For me, it will be time for the 20009 Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters Misinformers of the Year Awards in which I look back at some of the highlights (and lowlights) of anti-lgbt hysteria.
I can tell you right now that there will be a few surprises because unfortunately some of our own went out of their way to help the religious right in their anti-lgbt endeavors via unnecessary ugly words or abandoning an lgbt leader before he even had a chance to defend himself.
But it's still all in fun. And in that spirit, let me announce one award now:
The Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters Video of the Year award (or the Ed Wood Memorial Video Vanguard Award) goes to . . . oh come on, as if you would be shocked:
National Organization for Marriage's Gathering Storm Ad
In April of this year, the National Organization for Marriage launched an ad campaign claiming that gay marriage will have negative consequences for people's freedom and rights. Central to this campaign was a commercial. Naturally, this commercial recycled a bunch of lies about current events involving cases of lgbt rights and families.
But all of that took a backseat because the commercial was bad. I mean just plain awful. Valley of the Dolls bad, Heaven's Gate bad, Plan 9 from Outerspace bad.
See for yourself:
Instead of anger, the ad elicited laughter and a huge amount of parody ads, as well as ads which served to correct its phony claims. Among the funniest and most informative were:
Then there was Stephen Colbert:
via videosift.com
And just when it looked like things couldn't get any funnier, it came out that the people in the "Gathering Storm" ads were actors. We know this because somehow their audition tapes got released on youtube, thereby further revealing the abject phoniness of the entire campaign:
The fight for marriage equality has had some major victories and setbacks in 2009. However the "Gathering Storm" controversy was a watershed moment. It demonstrated the weakness of the argument against marriage equality and also demonstrated that all the money in the world and backing can't replace the integrity of your position.
If you don't have integrity, you will fall on your face.
Related posts:
No California Doctors Were Harmed In The Making Of This Commercial
Why the National Organization for Marriage ad failed
NOM lies about David Parker controversy
