Robert H. Knight

Robert H. Knight is a conservative American activist and writer. He was a draftsman of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the law that attempted to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman for all federal purposes and allows states to resist demands to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.cite web|title=Robert H. Knight|url=http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=2110&department=CWA&categoryid|publisher=Concerned Women for America|date=2002-10-10|accessdate=2008-06-19] He is currently director of the Culture and Media Institute, a project founded in 2006 by the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. [cite web|title=CMI Staff|url=http://www.cultureandmediainstitute.org/about/staff.aspx|publisher=CMI|date=|accessdate=2008-06-19] Also, Knight has served as director of the Culture & Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.

Career

His career has included working in journalism, in which he had been a reporter for the "Maryland Coast Press" and "Maryland Gazette" after graduating from American University, a news editor and writer for the "Los Angeles Times", and a Media Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. In 1992, he joined the Family Research Council; during his first ten years working in that organization, its budget and staff greatly increased. Knight left the FRC in March 2001.cite web|last=Morahan|first=Lawrence|title=Robert Knight: Getting to the Truth About Moral Relativism|url=http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp?Page=Culturearchive200108CUL20010801a.html|work=Cybercast News Service|date=2001-08-01|accessdate=2008-06-19]

Viewpoints

An ardent opponent of same-sex marriage, Knight has argued that: [cite web|last=Knight|first=Robert H.|title=Talking Points on Marriage: Giving "gay" relationships marital status will destroy marriage|url=http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/KnightMarriage.php|work=OrthodoxyToday.org|publisher=CWFA|date=2003|accessdate=2008-06-19]
*Giving gay relationships marital status will destroy marriage.
*Other groups, such as bisexuals and bigamists, will demand the right to redefine marriage to suit their own proclivities. Once the standard of one-man, one-woman marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point.

In his arguments about homosexuality, Knight has occasionally used the studies of researcher Paul Cameron. [cite web|last=Dreyfuss|first=Robert|title=The Holy War On Gays|url=http://www.pflagdetroit.org/Holy_War_OnGays.htm|work=Rolling Stone|publisher=PFLAG Detroit|date=1999-03-18|accessdate=2008-06-19] He has also faced criticism for his anti-gay views: following the U.S. Supreme Court case of "Boy Scouts of America v. Dale", Bryant Gumbel of the CBS morning show "The Early Show" muttered an obscenity off-camera intended to attack Knight, and ABC television cancelled a scheduled appearance of Knight's for "Good Morning America" a few days later. [cite web|last=Graham|first=Tim|title=Did Gumbel Call Guest a 'F---ing Idiot'?|url=http://www.mrc.org/realitycheck/2000/20000630.asp|work=Reality Check|publisher=Media Research Center|date=2000-06-30|accessdate=2008-06-19]

Written works

Knight is the author of "The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture", published in 1998 and 2000 by Spence Publishing. Additionally, editorials written by him have appeared in numerous American periodicals, including "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Washington Post". [cite news|last=Knight|first=Robert H.|title=Right Diagnosis, Wrong Remedy|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/12/AR2008041201847.html?nav=hcmodule|work=The Washington Post|date=2008-04-13|page=B6|accessdate=2008-06-19] Currently, he writes for the blog Newsbusters. [cite web|title=Robert Knight|url=http://newsbusters.org/bios/robert-knight.html|publisher=Newsbusters]

Personal

He has a B.S. and a M.S. in Political Science from American University. In 1981, he married his wife Barbara, with whom he now lives with his children.

References