NOM strategist harming same-sex families through his willful ignorance

Editor's note - It's a rare two post morning. After reading this piece, feel free to scan down and read how NOM is falsely claiming that support of marriage equality is costing Obama a victory in North Carolina. It's a lie, of course.

Schubert

So many of my lgbtq brothers and sisters have focused their anger towards Maggie Gallagher because of NOM's attack on marriage equality.

However, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle shows that perhaps we have been missing a key person in the attack on marriage equality. The Chronicle focuses on Frank Schubert, NOM's strategist in attempts to hinder marriage equality.

It's an interesting profile:

To supporters of same-sex marriage, Frank Schubert's name inspires a chill.

Few political consultants are as personally associated with their advocacies as Schubert, 56. The nationally lauded Sacramento strategist masterminded California's Proposition 8 and is guiding every similar ballot campaign to ban same-sex marriage, including measures before voters this fall in Washington, Maine, Minnesota and Maryland.

To Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which supports marriage as between a man and woman, Schubert "gives people hope that they're not alone." But to the gay blog Queerty.com, Schubert is a "marriage rights rapist."

Schubert is feared not only because he wins - voters have defeated same-sex marriage measures 32 times, including some campaigns led by him - but because he is able to seed doubt in swing voters with ads that show how legalizing same-sex marriage would affect children. Even if, as a former co-worker said, some ads contain "hyperbole."

In the article, Schubert paints himself as a devout Catholic who has made it his mission to supposedly preserve marriage:

Since voters approved Prop. 8 in 2008, Schubert has gone through a spiritual awakening that merged his personal and professional life. Defending traditional marriage isn't just a day job anymore; now he considers it a spiritual calling. Before Prop. 8, Schubert acknowledged that he "didn't spend five minutes thinking about marriage - not in a deep way."

In the months afterward, he began "really reflecting what I had been through. Was this an accident? That here I am, a political consultant who happens to believe in the cause, on the scene at the very moment that this debate is occurring."

But there is a sad contradiction to this man's nonsense.

 The article says that Schubert uses harsh tactics to supposedly defend marriage, especially claiming that it would harm children. He even pushes the discredited Mark Regnerus study in the article.

The sad contradiction is that Schubert is doing this even though his sister is lesbian and is raising children:

He worries about the children of his sister, who is raising them with her same-sex partner.

"I love my sister deeply and I love her children," he said. "That doesn't require me to accept that marriages should be redefined because my sister is in a gay relationship with two kids. I worry about anybody who doesn't have the benefit of a loving, active father in their lives. And those kids won't have that; I pray for them." 

So he thinks his sister is harming children. I wonder does he visit his sister before making such a judgement. If not, then he is indicative of so many religious right leaders who have inaccurate notions of same-sex families even though the tools to dispel these notions lay at their fingertips.

So while some may see Schubert as a powerful man on a mission while full of contradictions, I see a sad fool who is harming millions of families because of his self-righteousness.

Beware of the man who replaces the image of God with his own face.