Thursday, June 19, 2014

Five Acts of Anti-Gay Bigotry NOM Wants You to Forget

NOM president Brian Brown
Today is the day in which the National Organization for Marriage tries to turn a page on a thus far disastrous year for the organization and get back to its original goal of denying gays the right to marry while pretending to be the "victims" of "lgbt oppression."

In Washington, NOM will be holding its March4Marriage, a sure-to-be astroturfed event in which anti-gay spokespeople, such as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum will attempt to trick Americans into believing that marriage is in danger from "the gays."

All of those involved in this monstrosity will also claim that they are not bigoted for wanting to deny the gay community the right to marry and that their opposition to marriage equality isn't fueled by a personal animus of the lgbt community.

It's going to take a lot of chutzpah on their part as well as a hope that we will forget the homophobic acts which NOM has committed over the years to supposedly save the "sacred union between a man and a woman."

Good luck on that last one, particularly as I present Five Acts of Anti-Gay Bigotry NOM Wants You to Forget:

5. NOM has attempted to create 'fake victims' of marriage equality -  On several occasions, NOM has tried to create a narrative that marriage equality will lead to the unfair demonization of those opposing it, only to have the narrative blow up in its face.  In 2011, NOM began what it called the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance  This was an attempt to spotlight Americans who had their religious liberties and rights threatened simply for opposing marriage equality.  It failed badly. Equality Matters, in 2012, had this to say about the spotlighted examples:

 . . . out of NOM’s nine Marriage ADA stories, three weren’t about marriage, three were from a different country, and zero demonstrated an instance of actual “defamation.” It should come as no surprise that NOM had such a difficult time finding any compelling evidence that opponents of marriage equality were having their “rights and dignity” threatened and denied. NOM’s “gays as bullies” narrative has already been exposed and rejected by a number of judges and courts across the country.

In addition, in 2013, the site Politifact gave NOM's Rhode Island branch a "pants on fire" (which means basically you are lying out of your ass) rating for a claim it trotted out that religious groups have been forced to hold same-sex marriages in their facilities. 

4. NOM has implied that gays want to use marriage equality to "indoctrinate" children - No anti-gay group's arsenal is complete without the claim that gays want to "recruit" or "indoctrinate" children. And NOM is no different: