Robert H. Knight

Robert H. Knight (born April 23, 1951) is an American conservative writer and activist. He was a draftsman of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the statute which defines marriage for all federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman. DOMA was invalidated by the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor. He is senior fellow of the American Civil Rights Union and a regular columnist for The Washington Times. He was senior writer for Coral Ridge Ministries (now Truth in Action) and director of the Culture and Media Institute, a project founded in 2006 by the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Knight has also served as director of the Culture & Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.

His career has included working 15 years in journalism, in which he had been a reporter and editor for the Maryland Coast Press, Maryland Gazette, and a reporter for the Annapolis Evening Capital after graduating from American University, a copy editor for the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, a news editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times, and a Media Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution (1989–90). He was a Senior Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies for the Heritage Foundation (1990–92). In 1992, he joined the Family Research Council; during his ten years working in that organization as director of the Cultural Studies program, its budget and staff greatly increased. Knight left the FRC in March 2001.

Knight is an outspoken supporter of preserving the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and has written prolifically on that topic.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Knight was interviewed by anchor Bryant Gumbel on the CBS morning program The Early Show. Thinking he was off air after the segment, Gumbel profanely cursed Knight, who has been featured on virtually every major network news or talk show. ABC television cancelled a scheduled appearance of Knight's for Good Morning America a few days later at the behest of gay rights activists.

Knight is the author of Fighting for America's Soul: How Sweeping Change Threatens Our Nation and What We Must Do, published in June 2009, updated in September, 2010, by Coral Ridge Ministries at coralridge.org, "Radical Rulers: The White House Elites Who Are Pushing America Toward Socialism" (2010, Coral Ridge Ministries at www.radicalrulers.com), "The Silencers: How Liberals Are Trying to Shut Down Media Freedom in the U.S." (2010, Coral Ridge Ministries), "The Truth About Marriage", (2010, Coral Ridge Ministries), co-author of "Ten Truths About Socialism" (2010, Coral Ridge Ministries at www.dangersofsocialism.com) and The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture, published in 1998 and 2000 by Spence Publishing. Additionally, he writes a weekly column for The Washington Times, and frequently for Townhall.com, HumanEvents.com, OneNewsNow.com, DailyCaller.com, WorldNetDaily.com, AmericanThinker.com and other Web public affairs sites. He has written articles and columns for numerous publications and websites, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, Townhall.com, AmericanThinker.com, OneNewsNow and the DailyCaller.com.

He has a B.S. (1973) and M.S. (1975) in political science from American University. In 1981, he married his wife Barbara, with whom he now lives in the Washington, D.C. area.