The march4marriage

The anti-equality troops are marching today in DC. Let's be clear on what they want. They want to forbid LGBT couples from marrying. They want to forcibly divorce my wife and me, and deny any recognition of our marriage. They want children of LGBT families to have no legal rights. They want to prevent The Episcopal Church, The UCC, the Lutherans, etc exercising their religious freedom to marry LGBT couples. They want the right to discriminate against us, to fire us from jobs, and to refuse to serve us in restaurants and shops. They may claim they do this out of "love", but they do not. Listen, and you will hear the words of fear.

And over and over again, although they are a minority, they are given prominent opportunities by the media to spread their hate.

Five reason equality is winning

Great article in the WaPo identifies 5 reasons we are winning.

1. Rapid cultural shifts: more gay people coming out
2. An ally in the White House: the President evolved
3. A problem of overreach: if the other side had compromised, offering civil unions and legal rights, but they went out of their way to deny us any recognition
4. Religious influence rises — and falls: the rise of the nones
5. Belligerence

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing proponents of traditional marriage was a negative image that they were never able to overcome. While chafing at comparisons to racism and Jim Crow laws, the matriarch of the traditional marriage movement, Maggie Gallagher, concedes that her side has been labeled as “hateful and bigoted.” ...

Some conservative activists say they brought it on themselves. 

“There was the evangelical belligerence, often, in the last generation that spoke, for instance, about the gay agenda, in which there was this picture, almost as though there is a group of super villains in a lair, plotting somewhere the downfall of the family,” Moore told a gathering of journalists in March. 

Conservatives also weathered a host of guilt-by-association charges, which were equally hard to dislodge. In Arizona, a bill that supporters said would protect religious freedom was conveyed as license to turn gays away from public businesses. Evangelical opposition to homosexuality was exported to Africa, which took the form of harsh laws to jail or even sentence to death known homosexuals. 

In short, it was no longer popular or politically correct to stand against popular culture and a swiftly changing popular opinion. 

“They showed no compassion for gay people, they didn’t offer any substitutes like protecting gay families or gay kids,” Rauch said. “That lack of compassion came through. It took a little while to register, but the American public does not like lack of compassion.”

Getting rich from marriage inequality

Several times on this blog, I've reflected on the lucrative business model of opponents of marriage equality. (I've grouped the posts under the label of "follow the money"). From the now-discredited George Rekers, who testified for $$$$, to NOM's Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown, who have various shell groups that pay them generously, the business of opposing marriage rights generates quite a lot of cash.

Over at JoeMyGod, Joe frequently points at the money-begging emails from another distasteful anti-gay activist, a Virginia county supervisor named Eugene Delgaudio.

And I'm sure Frank Schubert, the "mastermind" behind the Prop8 campaign and most of the other ones state campaigns, is doing very nicely based on this business model.  (Although we wonder if his business will drop off since he hasn't been so successful lately.)

Now, ThinkProgress has done some digging into the finances of Gary Bauer, and shows that his various PACS and action committees pay him VERY generously for....  what exactly?  He's a consultant, apparently.  Here's an example:

So far, Americans United to Preserve Marriage has paid Bauer more than $260,000 — and between 2009 and 2012, Bauer received more than half of the committee’s total spending.

So, you donate money to this group and half of it goes to Bauer.  Hmmm.  And then this:

The Campaign for Working Families PAC, a traditional political action committee first created in 1996, began 2013 with nearly $1 million left in the bank. The committee, which calls itself “the leading pro-family, pro-life political action committee in America,” claims to exist “solely to raise funds to support or oppose candidates based upon their political views.” But starting in March, Bauer began paying himself $13,750 a month for “political and admin” consulting — $68,750 over the past five months, and several times more than the $8,250 the committee has given, total, to federal political candidates so far this year.

The "Great Gay Menace" drives donations to these groups, which use those donations to pay the leaders large amounts of money. So, being anti-equality is big business, and they are getting rich on it.  It may also explain why people like Brian Brown are getting increasingly shrill and more anti-gay, not limiting his remarks to marriage.  Because slowly but surely, his marks are realizing that marriage equality is inevitable.  He's got to yell and instill fear if his big business model is going to keep going.

But do they really want to win?  They'd be out of a job, if they did....

THe masks come off: desperation, and coming out

One of the major strategies of our opponents has been a veneer of reasonable-ness. It wasn't that they hate gays, oh no-- we don't hate anyone!  But think of the children! So in California, they argued that Prop8 was okay because there were robust civil unions (called domestic partnerships), nothing personal, 'mos.

 Of course it IS personal. Our opponents vigorously oppose civil unions if they think they can get away with it. We see the attorney general of Texas just this week going after municipalities that dare to provide any sort of partnership arrangement for gay couples, calling them unconstitutional. 

THe front group NOM is increasingly pulling off the mask.  They applaud the attacks by the Texas AG.  As the redoubtable activist Jeremy Hooper notes, the rhetoric from NOM is ratcheting up into an aggressive anti-gay tone.

 The organization is increasingly partisan, reaching out to groups that are further and further on the fringe right. NOM has been taking on causes unrelated to marriage, like the matter of Boy Scout inclusivity. NOM staffers like Jennifer Roback Morse engage inever-harsher rhetoric that admits its cause is against LGBT people and not just marriage. We see constant signs of the "drive of wedge" strategy that came to light his year. Brian Brown has even used his email letter to draw a connection between marriage equality and pedophilia. Again, this is all happening because moderates and independents who were once more likely to support the NOM view have increasingly joined the majority of us on the right side of history. Brian is taking the organization in this direction because, quite frankly, what other choice has he?

NOM supports the bile spewed by anti-gay obsessive Robert Gagnon, who considers homosexuality worse than bestiality or incest.

Interestingly, NOM's founder, Maggie Gallagher, has distanced herself from the organization she started.  In fact her disappearance corresponds with their more agressive, anti-gay language.  These days, she paints herself as a victim of religious intolerance. 

But this anti-gay rhetoric can't succeed.   14% of people who used to oppose equality now support it.
STudies show that the biggest thing that changes the hearts and minds is knowing someone gay.

If you listen to the arguments during the hearings on marriage  equality in Rhode Island, Delaware, or Illinois, what you hear is people saying, "I know gay couples.  And they aren't the drooling spawn of Satan that NOM claims.  They are decent citizens, good parents, and good neighbors. And I can't in good conscience deny them the same rights that I enjoy."

Which is why we have to come out, over and over again.  It's easy to vote against people you don't know, scary demons in the media.  It's a lot harder to vote against Uncle Jim, or niece Mary, or that nice young man in the office, or the lesbian couple you know at church.

And the more our opponents demonize us simply for being gay, the more the middle will react against them.

"First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win."  Gandhi

Anti Equality Groups Broke?

From Reuters:

Foes of same-sex marriage are laboring to pay the tab for an epic legal case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, as the movement suffers from fundraising shortfalls that could sap its strength in future battles. 

ProtectMarriage.com, the advocacy group defending a California gay marriage ban now under review by the high court, showed a $2 million deficit in its legal fund at the end of 2011 - the third year in a row that expenses exceeded donations, federal tax records show.
....
The fund-raising fall-off is a result of donor fatigue, the dramatic rise in public support for gay marriage and the softening of some major gay marriage opponents, including the Mormon Church, people involved with the campaigns say. Both individuals and institutions opposed to gay marriage say many are fearful of being associated with the cause.
"On the New York cocktail party circuit, the intensity of anger over the marriage issue has made being pro-life easy," said Sean Fieler, who runs the New York City hedge fund Equinox Partners. Fieler has donated over $1 million to gay marriage opponents such as the National Organization for Marriage.

All together now:  AWWW.

What? Marriage equality opponents are lying?

No, really?  They wouldn't do that, would they?

From the Bangor Daily News (ME):

Opponents of same-sex marriage in Maine are mischaracterizing the reasons that Catholic Charities of Boston stopped brokering adoptions in 2006, according to Peter Meade, the organization’s former board chairman, who spoke with reporters in Maine on Wednesday. 

[S]upporters of a group called Protect Marriage Maine have alleged that among the consequences of granting same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Catholic Charities was forced to stop performing adoptions after Vatican officials learned that at least 13 children had been placed with same-sex couples. 

....Meade said the situation that unfolded in Boston was driven by 1989 anti-discrimination laws that were on the books for more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legalized in the Bay State in 2004.
....
Catholic Charities of Boston formerly held a state-issued contract funded by taxpayer dollars to provide adoption services, and placed 13 children with same-sex couples between 1989 and 2006. The work was done in accordance with a Massachusetts anti-discrimination law that requires taxpayer-funded services to be provided equitably and without regard to sexual orientation, among other things. 

Meade said that the Vatican demanded in 2006 that Catholic Charities end its adoption service, despite a unanimous vote by the charity’s local board to continue adoptions. 

“Frankly, the only criteria for us was what was in the best interest of the child and we thought the Vatican was changing that,” said Meade. “People are suggesting in the campaign that it had something to do with the [same-sex marriage law] that allowed for marriage equality. That’s not correct.”

David Blankenhorn changes his mind

During the Prop8 trial, one of the two (count 'em) Pro Prop8 witnesses was a man named David Blankenhorn, who exasperated the judge and actually admitted that marriage equality was probably good for the children of gay couples. yes, he was on THEIR side.

Well, Blankenhorn actually has come out in favor of equality. Knock me over with a feather boa. From the NY Times:

Mr. Blankenhorn, who was raised in the South and attended Harvard, had long stood out among opponents of same-sex marriage because he did not invoke a biblical or religious justification and did not oppose civil unions for gay men and lesbians. Instead, he argued that marriage was society’s most important institution and had in recent decades come under attack, and that same-sex marriage was only adding to its decline.

He said that he had long hoped the debate over same-sex marriage would center on parenthood, not private relationships, but that in the public’s mind today the issue was simply about equality for gay men and lesbians — in other words, civil rights.

“And to my deep regret,” he wrote, “much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying antigay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.”

So, he too has been put off by the anti-gay ferocity, and feels that the anti-equality side has hurt itself with that. Blankenhorn writes,

Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation?

Yes, I can go there, at least part of the way. Many of us in the LGBT community who want marriage want it precisely for the same reasons that BLankenhorn values it, in terms of stability and family (even if we may disagree on his extremism). Many of us are as concerned about the sexualization of society as Blankenhorn is.  Maybe this will be a way to start that conversation and find a productive way to move ahead.

Calling the commentators to task

It happens all the time. Some neatly dressed conservative is interviewed to represent the anti-equality side of the marriage argument.  They are reasonable sounding, quite earnest, and almost convincing that they  have nothing against gay folks, it's not personal, they just want to protect the traditional definition of marriage.  It's a matter of religious freedom.

But when they aren't on the main stream media--when they are talking to their own true believers, then the gloves come off, the vicious comments come out, the lies, the smears, and the slanders.  It's this behavior that has earned some of them "hate group" status at the SPLC, because they are knowingly, and calculatedly, attacking LGBT people.

GLAAD has started a great initiative called the Commentator Accountability Project  to link these two aspects of the common anti-gay commentators.  Interviewers need to KNOW that  Tony Perkins, frequent guest on MSNBC, calls gay people hateful, spiteful, pedophiles, and terrorists.    Interviewers need to KNOW  that Bryan Fischer considers gay people to be Nazis, and the single biggest threat to American survival.  They need to know that Peter Sprigg thinks gays should be imprisoned, or deported.

Of course, the commentators don't say admit on MSNBC or the BBC.  But they should be taxed with it nonetheless.

This isn't about censorship. This is about transparency.

Naturally the commentators are protesting.  But as ThinkProgress writes, 

In every case, these anti-gay voices are claiming to be victims, but they are only victims of their own quotes....The mere fact that they feel the need to respond by condemning GLAAD’s effort validates the value of this project. Now there is an accessible hub for these quotes — albeit not a full archive (by design) — to ensure that pundits don’t get away with being conservative standard-bearers without taking responsibility for the many dangerous lies and offensive values that define them. The jig is up. 

The genius of CAP is that it creates a lose-lose situation for these would-be pundits. They can try to compensate by doubling down on their most offensive talking points and how loudly and widely they share them. Or, they can proceed with their typical media appearances and attempt to use the victim mentality to obfuscate responsibility for their own views. Either way, they stand to lose public favor, and no matter how they condemn GLAAD, that’s surely why they’re so perturbed.

Suit in New York to nullify marriages

Driven to desperation by the pictures of joyful couples, those opposed to equality seek any opportunity to hurt their fellow human beings. The NYTimes:

The group, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, alleges that the Senate violated the state’s open meetings law in the run-up to the vote on the marriage bill and acted improperly in closing the Senate lobby to members of the public.....

The complaint (see also below), which is to be filed in State Supreme Court in Livingston County, where Mr. McGuire lives, states: “The plaintiffs in this case seek to preserve not only marriage as the union of one woman to one man, but also our constitutional liberties by acting as a check on an out-of-control political process that was willing to pass a bill regardless of how many laws and rules it violated.”

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Josh Vlasto, said the lawsuit had no merit.

Gays disproportionately affected by hate crimes

From The Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently declared some of the most prominant anti-gay groups as hate groups, a review of hate crime data.

Although the rash of student suicides drew major media attention for a few days, the reality, gay rights advocates say, is that the LGBT world has been plagued by hate violence for years.

But that’s not the way a hard core of the anti-gay religious right sees it.....anti-gay leaders instead blamed those who sought to protect students from bullying.... Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said those activists want “to use the tragedies to increase pressure on the real victims: Christians.”

....[B]ullying is only the beginning of the violence experienced by gays in American society. The reality is that homosexuals or perceived homosexuals are by far the group most targeted in America for violent hate crimes, according to an Intelligence Report analysis of 14 years of federal hate crime data. The bottom line: Gay people are more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as Jews or blacks; more than four times as likely as Muslims; and 14 times as likely as Latinos.

A Changing Landscape
Remarkably, most Americans today seem to have a sense of the violence that the LGBT community is regularly subjected to, or in any event are increasingly rejecting extreme religious-right narratives about the alleged evils of homosexuality. An October poll by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found that 65% of Americans believe “places of worship contribute to higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth” (33% said “a lot” and 32% said “a little”). Seventy-two percent said places of worship “contribute to negative views of gay and lesbian people” (40% said “a lot” and 32% said “a little”).....

Digging In
It is in just such situations — when long-held societal notions about blacks, Latinos, Catholics, homosexuals or other minorities are shifting — that violent backlashes often set in. As groups like Focus on the Family have moderated their positions on homosexuality, a hard core of anti-gay groups, sensing they are being politically marginalized, seem to be growing angrier and more radical still....

A leading criminologist and sociologist of hate crimes, Jack Levin of Northeastern University, sees evidence of the growing radicalization of the fringe in other ways. He says perpetrators of anti-gay hate crimes appear to be getting older. No longer are they dominated by teens engaging in thrill-seeking with predatory gangs of their peers. More and more, he says, lone adults are committing what Levin calls “defensive hate crimes” — crimes carried out in reaction to sweeping social changes that they see as threats to their home, family, religion, culture or country.
...
[T}he hard core of the anti-gay religious right is digging in.

Making health decisions for your partner? We can't have that!

Rob Tisinai points out a video from the American Family Association (which SPLC calls a hate group), where the AFA disagree with letting LGBT partners into the hospital to make decisions about their loved ones, because that's like marriage!

they want to recognize domestic partners as the same as marriage. So, eventually, what I think [uh] Health and Human Services is going to do, is gonna ramp this policy up a little bit, and go beyond merely visiting in a hospital room . . . to who’s allowed to make decisions with regards to treatments, if [if] a [uh] person is in the hospital unconcious, those kinds of things. I think where this will eventually head is a domestic partner is the same as a spouse, and they will have equal rights in determining [uh] what those decisions should be.

What's spectacularly missing of course is whom the AFA thinks SHOULD be making decisions when a partner is in the hospital.

What they want is us to die alone. They really do hate us. Really.

Remember, it's not just about "Marriage". It's about ANY recognition at all of us as equal citizens.

The talking points from the hate groups

From the Southern Poverty Law Center, about that tactics from extremist groups who oppose LGBT rights (like the American Family Association or the Family Research Council):

They have gravitated toward three particular tactics: “love the sinner” rhetoric; secular validation; and depicting gays as a global threat.....

Not long ago, anti-gay propaganda was remarkable for its vulgar and wild-eyed tone — depicting homosexuals as immoral, feces-eating, disease-ridden pedophiles. And some of that tone, particularly the idea that gays seek to “recruit” children in school, remains in certain quarters. But that kind of approach doesn’t resonate much with younger audiences, who grew up with positive images of openly gay actors, musicians, artists, politicians and business leaders. As gays came out of the closet, others increasingly found they had gay friends and relatives.

Now, more and more groups on the religious right are framing their arguments with words that are meant to show respect for gays and lesbians. There is no better example of that than the Manhattan Declaration...

Another emphasis has been in seeking secular validation for anti-gay arguments — scientific evidence of the alleged pitfalls of homosexuality. Many on the religious anti-gay right now frame their arguments almost entirely around the idea that homosexuals present various dangers to children, that they will live short and unhappy lives, that they are more vulnerable to disease, and so on.

....There’s just one trouble with this approach. Almost all the “facts” trotted out by the religious right about gays turn out to be false or misleading....

A final new emphasis being used by many of the hard-core anti-gay groups is the charge that homosexuals make up, in effect, an active conspiracy whose agenda includes the destruction of Christianity and, ultimately, Western civilization. Sometimes, their propaganda sounds noticeably like Nazi descriptions of Jewish plots....

...The upshot, in all likelihood, is that violence, hatred and bullying of those perceived as homosexual will continue into the foreseeable future. Although leaders of the hard core of the religious right deny it, it seems clear that their demonizing propaganda plays a role in fomenting that violence — a proposition that has sparked a number of Christian leaders to speak out in the wake of the latest series of tragedies.

“The recent epidemic of bullying-related teen suicides is a wake-up call to us moderate Christians,” the Rev. Fritz Ritsch, pastor of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church, wrote in October in the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram. “To most unchurched Americans — meaning most Americans — the fruit of the church is bitter indeed. … [T]he bullying crisis has put a fine point on the need for moderates to challenge the theological bullies from our own bully pulpits. We cannot equivocate. Children are dying. We need to speak up. If not now, when?”

Selective Science

One of the features of the conservative movement is a suspicion of the educated. As David Frum recently pointed out, it's an odd characteristic of American populist movements that it's the educated elites that they attack, rather than the economic elites that actually oppress them. THis leads to suspicion, where as Frum says

many refuse to believe that the so-called experts care for the interests of anyone beyond their narrow coterie and class.

. Little wonder that educated people continue to move away from the Republican culture of ignorance.

In the case of LGBT rights, those opposed to equality refuse to believe myriad findings that homosexuality is a normal human variant and not a pathology, that kids of gay parents do just as well as kids of straights, and they peddle such endless lies and propaganda that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels many of them "hate groups."

The media plays into this, in an aberrant expression of "balance" that gives the most perverse minority view equal standing with actual mainstream thought.

In fact recently Dan Savage called out CNN for giving Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council "equal time" to peddle his lies.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labels these groups as hate groups and yet the leaders of these groups, people like Tony Perkins, are welcomed onto networks like CNN to espouse hate directed at gays and lesbians. And similarly hateful people who are targeting Jews or people of color or anyone else would not be welcome to spew their bile on CNN.

They invent official sounding organizations, like the so-called College of Pediatrics, which is really about a hundred conservative malcontents founded by George "lift my luggage" Rekers, who dislike the fact that the mainstream medical community accepts gay people. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the real organization of 60,000 pediatric professionals, is supportive of LGBT people and of same sex marriage.

Last week, Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball, had to clarify that this group cited by Perkins as a justification for his bile is a fringe offshoot.

Notorious anti-gay activist Paul Cameron, who has been thrown out of the mainstream groups and willfully misrepresents the facts, actually says

“We can no longer rely — as almost all pro-family organizations do today — on gleaning scientific ‘bits’ from those in liberal academia… . [W]e must subvert the academy by doing original, honest research ourselves and use this to advance the historic Christian faith"

Remarkably Cameron continues to get away with this. He out and out lies, but still manages to provide a veneer of respectability to the other side, despite the fact he has been soundly repudiated by a vast majority of physicians. And he keeps at it: this from a recent interview

God’s 11th Commandment is “Thou shalt not corrupt boys,” Cameron told me. He celebrated the Ugandan anti-gay bill, in which the penalty for gay activity could be death. “Whatever they decide, I’m OK with,” he said.

Cameron believes homosexuality should be criminalized in America. He proposes heavily taxing single American adults and homosexuals because of their failure to procreate. He would also like to see gays undergo a “public shaming,” though he offered no specifics.

Amazingly, he still gets an outlet for this crap.

They do it with official sounding words, but examination of the data shows that they focus on small reports and on mis-stating the findings of actual papers to the dismay of the authors.

The same sort of selective facts are characteristic of the conservative attacks on climate change, evolution, as well as other issues. Do you remember the cigarette company CEOs standing in front of Congress, each stating "I do not believe smoking causes cancer"? An excellent book documenting this is The Republican War on Science.

In a world where knowledge drives economic growth and development, this legitimization of fringe viewpoints as somehow "equal" to the mainstream is a dangerous step into willful ignorance.

So how do we counter this gullibility of the media and calculating abuse by the opponents of actual facts? One way is to be ever vigilant. The bad guys are good at sounding "official," which is why Chris Matthews fell for the College of Pediatrics But he was called to task and corrected it. Now it would have been more effective if he had been aware enough to challenge it when it started--but expecting our media to be informed and responsible appears a pipe dream. (Except for Anderson Cooper, who is pretty on the ball).

Another way is to work to get the facts out there. Of course, people must be susceptible to the facts, which leaves out the tea party persuasion, but there are still reachable people in the middle.

It's why I keep writing, and sourcing this stuff, in hopes that I can give my readers the resources needed for vigilance.

SPLC declares AFA, FRC and others are "hate groups"

The American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and other such conservative groups claim to have a principled objection to the reality of homosexuality. But their rhetoric is based in lies, propaganda and hatred--so much so that the Southern Poverty Law Center has declared these groups as "Hate Groups".

For example, regarding the AFA, the SPLC reports,

In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy.... Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” .... Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy.

Then there's the Faithful Word Baptist Church and its pastor Steven Anderson

Much of his venom was aimed at homosexuals, who he suggests should be killed (“The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers but not for homosexuals”). In an August 2009 sermon, he attacked the United Methodist Church, saying “10% of their preachers are queers” and adding, “they got a dyke and a faggot behind the pulpit.” He has described gays as “sodomites” who “recruit through rape” and “recruit through molestation.”

And of course, the lying Family Research Council:

[T]he FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia ...

More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied. ...

Tony PErkins of the FRC also has links to white supremicists.

The AFA can complain as much as it likes about this designation, but John Aravosis (Americablog) has collected examples of their bile over the years.

The SPLC also debunks 10 of the most prominent anti-gay myths these groups tell--a useful resource.

Update: naturally, the AFA and others aren't happy with this. But their attempt to recycle their lies and propaganda is soundly slapped down by the SPLC here.

Red state, blue state, and same sex marriage

There's a new book out called Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture. How is it that states with the most liberal viewpoints (same sex marriage, major Obama supporters) do better in "family values" (low divorce rates, low rates of teen childbirth) than states with more "traditional" views?

The book argues that traditional family life was built on early marriages, and the ability of low-skilled men to get jobs with little education. Children, sex, and marriage were all tangled up together, divorce was hard to get, and thus people married young. But the global economy changed the game, by demanding high levels of skill and education, and the sexual revolution decoupled sex from children. Women entered the workforce and could postpone child bearing; liberalization of divorce laws made it easier to break up a marriage and gave women options and independence. Thus people take their time, marry later, and have fewer children, if at all. In this paradigm, The Red Families think Bristol Palin getting pregnant too soon is okay if she marries the boy; The Blue Families are horrified that she's having a child before finishing her education.

Jonathan Rauch has written about this several times and points out

In the Blue and Red paradigms, same-sex marriage has entirely different meanings.

In Blue World, same-sex marriage is wholly consonant with the ethic of responsibility and autonomy as the pillars of family formation. In this world:

• Mature adults form families to express and nurture commitment to each other and their children, and to share human capital which both partners have already amassed.
• Sex comes before marriage, and marriage comes before children, and indeed children need never come at all

....In fact, in Blue World, marriage is incomplete if it excludes gay couples! Excluding them sends all the wrong signals about family and responsibility. It would make a hypocritical nonsense of what it is that marriage is supposed to be all about.

In Red World, things look very different. The Red project is to maintain the linkage between sex, marriage, and procreation. In Red World, de-linkage has wrought all kinds of social problems.

Same-sex marriage, in this view, is in some sense the ultimate symbolic assault on what is left of the unity of sex, marriage, and procreation.....After gay marriage, in the Red view of things, how can sex, marriage, and procreation ever be put back together again?

In this regard, he suggests that the opponents are fighting for a world view and a society that is long gone.

I believe that, slowly but surely, family values are renormalizing and will continue to renormalize around later family formation and an ethic which stresses responsible childbearing over abstinence from sex—if only because economic and cultural forces are pulling so hard in that direction. ...I don’t think excluding gay couples from marriage will do anything to strengthen or restore the old sex/marriage/procreation unity, and I think trying to hold homosexual couples to the old norm while heterosexuals live by the new one will be counterproductive as well as unfair.
....

I think it's very interesting to suggest that the opposition to marriage equality is based in this resistance to changing norms. It's convenient to blame the gays since this seems a change that is So Big, but in reality, the changes have already taken place, and this is quite incremental. It describes a polarization in worldview that is really profound.

And that leads into a broader question of how we can bring along people for whom advanced degrees and educational opportunities are not available solutions. How do we rescue the kids in mill towns and rural America and poor working families to benefit from these changes? Something I blogged about elsewhere.

Ethical problems in the fight against equality

In California, the Fair Political Practices Committee has fined the Mormons for failing to admit they had institutionally supported Proposition 8 by providing staff. It's only a bit more than $5000 but it's something to get them to admit it, even though they call it "an oversight".

Now I'd like to see more aggressive attention paid to the Roman Catholics and that nasty bishop Salvatore Cordileone who expressed such relish in attacking us.

In Maine, our friends at the hate-group NOM claim that they should be free of the reporting rules of Maine's election laws. Which in fact they consider "unconstitutional". Maine is one of those pesky states that expects to know who is donating money to campaigns there. NOM tried to appeal the decision, claiming its donors would be harassed (another example of the "violence" meme that the rightwingers claim as a justification for wearing a hood). That appeal was denied. As the Portland Press Herald says, approving the decision,

[The Magistrate's] ruling is not likely the last word on this subject. NOM's refusal to refuse to file reports with the state led the ethics commission to open an investigation into the group's actions, and it could continue to fight release of the information.

What is important is establishing that national groups should not be able to come to the state and make their own rules regarding transparency in election campaigns. If you choose to participate in this Maine campaign, you should abide by Maine's rules.

Except for marriage equality opponents, who claim in California, Washington, Iowa, and Maine that the rules don't apply to them.

And in a second blow, the 1st District court in Boston has now rejected NOM's attempt to block release, although the names will only be released to the state of Maine, not made public.

The speculative testimony set forth in the affidavits Appellant-Petitioners [NOM] offered does not establish a significant risk of chill stemming from disclosure severely limited by the entry of a strict litigation protective order.

Moreover, Appellees [Maine]have a compelling interest in defending Maine's election laws against charges of unconstitutionality. ... In this case, that interest extends to review of the documents in question. In framing some of their underlying constitutional challenges to Maine's election laws, Appellant-Petitioners have made relevant the issue of whether NOM has as one its primary purposes the influencing of ballot questions and/or candidate elections. We conclude that the materials in question have the potential to be highly relevant to that issue, and we see no less restrictive means for Appellees to probe the issue than by reviewing the materials under the auspices of the strict protective order to which Appellees have consented. Accordingly, pursuant to Local Rule 27.0(c) we summarily AFFIRM the ruling of the district court. Because Appellant-Petitioners have not demonstrated "a clear entitlement to the relief requested," mandamus relief is DENIED......The stay entered by this court on May 28, 2010, is hereby LIFTED. (source)

Remember that based on Washington, they have actually got a case before the Supreme Court saying that uniquely for marriage equality, campaign transparency laws should not apply.

If you aren't outraged at this effort of these bigots to hide their bigotry, you really aren't paying attention.

Anatomy of the lies

There is an absolutely OUTSTANDING exposé at Daily Kos explaining how the bad guys won Prop8, and how they might win with Question 1 in Maine. This DK diary lays it all out in stunning detail. Read it, because it's what we're up against, not only in California, but nationally.

The author shows how the key to their victory was framing the question not about our marriages, but about what it might cost them---even if those costs were palpably LIEs about children and education. Coupled with numerous mis-steps on our side it was a masterful bit of swiftboating, as the author terms it.

The story is instructive because Religious Right professionals have succeeded in making it appear as if all people of faith are antigay and anti-marriage equality. Worse yet, they are using religion as an excuse to perpetrate lies and deception – to swiftboat same sex couples in the name of God, when in fact they are just advancing another end-justifies-the-means political scheme.

Don't wait, go here and read it NOW. Because they are trying exactly the same approach in Maine, and they will continue to do this unless and until we manage to expose their lies and dishonesty.

NOM gets slapped in Iowa too.

Maggie Gallagher's hate group, the National Organization for Marriage, has been soliciting donations around the country to attack marriage equality. Part of what they promise is anonymity.

Letters and emails from NOM Executive Director Brian Brown .... stated:

“And unlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protestors.”

Only hiding your donors peeves ethics and openness standards of different states.

As mentioned yesterday, Maine's Ethics Commission is investigating, following a complaint from Californians Against Hate

And in Iowa, the Iowa Ethics Board is also cross:

In a August 27 letter, the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, warns the National Organization for Marriage about their campaign activities in Iowa. Here are the key points of the warning:
>>only an “insignificant and insubstantial amount” of NOM’s income is permitted to come from business organizations

>>if advocacy activities in Iowa exceed $750, NOM must form a PAC and disclose contributors

>>“To continue to file an independent expenditure statement for future elections in Iowa would mean that your organization is not raising more than $750 from outside sources for such purposes”

Last Friday NOM filed an independent expenditure report for nearly $90,000 worth of ads. The letter makes clear that to continue to file in this manner would run afoul of Iowa election laws.

The Advocate reports:

NOM’s lawyer, Barry Bostrom, has flat-out denied the allegations, calling them “unfounded and scurrilous.”

“These accusations and complaints are intended to inhibit our freedom of speech and freedom of association,” Bostrom told The Iowa Independent. “But we intend to aggressively safeguard these rights, while complying with all state and federal laws.”

But Des Moines attorney Sharon Malheiro says the lack of transparency undermines the democratic process.

“Election laws are necessary to protect public confidence in our democratic system,” she says. “When outsiders try to pervert the justice system and work around the election laws of our state, our public officials must call them out and hold them accountable.”

Time for NOM to take off the hoods.

The only good news in this? That $90K in ads was to influence an election for the Iowa House, where a pro-equality Democrat was paired against an anti-equality Republican. But despite potentially breaking the law to donate secret monies, their candidate lost. Good on yer, Iowans!