Gallagher, "Do you defend your own race-baiting to further bigotry and homophobia on a national level?"

As one of those black church leaders who has worked in the field with Maggie and others to protect our culture's understanding of marriage as a union of one man with one woman, I will answer Mr. Roberts' question. Race is different from sexual orientation, and equating the two (as many gay marriage theorists and advocates do) is unreasonable. And America would certainly be a better place if traditional sexual morality received more respect in elite circles.

The Church of God in Christ is the largest black Pentecostal denomination and the fifth largest Christian denomination in the United States. It has worldwide membership in 60 countries. We oppose same-sex marriage because it is contrary to God's Word and opposed to the natural order.

Marriage is rooted in sexual differences and in the need for males and females to come together to make the next generation. The very first chapter in the Bible makes this clear: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply."

This idea of marriage has roots not only in the great, stirring words of Genesis, but in the human heart across time and diverse cultures. Marriage is a virtually universal human social institution because every society has recognized the need to bring together man and woman in order to encourage and protect the next generation. Both our faith and our reason direct us to this understanding of marriage.

About 10 years ago, gay marriage advocates decided to overturn this historic and religious understanding of marriage and insist that unions of two men or two women were the same as a marriage and must be treated as such by the government and society. They created out of whole cloth the idea that gay marriage was a basic civil right and that dismantling the public meaning of marriage was somehow akin to overturning racist bans on interracial marriage. Misusing the sacred value of equality, they began insisting that all opposition to their new morality was "bigotry" or "hatred."