Eleven examples of NOM's bigotry

Maggie Gallagher, National Organization for Marriage

Editor's note - This is a repost of a February piece I wrote regarding Maggie Gallagher and NOM. I am presenting it again because it needed to be updated and also we need to be reminded of Gallagher and NOM's duplicity.

These days, it's relatively easy to be a talking head on news programs.

Just find some sucker with a lot of money willing to fund you,  created an organization with an important sounding name, give yourself an important sounding but meaningless title (senior fellow, research analyst, president, etc.), and they'll practically be beating at your door.

An incident recently on Fox News more than demonstrates that point. Not long after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama Administration would no longer defend DOMA, Fox News personality (you really don't think I'm going to call her a journalist, do you) Megyn Kelly had National Organization for Marriage head Maggie Gallagher on her show to whine about how evil this decision is for families.

Of course Gallagher's definition of families never seems to include lgbt families, leaving a lot of people out.

Nevertheless, Kelly allowed Gallagher to push her usual silly talking points, including one about how gays are inaccurately being compared to black people in terms of civil rights.

I sincerely hope that in discussing the DOMA decision - and hopefully this piece - no one falls for the divide and conquer technique of this person - Gallagher - who cares as much about the black community as she does the lgbt community.

And that level of care is zero.

What Gallagher and Kelly did were evasive tactics, much like other tactics Gallagher seems to have mastered when talking about gay marriage. Give her five minutes and she will try to pivot the conversation from the same-sex households negatively affected by her activism to how she and others like her are supposedly unfairly called "bigots" for supposedly simply trying to "protect marriage."

Okay, let go on that angle. Let's break down the acts of Gallagher and NOM and pose the question - are these the acts of a bigoted, homophobic organization or people simply trying to "defend marriage:"

November 20, 2009 - Signer of Manhattan Declaration wanted to jail gays and lesbians - By signing an anti-gay document, The Manhattan Declaration, Gallagher and NOM affiliates themselves with folks who want to jail lgbts.

February 1, 2010 - Maggie Gallagher commits 'sin of omission' to make case against marriage equality - Gallagher cites a study to bash gay marriage and gay parenting, even though the study had nothing to do with either concept.

March 8, 2010 - TinyU-R-Gay: @NOMupdates limits gay lives to less than 140 characters/years - A NOM tweet actually pushing the lie that gays have a short life span.

June 14, 2010 - National Organization for Marriage: Gays Were Never Hunted Down and Murdered Like 'Jews, Christians, and Blacks' - NOM is found to be affiliated with Louis J. Marinelli during its failed summer for marriage tour. Amongst other things, Marinelli claims that gays want to molest children. When Marinelli's words became public, NOM claimed that the organization had no affiliation with Marinelli. However certain links posted as an update to the story demonstrated that NOM did have an affiliation with Marinelli. Editor's note - earlier this month, Marinelli disavowed his work with NOM as well as many of the things he said in the past about lgbt. He is now a supporter of marriage equality.

A Teabagger fails miserably in refuting racism charge

In all honesty, I don't believe that the entire tea party movement is racist. I believe it's a naive movement which allowed itself to be co-opted by the wealthy powers that be, but that's another argument entirely.

What I do believe, however, is that the tea party movement houses vindictively racist elements who can't get over the fact that an African-American is president or that the United States is becoming more multicultural. I also believe that those who have sense in the tea party movement know this but are afraid to admit so for fear that it would reduce the credibility of their entire movement.

However, this video speaks for itself. This is an authentic teabagger, Grady Warren, griping about how unfair it is to brand the tea party movement as racist. However, I don't think his argument will fly when you listen to what he has to say. If you can listen to the entire piece, then you deserve an award.



As much as I hate to remind folks, this video was done before the 2010 midterms, where thanks in part to folks like Warren, the Republican Party took over the House of Representatives and several state governorships. So any thing that's happening now, i.e. the problems with unions in Wisconsin, the Republican Party trying to make Medicare into a voucher system, insane anti-abortion legislation, is solely on the shoulders of folks like Warren.

See what happens when reasonable people don't vote like they should.


Big hat tip to a Facebook friend of mine of who pointed out this video.