National Organization for Marriage's questionable tactics go across six states

Maggie Gallagher, head of NOM

For an organization supposedly dedicated to the moral high position of "protecting marriage," the National Organization for Marriage seems to have a problem with doing things by the book.

The group has gotten into trouble in several states regarding skirting disclosing its finances, as well as its tactics.

Now one can add Minnesota to that last. According to the Minnesota Independent:

When the National Organization for Marriage and the Minnesota Family Council spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads promoting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions last fall, the groups should have reported those expenditures, according to a complaint filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board earlier this month. The complaint, which focuses on ads launched throughout the 2010 campaign cycle in support of gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, asks for financial penalties as well as an audit of NOM’s spending in Minnesota.

The filing by Common Cause Minnesota alleges that the Minnesota Family Council — and in particular its lobbyist, Tom Prichard — failed to report lobbying expenses related to several ads. Since the ad urged the public and legislators to act on legislation, in this case a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, it constitutes lobbying, the group argues in the complaint. The ads in question include references to an actual bill, SF120, and were created and distributed in partnership with NOM.

There seems to be a pattern going on here:

• NOM goes to a state to fight against marriage equality.

• Their efforts are successful because of their mysterious finances.

• They leave the community in shambles with neighbors angry at neighbors over their positions.

• Lastly, questions are raised regarding NOM's questionable tactics regarding mostly finances.

According to the nomexposed.org, this pattern regarding questions raised over NOM's finances is a pattern which took place also in:

Maine:

NOM remains under investigation by the Maine Ethics Commission for failing to register with the state as a ballot question committee and refusing to disclose the donors to its campaign to overturn Maine’s marriage equality law in 2009.

NOM provided more than $1.8 million of the $3 million spent by opponents of marriage equality to pass Question 1 – but it illegally failed to disclose where the money came from. Public disclosure laws create transparency by informing voters who is behind a campaign effort. Maine’s law does this by requiring that any funds raised to support or oppose a ballot question be made public.

NOM flouted this law, first by soliciting funds from donors to overturn marriage equality in Maine, and then by refusing to disclose the contributions. As a result, NOM deliberately hid from the public almost two-thirds of the total money the Yes on 1 campaign spent to run its deceptive campaign to overturn marriage equality.

Based on an initial complaint filed by Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate, the Maine Ethics Commission launched a formal investigation into NOM’s fundraising tactics in late 2009. NOM has refused to cooperate with the state inquiry each step of the way, stonewalling requests to turn over documents to the Ethics Commission. The Commission’s executive director defended the inquiry in February 2010: “NOM donated almost $2 million in support of the referendum. The Commission needs to understand how NOM solicited the funds in order to determine whether campaign finance reporting was required.” In June 2010, the Ethics Commission unanimously denied NOM’s latest request to dismiss the state investigation into the organization’s finances.

Rhodes Island:

In September 2010, NOM filed suit in Rhode Island seeking to spend thousands of dollars on TV and radio ads for and against gubernatorial and General Assembly candidates – all free from the state’s reporting requirements. NOM is framing the issue as a matter of free speech. In its court filing, NOM says it intends to “engage in multiple forms of speech in Rhode Island” in advance of the November 2 elections, “including radio ads, television ads, direct mail and publicly accessible Internet postings.”

. . . Shortly after NOM filed the suit, a federal judge gave the organization one week to refile – calling the lawsuit “disorganized, vague and poorly constructed.” According to the Boston Globe, the judge said the relevant allegations were “buried” in the lawsuit.

California:

In January 2009, NOM and ProtectMarriage sued the California Secretary of State in federal court to avoid disclosing Prop. 8 donors. California law requires campaign committees to report information for any contributors of $100 or more, which is then made publicly available. Donor disclosure is uniformly required across the country for federal, state and local campaigns and is widely accepted as a vital means to ensure that elections are conducted transparently and fairly.

Rather than follow the decades-old California Public Records Act, NOM suggested that it was entitled to a blanket exemption. NOM falsely claimed that its contributors had been subject to threats, reprisals and harassment. Serious scrutiny of these claims has revealed only isolated incidents, questionable reports and, more often than not, legitimate acts of public criticism typical of any hard-fought campaign.

Iowa:

In Iowa, NOM’s pattern of evading campaign laws prompted a strong written warning from the state ethics agency.

NOM spent a staggering $86,000 in 2009 in a single legislative special election, part of its effort to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would reverse the state Supreme Court’s unanimous decision recognizing marriage equality. NOM asked its supporters to contribute to the Iowa campaign in a nationwide email by saying that “…best of all, NOM has the ability to protect donor identities.”

The email and subsequent complaints prompted a letter from the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Finance Board stating that state law requires disclosure of political contributions solicited for the Iowa campaign. The board’s director and counsel wrote to NOM that he wished to “avoid potential problems in light of questions the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board has received concerning a solicitation statement made by your organization” and warned that the “independent expenditure process in Iowa is not a vehicle to shield political contributors.”

Washington State:

In Washington State, NOM and its allies waged a coordinated legal battle to hide the names of those who signed the petition to qualify Referendum 71, and those who donated to the campaign to eliminate Washington’s domestic partnership benefits. In doing so, NOM lawyers attempted to dismantle the nation’s public disclosure system as it currently exists until the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their claims.

On the same day that NOM’s lawyers sued to overturn Maine’s campaign finance laws, a mysterious group called “Family PAC,” represented by the same lawyers, sought to circumvent Washington’s campaign contribution limits and keep secret the names of donors to the campaign. The lawyers cited false claims of harassment directed at supporters of Prop. 8 in California as justification for hiding their donors.

The judge rejected the NOM lawyers’ claims, stating that, “The State has a real and vital interest in showing the money trail… I do not believe it is in the public interest for the court to intervene and change the rules of the game at the last minute.”

If this sort of thing was to happen in one or two states, eyebrows would be raised. But this is six states here.

Perhaps it's time for a national investigation into NOM's finances and tactics.

Mob attack on SC student breeds more hatred, more anger

This story is ballooning into something awful. And what it worse for me is the fact that Winthrop University - the university that the student attended - is my alma mater:

The brutal attack of a gay teenager by a group of men at a Rock Hill gas station has a Winthrop University professor warning gay students to "act straight."

The warning comes after 19-year-old Joshua Esskew was beaten by a group of at least eight men at the Spot Convenience Store on 990 South Cherry Road on April 9th. Esskew believes the attack happened because he is gay.

The attack has sparked an investigation by the FBI and the York County Sheriff's Office, who are hoping to identify the men who attacked Esskew. Images of the attack, which was caught on surveillance video, have been released to the public, in hopes of identifying the men.

Esskew says when he was walking to the gas station when someone yelled a derogatory homosexual comment at him. Words were exchanged and when he turned back around, someone hit him in the head with a 40-ounce malt liquor bottle.

He was then beaten by at least eight men for nearly 15-seconds, being kicked and punched by the group.

The attack has angered many in the community, including professors and student advisors at Winthrop University.

“I’ve got to let my students know [about the attack], so when they’re out and about in Rock Hill they act straight,” said Kelly James who teaches sociology and criminology at Winthrop University.

James is also the advisor for GLoBAL, Winthrop University's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender ally league. She says the attack has her worried about students' safety in Rock Hill and she welcomes the federal involvement in the investigation.

She feels South Carolina laws don’t go far enough in protecting those who are the victims of targeted violence like this.

“The legislators aren’t interested in it," James told WBTV's Steve Crump. "There’s been grassroots activism, but there’s been no change in the system.”

And the thing that makes it worse? The professor in the clip, Kelly James, is being attacked by others for her comments. But her comments about "acting straight" were taken out of context. (Alvin's note - for some reason, I could not embed the video featuring those comments. So go to this link to see the video of the story including James's comments)

From WBTV 3:

. . . In an email to us today, Ms. James says, “ I am receiving hate mail at work and on Facebook because of the way you presented a part of a sentence in my comments to you. I thought you understood that I meant it was ridiculous that I would have to tell my students to act straight, that I meant it ironically. “

. . . This is the whole paragraph that the soundbite was clipped from for the broadcast story:

Kelly James says, “But, my first thought was that, “I’ve got to let my students know’ so that when they are out and about in Rock hill that they, you know, act straight, And that’s a sad lesson in 2011 to be teaching young people. I mean, it’s been off the books as a mental illness since 1973.”

Steve Crump used a few soundbites from Ms. James in his broadcast story and felt that he had portrayed, in the story as a whole, her sentiments on the story correctly. However, time restraints, a daily part of newsgathering, resulted in using a portion of the comment. In the interest of being fair to Ms. James and to our readers, I have decided to not only include the full paragraph from which the bite was excerpted, but to include the entire interview so that readers can understand all of her statements.

The following is the raw interview:



Folks, whatever the case may be, this is not the time to attack each other. Certainly a lot of anger has been created because of this awful attack. But I doubt that Ms. James meant any harm by her comments. It would be easy for folks to go into an expository about what she said and how what she said harms lgbt students, wouldn't it?

Well in this case, discretion and discernment are two words we should remember. James is not the villain here, so let's give her the benefit of the doubt.

We need to be angry at those who committed this crime and not our allies.

Related post:

SC gay man attacked by mob

'Glee is demonic' . . . or why do the lgbt community waste such good material?

I'm going to do something different today. Rather than midday news briefs, I want to spotlight a couple of posts in an attempt to make a point.

I get beleagured at members of the lgbt community who say that we should ignore the ramblings of various religious right figures. That mentality of "if you ignore it, then it will go away" contradicts so many realities.

No matter how much the lgbt community ignores them, the religious right isn't going away. They have been at their lies for over 30 years. And it was because we didn't built up a suitable countermeasure to their "homosexuality is a dangerous lifestyle" lie during the heydays of the 1980s and early 90s (and the heydays of discredited researcher Paul Cameron) that we find ourselves bending over backwards to beat back that line of thinking.

What some of us fail to realize, or rather will not realize, is that the lgbt community is in the middle of a war and we have to approach it as such. Granted, I am not talking about one of violent conflict, but that of charged rhetoric designed to either appeal to people's common sense or exploit their ignorance and fears.

And so far, the religious right have scored significantly in their lying rhetoric that the lgbt community is "trying to force acceptance of our supposed lifestyle while at the same time recruit children."

The truth is that these folks knowningly lie about legitimate science or produce some of the most outlandish statements which can be seen as Freudian slips or windows into their homophobic  minds.

Take for example this recent exchange between Peter LaBarbera of the anti-gay Americans for Truth and Linda Harvey of the equally anti-gay Mission America. To make a long story short, in this exchange, they accuse the lgbt community and the popular television show Glee of using "demonic manipulation" to create gay children:

Harvey: These people are masters at demonic manipulation; I mean I have to put it that way, because that is what the homosexual agenda directed to that age group does. Kids don’t know what they’re going to turn out to be, kids can be secretly wondering and doubting if they are homosexual without a parent ever knowing. Because of A) what they get in schools, and B) what they get on the Internet.

LaBarbera: And then Hollywood, I talked about at our conference about this Glee kiss which is just, as I said at the conference, it shocked my soul. This romantic Glee kiss between two teenage boys depicted on the show, popular characters, one of the most popular if not the most popular TV show that young people watch, and here they had a romantic kiss between two teenage boys, I thought, what, how many young men and boys decided right there that they’re gay?

When I read stuff like that, I say don't ignore it. Put on page one of every lgbt blog. Send it to your friends and the lgbt press.

By all means, don't ignore  Maggie Gallagher and her ridiculous fumblings at Congressional hearings. Don't forget the Family Research Council and its clumsy attempts to deflect the Southern Poverty Law Center's correct charge of it being a hate group.

But LaBarbera and Harvey represent the true homophobic face of the religious right which should be given equal focus -  that face is self-righteous, claiming to speak for God but underneath it all bearing craziness that doesn't come from knowing God but succumbing to stupidity.

The most important part of a rhetorical war is the ability to paint your enemies as irrational. So why should the lgbt community ignore it when those who oppose us gives us so much good material.

So with that in mind, I want to spotlight several posts of some of the nastiest, crudest, most outrageous things said about the lgbt community from members of the religious right:

Religious right having gay sex fantasies even during Obama's SOTU address - During President Obama's recent State of the Union address, the only thing a certain religious right spokesman could think about was a gay soldier "rubbing his back."

Peter LaBarbera - the self-destruction of an anti-gay activist - And how can any denunciation of the religious right be complete without the complete story of "Porno" Pete LaBarbera

Something Guaranteed To Piss You Off , Something guaranteed to piss you off - The sequel - In the 1980s, a man named Dick Hafer published a comic book called "Death Style" which supposedly showed actual depictions of just how nasty, raunchy, and filthy lgbts are. As you look at it now, you will either be shocked or laugh. But remember this - on the back page of that comic book are individuals who vouched for the veracity of that hot mess, including a former Congressman (who was in office at the time) and the Concerned Women for America (who as far as I know never renounced what it said at the time)

The 'Complete' Words of love? A reminder of what some people really think about the lgbt community - And one of my magnum opuses - Some of the most ridiculous, homophobic things ever said about the lgbt community featuring Jesse Helms, Donnie McClurkin, and that black minister who said that if the Klan opposed gay marriage, he would ride with them. His name doesn't deserve to be repeated.

Hat tip to People for the American Way's Right-Wing Watch

Malaysia ships 66 children to ex-gay camp

As the following ugly incident demonstrates, our struggle isn't just about white gay men. It isn't about what's going on in New York or San Francisco. It isn't simply about marriage equality or DOMA or DADT or ENDA. It isn't simply about "tolerance" (I hate that word). The lgbt struggle for equality is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural universal struggle for basic dignity:

Malaysian authorities have admitted sending 66 teenage boys thought to be gay to a camp to learn “masculine behaviour”.

An official from Terengganu state said the boys, aged between 13 and 17, were identified by teachers as having effeminate mannerisms.

This week, they are being sent on a four-day “self-development course” in the hope of dissuading them from being gay or transgender.

State education director Razali Daud told The Associated Press that the camp was designed “to guide them back to the right path in life before they reach a point of no return. Such effeminate behavior is unnatural and will affect their studies and their future.”

He added: “We can’t force the boys to change, but we want them to know what their choices are in life. Some effeminate boys end up as a transvestite or a homosexual, but we want to do our best to limit this.”

Officials said the boys were invited to the camp and were not compelled to go.

Luckily, this act has received much deserved criticism:

A Malaysian ‘gay cure’ camp for effeminate teenagers should be abolished, the country’s women’s minister says.

Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said that the decision, by the state of Terengganu, violates the Children’s Act and would damage the boys.

“The experience of being singled out on the basis of perceived characteristics is an extremely traumatising experience, particularly for adolescent teens,” she told the Malaysia Star.

. . .A spokeswoman for the The Joint Action Group for Gender Equality said the camp was disturbing.

“The act of identifying and singling out boys who behave effeminately is highly discriminatory,” she said.

Sexual rights campaigner Pang Khee Teik said the move was homophobic and work not ‘cure’ any gay or trans children.

“All the students will learn from these camps is that they are expected to behave a certain way,” he told BBC News.

“And in order to avoid further ridicule, perhaps they will learn to pretend better. In the end, we are only teaching them how to be a hypocrite.”

Maggie Gallagher shucks and jives her way through the DOMA hearing

Equality Matters has listed the top five moments from Friday's DOMA hearing. The moments are very telling in terms of how unnecessary DOMA is and the mindset of those trying to defend it.

But the best moment comes when Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) questions National Organization for Marriage head Maggie Gallagher on the idea of same-sex parenting:



At 2:29 - 2:41 , Gallagher admits that "there are some gay people who are wonderful parents." She also says that she thinks its unfortunate that people misinterpret things she says as a condemnation of "gay people" and their parenting skills."

But as Equality Matters points out:

This “interpretation” might have something to do with Gallagher having called homosexuality “an unfortunate thing” which represents “at a minimum, a sexual dysfunction.” Or perhaps it has to do with her decision to assert that gays and lesbians are “committing several different kinds of very serious sins.”

Also, Gallagher's past other comments and actions haven't been as conciliatory to the idea of same-sex parenting as she tried to make herself seem during the hearing.

In 2004, she wrote the following about same-sex marriage and parenting:

Marriage is our most basic social institution for protecting children. Same-sex marriage amounts to a vast social experiment on children. Rewriting the basic rules of marriage puts all children, not just the children in unisex unions, at risk. 

During this interview with the site Ignatius Insight in October 2005, Gallagher said the following regarding same-sex parenting:

In my opinion, judging by the standards of kinds of evidence that are used in the larger family structure debate, we know almost nothing about how the children fare. There’s been about 35 to 50 studies, but there’s not a single study based on nationally representative data that follows children from birth raised by same sex couples and can tell us how they do in adulthood.

More recently, in January of last year, she distorted a study on child abuse to make the case that children in married biological homes do better to protect children from abuse than children in same-sex households.

The distortion comes because the study in question - the one she cited - didn't even look at children in same-sex households. We know this because Gallagher even admitted at the time that same-sex households wasn't a category in the study:

All the other family structures studied (which does not include same-sex parent families probably because these are such a small part of the population), but does include solo parents, other married parents (remarried primarily), single parents living with a partner, cohabiting parents, and no parents.

I don't think any us lodging criticisms against Gallagher and NOM has misinterpreted any of her words when it comes to marriage equality or "gay parenting skills."

But in sidestepping Rep. Quigley's questions, you simply have to give Gallagher points for chutzpah.

Bear in mind that I said "chutzpah," not integrity or honesty.

By the way, that story she tells about being labeled as a bigot by a radio show host in Maine starting at 3:47. Another complete lie on her part.

FBI investigating mob attack on SC gay teen and other Tuesday midday news briefs

FBI investigating possible ‘hate crime’ attack on South Carolina gay teen - Good!


Leader of Maine’s Yes on 1 Campaign Admits to Lying - He is going to regret admitting this . . . at least if the lgbt community is smart enough to constantly remind folks of it.


Family Research Council launches FRC U; for gays, the 'R' & 'C' are superfluous - Family Research Council University? What is that? The name of a new horror movie?

Media ask court to unseal gay marriage trial tapes - Uh oh. The pro-Proposition 8 forces wanted the tapes of the trial - that they lost - sealed. Their insistence has gotten media associations - including the Associated Press - interested in what exactly are on those tapes. I say release them!

Chely Wright: 'I'm A Grand Ole Opry Outcast Now I'm Gay' - This ain't good at all!


John Boehner: Justice Department Should Pay House GOP To Uphold Defense Of Marriage Act - Proof that Boehner has lost his fricking mind.

National Organization for Marriage breeds ignorance

More times than not, you can always tell the usefulness (or lack thereof) of an organization by some of the people who chooses to support it.

That being the case, what do the following videos say about the National Organization for Marriage?








And the following tweet is from a NOM supporter who isn't happy with Louis J. Marinelli's support of marriage equality:

Granted, Maggie Gallagher and company will probably say that I am judging them unfairly based on a few clips, but one wonders just how many other supporters of NOM out there are either like this or even worse.

But even if were only this few acting out, what does it say about NOM for attracting such an "interesting element?" So much for the lie about "decent Americans standing up for marriage."

Videos from Prop 8 Trial Tracker.