Thursday, March 29, 2012

NOM and the Race Card

The National Organization of Marriage is a hate group.  They claim to be  a  “nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.”  By “protecting marriage” they mean preventing  the sinful gays from getting one.  Steve and I dismantled their anti-gay marriage talking points from their own website way back in 2010 when this blog was just getting started.  They had more than a few dirty tricks employed in their proposed talking points such as:  

Language to avoid at all costs: "Ban same-sex marriage." Our base loves this wording. So do supporters of SSM. They know it causes us to lose about ten percentage points in polls. Don’t use it. Say we’re against “redefining marriage” or in favor or “marriage as the union of husband and wife” NEVER “banning same-sex marriage.”


They are well aware of the influence of language and know that outright stating that they are against someone else’s marriage will sound too much like denying someone a civil right.  They need to specify that they are for the traditional institution not against a particular minority's ability to participate in that institution.

Recent documents have come to light in the state of Maine as part of an investigation into the campaign finance activities of NOM.  These documents have exposed a blatant attempt to be divisive and manipulative.  They have sunken to a new low to promote their theologically inspired bigotry.

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…”


Turn the minorities against each other.  Find an African American to speak up against Same Sex Marriage (SSM) and provoke the Pro-SSM crowd to call them bigots.  This is exactly what they did in California with the 2008 Proposition 8 campaign.  They targeted the African American community who were voting in record numbers.  They appealed to religious sensibilities regarding traditional marriage.  Incidentally, the same doctrine commands a husband to stone his wife on her father’s doorstep if she is not pure on their wedding night (Deuteronomy 22: 13-21).  This strategy almost certainly involves African American religious leaders to serve as pawns to spread the agenda.  These individuals who would be “energized, equipped and connected” would face the consequences of accusations of bigotry.  They will of course bear the criticism proudly.  Their compassion insulated by dogma and the protests by reasonable people  marginalized and dismissed as an aspect the persecution stratta of Christian theology.

Another disturbing passage was identified regarding Latin Americans:

"The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”


Now that immigration has taken a backseat in the political  scene, the culturally protected racism against Latin Americans has diminished somewhat.  NOM knows their sociology.  Any immigrant minority will wrestle with ethnic identity vs assimilation.  By highlighting the dissonance and attacking the very concept of SSM being  acceptable in Latin American communities, NOM is attempting to dictate a minority’s identity.

Aside from their minority status, these two groups share a high religiosity and a sense of community that typically revolves around religious activities.  NOM’s bread and butter has always been their invocation of dogma and religious indoctrination.  I hate to play the broken record here but every argument against SSM can be condensed to the ick and/or the icon.  Either the thought of gay sex is so yucky that we have to stop them at all cost, or the creator of the Universe disapproves of two adults of the same gender promising to spend the rest of their lives loving each other.

These are our champions of family values.  NOM is just one example of a small but powerful group  with the ability to sway public opinion to embrace bigotry by tearing down the brotherhood of civil rights from within.  These are just a few documents found in one state outlining a dishonest and (I’ll say it) downright racist tactic to achieve their goals.  These documents were never intended to see the light of day.  They expose these despicable individuals for who they are.  They have proven that they are willing to be immoral to preserve their morality.  Just imagine the paper that is being shredded behind NOM’s doors right this minute.

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