Monday, March 26, 2012

Court documents prove NOM's plan to divide black, gay communities


Maggie Gallagher of NOM
The National Organization for Marriage's unsuccessful fight to skirt Maine's financial disclosure laws just backfired majorly on the group by revealing a  distasteful part of its game plan to stop marriage equality.

According to a court document that was uploaded online, NOM specifically worked to drive a wedge between the black and gay community on the subject of marriage equality:

According to page 11 of this document called Marriage: $20 Million Strategy for Victory:


3. Not a Civil Right Project 

The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks - two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.

NOM has portrayed whatever African-American opposition to marriage equality its spotlighted as spontaneous attempts by leaders and members of the black community to keep its civil rights legacy from supposedly being "tainted" by a comparison to gay equality.

But now we see that there was nothing spontaneous about this. It was a cynically planned effort by NOM - which the organization continues to exploit - in order to drive a wedge between blacks and gays.

And notice how NOM says that one of the purposes of creating this division was to create a negative reaction from gay equality supporters against the African-Americans speaking out against marriage equality.

One doesn't have to spell out how this benefits NOM's efforts. The two sides attack each other with extreme anger causing magazine articles to be written about the division, news programs to focus on the division, and venomous chats to occur on places like Facebook and Twitter.

Some heterosexual African-Americans will let loose with homophobia against the gay community.  And some white lgbtqs will express racist comments about the black community. Both communities will be at each other's throats. There will be no intelligent conversations on the matter and neither community will benefit an iota.

And NOM will sit back and reap the benefits of causing this chaos.

It reminds me of an Aesop fable I once posted:

An Eagle had made her nest at the top of a lofty oak. A Fox, having found a convenient hole, lived with her young in the middle of the trunk; and a Wild Sow with her young had taken shelter in a hollow at its foot. The Fox resolved to destroy by her arts this chance-made colony. She climbed to the nest of the Eagle, and said: "Destruction is preparing for you, and for me too. The Wild Sow, whom you may see daily digging up the earth, wishes to uproot the oak, that she may, on its fall, seize our families as food." Then she crept down to the cave of the Sow and said: "Your children are in great danger; for as soon as you shall go out with your litter to find food, the Eagle is prepared to pounce upon one of your little pigs." When night came, she went forth with silent foot and obtained food for herself and her young; but, feigning to be afraid, she kept a look-out all through the day. Meanwhile, the Eagle, full of fear of the Sow, sat still on the branches, and the Sow, terrified by the Eagle, did not dare to go out from her cave; and thus they each, with their families, perished from hunger.

Moral - Gay folks and black folks can argue all day as to who gets to be the  "sow" and who gets to be the "eagle." But both groups better damn well recognize who the hell the fox is.

Editor's note - There are a lot of court documents and I'm sure that in the coming days, we will learn more about NOM's exploits. Stay tuned not only to this blog but several others.


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15 comments:

Unknown said...

Divide and Conquer is the oldest game in the book. It will backfire on them. Excellent reporting, Alivin!

Rev Charles Curtiss said...

Satanic conduct! This is NOT the way in which true Christians would behave.

Wade MacMorrighan said...

Also note that they "have learned to [coerce] religious" institutions, as well! They admit to that!

Anonymous said...

AWESOME story and so great of story...who gives a shit who the ealge is and the sow is just be weary of the FoxNOM. Thats what their new name should be FoxNOM. I like it.

LittleKiwi said...

I knew it. This is textbook bigotry playbook nonsense.

NOM, you're going down. hard.

Bernie Keefe aka OneOfThe Watchers said...

This is disgusting and deplorable. How are they ever going to quash this. They can't! The jig is up for them.

truthspew said...

Indeed, I've long known NOM was playing the divide and conquer game. But NOM has now shown it's hand and it's going to mean the destruction of any appearance of credibility that they ever had. Good, it's about damned time they got hoisted on their own petards.

PJB863 said...

Now I know where "Black Tsunami" comes from, Alvin. Good show!

The question remains: where does NOM get its money? I'm going to be watching the Catholic Church and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops closely over the next few days. That's going to be the second pile of manure to strike the air-circulating device. Better if they denounce NOM's tactics, only to have it revealed that they were behind it.

Anonymous said...

This is the beginning of the end of NOM.

Dan Mac said...

I have conservative friends already claiming the document is a forgery. How do we combat this claim and prove the document is genuine?

BlackTsunami said...

Figures. It's legitimate. Tell them NOM has yet to comment and the piece has been picked up by several other places. Also, the news came from the Human Rights Campaign. Direct them to the link on my post.

Quasar said...

like all things right-wingnut, it'll backfire. they've been trying to divide and conquer the straight community for years, and haven't done a very good job of it. same with the gays & blacks.

and look at the term OBAMACARE. they thought it was going to work to demolish obama. when the act is held up in court (minus maybe the mandate thing, which i think was only in the bill to appease the insurance companies), everytime obamacare gets mentioned, barack's name will be associated with it.

they're a pack of fools. hypocritical fools.

Reed Boyer said...

TWENTY FREAKIN' MILLION DOLLARS? When people are starving and children are dying?
20 million.
Ohmigod.
It just makes me want to hurl (either my cookies or some kind of glitter grenade device thingie).
Seriously.
Sick (and not in the "good new sick" way).
Bad.

GreatJT said...

As Steve Publicover said, Divide and Conquer is an ancient tactic. More often then not it results in the destruction of your foes, if executed right.
But sometimes either fate isn't on your side or things just go horribly wrong, and the sides you attempted to divide turn their gaze upon you.
So it is now with NOM. Let us see how they enjoy the attention.

Fact-Free said...

Here they are on NPR, doing just what they planned:

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/23/147295677/the-dialogue-around-gay-marriage-in-black-churches