Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: National Organization for Marriage
April 11th, 2012
The National Organization for Marriage is having a rough day. Their blog is down, their Facebook site had been hacked, and someone else has control of NOM’s Twitter feed NOMTweets:
It looks like NOM has their Facebook page back, and their “apology” for stifling comments in their web sites and their racially divisive strategy is gone. But NOMTweets is still going rogue.
Update: NOM’s Brian Brown vows to crush the rebellion:
April 10th, 2012
The National Organization for Marriage is politically tone deaf. I cannot think of a more stupid decision than the one to appeal to the theocratic instincts of radical Islamists and find common cause in their desire to oppress gay people. And I cannot fathom why they think that identifying with Chinese communists will appeal to their support base.
We’ve long known that NOM opposes freedom of religion for anyone other than those who agree with them. We’ve long known that they don’t blanch at the idea of capital punishment for gays. We’ve long known that in their views, states should impose morals codes on a local population based on religious dictates of a centralized global religious self-proclaimed authority. We’ve long understood that behind the “let the people vote” claims was an organization who sought to impose its will in any way possible with no more regard for the will of the people than they have for the individual rights and dignity of gay Americans.
But convincing the rest of the world that they are exactly like the Taliban or any other Islamist group has been difficult. Arguing that their perspectives on democracy are the same as those in communist China was daunting. It seems too bizarre and accusatory and extreme.
But now NOM has done it for us.
The National Organization for Marriage today announced that its new DumpStarbucks.com campaign is going international.
“In our first week, we gained 25,000 pledge signers in the U.S. alone; today we go international, expanding DumpStarbucks.com campaigns into Mandarin, Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, and Bahala (one of the chief languages of Indonesia),” announced NOM President Brian Brown. “DumpStarbucks.com online ads will also start running in Egypt, Beijing, Hong Kong, the Yunnan region of China, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait.”
And just in case anyone missed the connection:
“The National Organization for Marriage is in this for the long haul,” said Jonathan Baker, head of NOM’s Corporate Fairness Project. “Here’s our goal: If Howard Schultz and his insular Seattle liberals hear from enough of us, management will move to a more genuinely inclusive attitude toward its customers’ and partners’ diverse views on marriage.
“Us.” You know, “us”, the members of NOM and the mullahs in Bahrain and the communist leaders in China.
April 6th, 2012
The National Organization for Marriage is upset over the New York Times editorial calling NOM out for its race-baiting tactics. Those tactics were revealed in a document dump resulting from a court case in Maine in which NOM has been fighting to circumvent that state’s financial disclosure law. The Times labeled NOM’s tactics as a “poisonous political approach.” NOM’s Brian Brown responded with this fundraising plea to supporters:
I promise you this: Marriage is the cause that unites people of all faiths, races and political backgrounds. And nothing The New York Times or anyone else can say will stop us from coming together to defend marriage against these strategically timed attacks designed to distract us from the critical work we need to be doing this year.
One has to wonder at the level of self-delusion it must take to put out this kind of statement with a straight face. NOM’s own strategy documents talked about dividing gays from African-Americans, gays from Latinos, and even Latinos from other Americans as long as it means they’re anti-gay (NOM is actually plotting against Latino’s assimilation!). NOM;s strategy even calls for dividing children from their own gay parents. And NOM talks of uniting people? This is an organization which is, by its own admission, hell-bent on wedging and dividing everyone nine ways to Sunday.
Now Brian Brown followed that with this letter to the editor of the Washington Times, complaining that their critic’s “end game” is “(s)ilencing the voices of millions of Americans.” But wait. All we did was put the things they whisper to each other in front of a megaphone. It’s their own words that blew up in their faces. Silence them? Puhleeze! That’s the last thing we want to do.
April 2nd, 2012
Last week, we were astonished to read the document dump that revealed the National Organization for Marriage’s race-baiting strategy to drive a wedge between African-Americans and Latinos against fellow members of their respective communities which happen to be LGBT, as well as their strategy to drive wedges within LGBT families. Of course, we’re not astonished at the existence of the strategies themselves, but the casual ease with which they could be set to paper with nary a qualm.
It’s ironic that the only reason those documents were made public is because NOM decided to flout Maine’s campaign finance laws. NOM has refused to disclose their donors as required under Maine law. But it has now surfaced that in 2008 during the height of California’s Prop 8 campaign, former Massachusetts governor and current GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney donated $10,000 to NOM. And more recently, Romney signed NOM’s five-point pledge at the start of the GOP race for the presidential nomination. Now that Romney looks like he is in the best position to take that nomination in August, it’s time he clarified whether he agrees with NOM’s race-baiting and family-dividing strategy. And he needs to do it now, because there’s no way that stain will disappear just by shaking an Etch-A-Sketch come summertime.
April 2nd, 2012
New Jersey’s biggest newspaper (by far) has released an editorial on the National Organization for Marriage:
It is sick beyond words that a group to “save” marriage would exploit racial and ethnic divisions, stir intolerance and fear, and even rip families apart by pitting children against parents. In their self-described “battle,” they come across as the biggest losers of all.
Its not looking like a happy week at the NOM office and today is only Monday.
March 27th, 2012
In reading the language of the National Organization for Marriage’s race-based strategy for delaying the eventuality of marriage equality, two things immediately struck me.
First, in order for this strategy to have any success, it had to create a long-term division in America along racial lines. Their hope was that African Americans (immediately) and Latinos (as their demographic increased in the voting population) would have a permanent division from White Americans along social issues and that this would be a race-based pride point. Their entire hope was that we all continue to see race as something that makes us inherently different from each other and would continue to view each other through lenses of suspicion, hostility, and fear.
While cynical and evil, this is not the oddest of their prepositions. In order for their plan to have effect, African Americans (and subsequently gays and Latinos) were presumed to be so stupid that they not only wouldn’t notice the objective but would blindly fall for it.
Well some did. Stupidity comes in all sizes, shapes and colors. And there are a small handful of preachers in the community who see race as all important to whom such a message was appealing and who readily lent their name and voice to NOM’s campaign. And there were a few gay folks who read this as “blacks hate us” and sniped back.
But NOM misjudged. Most blacks weren’t interested in joining their anti-gay crusade. Even when their pastor was the celebrated speaker, virtually every face at a NOM event was white. And old. And, for what it’s worth, bored. Blacks didn’t fall for the ploy.
Despite their assumptions, melanin seems to have no inverse correlation to intellect. As it turns out, black people just aren’t as stupid as NOM assumed they were.
But I do believe that NOM has had an impact on the way in which the African American community has thought about the subject of marriage. Since they started their campaign (which we observed during their Tour of Mostly Empty City Plazas), I believe that I have seen a noticeable change.
In the direction towards acceptance.
Now it’s not all champaign and roses between the gay and the black community. The polls in Maryland show that black voters are FAR less likely to support equality (or, at least, were before today). But in the community the tone is different, the leadership message is different, the community voices are different, and things are changing.
It’s hard to put numbers on it, but there it’s there if you look.
A few years ago, if a black guy made a homophobic comment he might be called on it, but there was also an accompanying demand to understand his culture and not judge too harshly. I don’t hear that part anymore. What I read are black writers condemning blatant homophobia without any room for excuses.
Where just a few years ago it was presumed that a black actress might support us but certainly no black athlete wanted anything to do with gay issues. Now some of the most respected black men in athletics speak out in favor of full equality and do so with an attitude of “yeah, of course I do, why wouldn’t I?”
And where we did have the official support of many black leaders a few years back, now some of the icons of the community are willing to put their hard-earned reputation on the line in ways we frankly have no right to expect. They worked hard to make sure that what NOM wanted would not succeed.
Sure, some of this was natural flow with the tide. But I also believe that NOM’s efforts to make opposing equality a matter of “what blacks are like” got some African Americans thinking about the issue and about what being black is really all about. And they didn’t much like what NOM was suggesting.
And NOM didn’t have success with Latinos either. It seems that their efforts to get hip young beautiful latinos e latinas were met with a blank faced, “Lo siento, no hablo Inglés … ¡que condescendiente idiota racista!”
Their joint effort during the Carly Fiorina senate campaign in California (“Vota Tus Valores”) yielded one telenovela actress who thought she was there to talk about her religious conversion and talk up the values of chastity. When she found out she was supposed to do political campaigning against the evils of Teh Ghey, she hopped back on the bus and was never seen again.
Because ya know, the funny thing about race-based points of pride is that they are just that. They are issues or matters or traits or peculiarities that feel like home. They are things that are shared that make us into “us”. And Latinos and African Americans aren’t particularly receptive to white folk telling them what they should be proud about.
Ultimately, people pride themselves in what they feel good about. If it’s food flavors that go back dozens or generations, that’s community. Facial expressions that mom got from her mom who got them from her mom, that’s family. A sense of humor that no one else gets, that makes you feel like you are totally and completely accepted and loved. A sense of honor, decency, hard work, commitment to caring for those you are responsible for, charity for those who have less, the ability to always make room for one more, showing love when others may not, those are the values you pass to the next generation.
And those are the pride points that you see in all communities, be they African American, Hispanic American, Irish American, Native American, German American, or I-Have-No-Idea American. The most visible differences are the foods and the songs and the dances and the history, but look past it and really everyone pretty much prides themselves on the same thing: “we are who we are because we love each other.” That is a cultural pride point that happens naturally.
Making sure that someone else doesn’t have the happiness you have? Not so much.
Sure there are tensions. The gay community and the black community have been a bit at odds for a while. But no one is proud of that. We don’t define ourselves in terms on not liking the other. And nothing will heal our grievances quicker than having some outsider try and take advantage.
As NOM is in the process of learning.
March 27th, 2012
You know, one of the simpler joys of the NOM document dump is that you can read it and read it and read it — Oh, I don’t know, how many times? — and still overlook gems like this:
Hollywood with its cultural biases is far bigger than we can hope to be. We recognize this. But we also recognize the opportunity – the disproportionate potential impact of proactively seeking to gather and connect a community of artists, athletes, writers, beauty queens and other glamorous non-cognitive elites across national boundaries. (This is applying the Witherspoon and IAV model to non-intellectual elites.)” [Emphasis added by GLAAD]
“Beauty queens.” Does that remind you of anyone?
March 27th, 2012
Louis Marinelli, the National Organization for Marriage’s former tour organizer, is updating this post with more emails illustrating NOM’s implementation of their previously secret strategy documents pitting African-Americans against fellow LGBT citizens. Those emails seem to show Maggie Gallagher’s growing obsession with pictures of black people. One email, titled, “I need a close-up photo of Bishop Battle for the newsletter tomorrow) explains the need in very simple terms: “He’s black, he’s on our side, he’s COGIC (Church of God in Christ)” Another email following a rally in Washington, D.C. has Gallagher giving this direction:
I’m told the rally was two-thirds blacks. All the photos we have up are taken behind white people. Any phot (sic) that shows the crowd as it was. Please send it to me and Eve tushnet (sic) for use in this week’s newsletter. I would also like a photo of Faunteroy for the Newsletter.
And think it should go up on the blog. Maggie
Here are two photos from the D.C. rally. It looks like Maggie heard wrong. Marinelli says more revelations are coming.
March 27th, 2012
Louis Marinelli, the National Organization for Marriage’s former tour organizer and NOM Facebook page founder and blogger, revealed that line in an email from NOM President Brian Brown. Marinelli says more emails are on the way. That will be interesting
March 27th, 2012
The NAACP issued a press release in response to the release of secret strategy documents from the National Organization for Marriage as part of an ongoing campaign finance investigation by the state of Maine. Those documents revealed that NOM sought to drive a wedge between the LGBT community and African-Americans (as well as between LGBT African-Americans and their own families). The NAACP responded:
After learning of the content of the documents, Dr. Julian Bond, Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP, released this statement a short time ago through HRC.
“NOM’s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination,” said Dr. Bond. “Pitting bigotry’s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together.”
Dr. Bond is the first among a forthcoming list of leaders, jointly compiled by HRC and the Center for American Progress, who are speaking out against NOM’s plans to fight marriage equality and create racial divisions in order to do so.
March 27th, 2012
The dump of National Organizations for Marriage’s secret strategy documents revealed once and for all NOM’s stated, written tactics of driving a wedge between African-American LGBT people from their African-American community, between Latino LGBT people and their Latino communities, between LGBT people and their political allies, and, just for good measure, between President Barack Obama and, well, just about everyone.
As dispicable as all that is, Right Wing Watch noticed another wedge that NOM tried to drive: between LGBT parents and their very own children. NOM set aside $60,000 to hire an “outreach coordinator to identify children of gay parents willing to speak on camera.” If they did make that hire, it wasn’t money well spent. Not a single child turned up to denounce his or her parents. But it does go to show how utterly contemptible this “family values” outfit is toward families.
March 27th, 2012
According to secret strategy documents of the National Organization for Marriage which were unveiled last night, NOM’s strategy was based on seeking to sow divisions between LGBT people and African-Americans and Latinos, between LGBT Americans, President Barack Obama and the Democratic base, and between LGBT Americans and other ordinary Americans across the country.
NOM’s internal strategy documents were unsealed in Maine yesterday as part of an ongoing investigation by that state into NOM’s campaign finance activities. Some of those documents have been posted on the NOMExposed web site of the Human Rights campaign. Many of the tactics revealed in the documents include manipulating ethnic and racial minorities in order to pit them against LGBT Americans — as well as LGBT members of their own ethnic and racial groups. For example, on page 20 of a December 15, 2009 document describing NOM’s national strategy with regard to the Latino vote:
The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be even more so in the future because of demographic growth. Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity.
We aim to identify young Latino and Latina leaders, especially artists, actors, musicians, athletes, writers and other celebrities willing to stand for marriage, regardless of national boundaries. …Here’s our insight: The number of “glamorous” people willing to buck the powerful forces to speak for marriage may be small in any one country. But by searching for these leaders across national boundaries we will assemble a community of next generation Latino leaders that Hispanics and other next generation elites in this country can aspire to be like. (As “ethnic rebels” such spokespeople will also have an appeal across racial lines, especially to young urbans in America.)
With the help of Schubert Flint Public Affairs, we will develop Spanish language radio and TV ads, as well as pamphlets, YouTube videos, and church handouts and popular songs. Our ultimate goal is the make opposition to gay marriage an identity marker, a badge of youth rebellion to conforming assimilation to the bad side of “Anglo” culture. [Emphasis mine.]
That same document outlines what they call the “Not a Civil Right” Project aimed at African-Americans (Page 22)
The majority of African-Americans, like the majority of Americans, oppose gay marriage, but Democratic power busses are increasingly inclined to privilege the concerns of gay rights groups over the values of African-Americans. A strategic goal of this project is to amplify the voice and power of black Americans within the Democratic Party. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil rights. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party. [Emphasis mine]
According to that document, one million dollars was being earmarked for that effort in 2010, the same amount that was also earmarked to the Latino project. Another undated document which describes NOM’s “$20 million strategy for victory” was much more blunt about the purpose of this initiative (page 12):
The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. [Emphasis mine.]
Another document, a NOM “Board Update 2008-2009,” quite literally seeks to “fans the flames” further (page 13):
Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the costs of pushing gay marriage to its advocates and persuading the movement’s allies that advocates are unacceptably overreaching on this issue. Consider pushing a marriage amendment in Washington, D.C.; find attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally. [Emphasis mine.]
Alvin McEwen puts this dynamic in very plain language:
NOM has portrayed whatever African-American opposition to marriage equality its spotlighted as spontaneous attempts by leaders and members of the black community to keep its civil rights legacy from supposedly being “tainted” by a comparison to gay equality.
But now we see that there was nothing spontaneous about this. It was a cynically planned effort by NOM – which the organization continues to exploit – in order to drive a wedge between blacks and gays.
…One doesn’t have to spell out how this benefits NOM’s efforts. The two sides attack each other with extreme anger causing magazine articles to be written about the division, news programs to focus on the division, and venomous chats to occur on places like Facebook and Twitter.Some heterosexual African-Americans will let loose with homophobia against the gay community. And some white lgbtqs will express racist comments about the black community. Both communities will be at each other’s throats. There will be no intelligent conversations on the matter and neither community will benefit an iota.
And NOM will sit back and reap the benefits of causing this chaos.
One of NOM’s chief tactics lately has been to claim victimhood status while simultaneously attacking LGBT families, and those attacks are aimed specifically at trying to provoke some sort of backlash against their side. Whether they succeed in that or not is immaterial to them however. NOM designated another project aimed toward creating victimhood messages regardless of merit. This project was called “Behind Enemy Lines”, with the goal of “keeping gay marriage controversial in Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut.” (page 24):
Document the consequences of gay marriage and develop an effective culture of resistance. … Fund a low-cost media campaign (primarily billboards) to support the idea the children need mothers and fathers and to highlight threats and promise support to any citizens attacked for their pro-marriage views; commission polling and other studies to document consequences of gay marriage; and gather a rapid-response team of videographers and reporters to collect and record stories of those who have been harassed, threatened, or intimidated as a result of their support for traditional views on marriage and sexuality across the country and also in Europe and abroad. [Emphasis mine]
The document earmarked $300,000 for the Behind Enemy Lines project in 2010, including $100,000 for a “study of what schools are teaching in gay marriage/civil union regimes.” The document also proposed related project called “the Face of the Victims Rapid Response Video Team and Archive” (page 25):
Who is hurt by gay marriage? The rapid response video project would aim to put an emotionally compelling face on the answer to this question. … When a young Hispanic mother discovers in New Jersey that her first grader is being taught about gay marriage, how does the school counselor respond to her concerns? We need to get her on camera, telling the story of what gay marriage really means. NOM’s rapid response team takes the “document the victims” project national, giving us the capacity to capture the oppression of people’s rights, the disregard of their feelings and interests, on video, as it happens, in real time. [Emphasis mine.]
Another document, dated August 11, 2009, also had a plan for painting president Barack Obama as a “radical socialist” as part of their anti-equality strategy. This plan is significant, given that NOM has always touted itself as an organization that is only interested in marriage and nothing else. But the August 11, 2009 document shows that NOM sees itself as an integral player in the much larger culture war against LGBT Americans, as well as pushing the radical-right’s broader messages against President Barack Obama with an eye toward their desire to defeat him in 2012 (page: 13):
Expose Obama as a social radical. Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders and parties and develop an activist hase of socially conservative voters. Raise such issues as pornography, protection of children, and the need to oppose all efforts to weaken religious liberty at the federal level. This is the mission of the American Principles Project. …
The Preserve Innocence project will monitor all administration initiatives from the White House, Department of Justice, Education Department, and the Health and Human Services Department that affect the welfare of children. We will put a special focus on exposing those administration programs that have the effect of sexualizing young children. We will provide a weekly update to Congress, to conservative leaders and to the national media on personnel or policy threats to childhood innocence. We will work with appropriate legislation to reverse current Department of Education policies that use the Safe Schools program to foist de facto sex education on children as young as kindergarten age. [Emphasis mine.]
Another undated document which describes NOM’s “$20 million strategy for victory” outlined the same offensive against the president, calling the effort “Sideswiping Obama” (page 11). That document also calls for “nationalizing” the issue in the context of the U.S. presidential elections (page 9):
Marriage needs to be a national (and ultimately international) effort, not just a local or regional issue. If marriage is going to be preserved between a man and a woman in the United State two things must happen: the pro-gay agenda of President Obama must be defeated in 2012, and replaced by one of that expressly articulates a pro-marriage culture. [Emphasis mine.]
HRC’s outgoing president Joe Solmonese describes this document dump as a “game changer”:
“Nothing beats hearing from the horse’s mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “Such brutal honesty is a game changer, and this time NOM can’t spin and twist its way out of creating an imagined rift between LGBT people and African-Americans or Hispanics.”
March 21st, 2012
Maggie Gallagher and Johnathan Baker, National Organization for Marriage’s director for what they call “The Corporate Fairness Project,” attended the annual Starbucks shareholder meeting today. Baker, as a Starbucks shareholder, addressed the meeting and took the board to task for the “controversial stand Starbucks has taken here in Washington in support of same-sex marriage.” Citing a Starbucks message endorsing Washington’s Referendum 74, a proposal that would allow marriage equality to take effect in the state, as reflecting Starbucks’ core values as a company, Baker asked if that decision was made by the board of directors and questioned whether the decision would hinder the company’s efforts to expand internationally. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz responded:
Any decision of this type or magnitude has be made with great thoughtfulness and I would assure you that a senior team of Starbucks discussed this. And it was, to be candid with you, not something that was a difficult decision for us and we did share this with some members of the board as well. [Applause and cheers]
I don’t want to answer the question in any way that would be disrespectful to you or other people who might see it differently. I think Starbucks has many constituents, and from time to time we are going to make a decision that we think is consistent with the heritage and the tradition of the company that perhaps may be inconsistent with one group’s view of the world or a decision we may make. I said earlier in my prepared remarks that we’re not perfect, and from time to time we may make a mistake or people may view it as a mistake. But we made that decision, in our view, through the lens of humanity and being the kind of company that embraces diversity.”
And with that, NOM announced their boycott:
“Unlike our opponents, we do not target whole companies for the actions of an individual business executive in that company,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “But Starbucks has taken a corporate position in support of redefining marriage for all of society. We will not tolerate an international company attempting to force its misguided values on citizens. The majority of Americans and virtually every consumer in some countries in which Starbucks operates believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. They will not be pleased to learn that their money is being used to advance gay marriage in society.”
March 21st, 2012
Or something like that, according to NOM’s Brian Brown who likened his efforts to roll back marriage equality to those of abolitionists “in the late 1800s.”
March 21st, 2012
CNN’s Thomas Roberts (who is gay) interviewed Brian Brown, the National Organization for Marriage’s President, and Craig Stowell, the Republican co-chair of Stand Up for New Hampshire Families (our side), about the expected vote today in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
Brown gave his usual posturing and nonsense.
(Segue alert: don’t you get tired of talking heads saying the same nonsense over and over regardless of the situation? I laughed out loud this week when Brooke on Dancing With the Has-Beens asked Martina Navratalova about her scores. Instead of the standard “we are really pleased, we went out and gave it our best and had a lot of fun, so we hope America votes for us” that every other contestant said, Navratalova said, “oh, it was the same score we got in rehearsals so I guess it is what it is.” Back to the topic.)
He laughably ranted about “special interest groups from out of state” (leaving the New Hampshirite the opportunity to point out that Brian isn’t a local boy) and claimed that 119 legislators were “booted out because they took it upon themselves to redefine marriage” (a notion scoffed at by the Republican leaders who ignored the issue for a year and a half because “we were elected to address the economy”).
But here’s the sentence you need to pay attention to.
“We’re looking forward to the vote today. I expect we’re going to have a majority here. I think it’s going to be historic to have a state vote and have a majority vote say, “this was wrong, we made a tragic mistake two years ago and we’re going to right that wrong” and I expect that we’re going to see a victory today.”
NOM’s definition of success is “a majority”. And, mind you, this for a bill that would simply revert to full civil union protections.
In terms of actual impact, if NOM eeks out “a majority”, we win. Governor Lynch will veto the bill (assuming it survives the Senate) and NOM will scramble to try and find enough votes to overturn the veto.
Keep in mind that Republicans have a veto-proof majority. If this is a party-line vote, then marriage equality would be reversed in that state. But Brown has conceded that NOM isn’t expecting a veto-proof majority. They aren’t expecting to win, they are just laying the framework to argue that a vote in which they lose all Democrats and a large number of Republicans and which will never become law is “historic”.
The vote has not yet happened. And in politics anything can happen. But NOM’s admission suggests that the vote today will be good news.
I can feel pity for Brian Brown. Surely it cuts at one’s sense of being to constantly spin and lie and pretend. When one goes into quiet contemplation, surely “winning” seems little consolation for giving up your integrity, and when you aren’t winning it must seem like an unfair trade. If you sell your soul, shouldn’t you at least get something for it?
As Thomas asked him,
Brian… what the National Organization of Marriage does to try and stand against the tide of equality, isn’t it exhausting?
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