Box Turtle Bulletin

Anti-marriage Christian theologian says a wise thing

Russell Moore is Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It is safe to say that Dr. Moore and I agree on very little when it comes to matters of sexuality or society.

But Dr. Moore, writing about the proposed Starbucks boycott, recognized something that I think that American Christianity has forgotten: faith isn’t about forcing people to obey you. There may not be much I can share with this man, but I commend the wisdom of this paragraph:

We won’t win this argument by bringing corporations to the ground in surrender. We’ll engage this argument, first of all, by prompting our friends and neighbors to wonder why we don’t divorce each other, and why we don’t split up when a spouse loses his job or loses her health. We’ll engage this argument when we have a more exalted, and more mysterious, view of sexuality than those who see human persons as animals or machines. And, most of all, we’ll engage this argument when we proclaim the meaning behind marriage: the covenant union of Christ and his church.

None of this is new. The founder of Christianity told his followers a couple thousand years ago that the way to follow him was to love – and to do so in a way that everyone else would marvel. Converts would not be made to avoid the wrathful anger of an vengeful god and his curses of eternal flame, but because they wanted to be like his followers. And Moore seems to have – at least for this moment – taken a little trip down retro lane.

And he’s right. Not about the mystery covenant exalted churchbabble, but about what matters in this debate. The argument over equality is not going to be won by whomever can exert the most economic pressure. It’s not even going to be won by whomever has the best political connections or the more articulate orators.

The argument is going to be won by whose lives look the best. And that’s why we are winning.

It’s because while the bible thumpers are threatening JCPenny, the gay couple down the street took in another child born with HIV and drug addictions. While Suzy Churchharpy is collecting signatures to take away rights, Janet Bigdyke is down at the park with a post hole digger trying to get the kids a new swingset. When Mr. and Mrs. Jesushatesyou couldn’t possibly help the troubled kid tossed out by a drunken but church-going father (“we don’t want to condone sin and he’d be a bad influence on our little darlings”), Ms. Raven Usedtohaveapenis found that if you turn the couch sideways there’s room for another kid and there’s always an extra minute to talk to a social worker.

While the Christian Church has been demanding that the world follow its dictates, the gay community has been – mostly unintentionally – following the wisdom of their founder: treat people the way you want to be treated and if you want to be known for something, be known for love.

I hope Moore’s audience listens. I hope he listens to himself. The world would be a much better place if Christians spent less time trying to force me to become what they teach and more time trying to be the best person they could be. And if they want to know what that looks like, they can just take a look at our community.

San Diego mayoral candidate leaves Republican Party

San Diego is beautiful. The weather is lovely, Balboa Park is peaceful, housing isn’t insane, and the people are generally nice. If I win the lottery, San Diego is on my possible cities list.

San Diego is also home of an odd mix of political views: pro-business, pro-military, pro-gay. It’s currently helmed by Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican former chief of police who is a fierce advocate for marriage equality.

But Sanders’ term is up and there are four credible candidates running to replace him: three Republicans and a Democrat. Or there were three Republicans until today; State Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher – who gave an eloquent endorsement for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on the Assembly Floor – just left the Party to become Independent.

Which leaves only two Republican candidates: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and City Councilman Carl DeMaio, both of whom are gay.

No one in San Diego thinks this is odd.

Boehner Names NOM Co-Founder Robert George to Religious Freedom Commission

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) appointed Robert George, the National Organization for Marriage co-founder and former chairman, to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The appointment is for a two-year term.

In 2009, George drafted the Manhattan Declaration, which equates same-sex marriage to  polygamy and calls for “resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.” In December of that year, George signed a letter which mildly criticized Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill (a.k.a. the “Kill the Gays” Bill) but tacitly approved jail terms for LGBT people. George also founded the American Principles Project, which, through it’s Preserve Innocence Project, declared that LGBT people and safe-school policies pose a threat to children. In 2010 George published the article “What Is Marriage?” in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, which BTB’s Rob Tisinai critiqued at length in a series of posts. You can access those critiques from this page.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, March 28

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Soulforce Equality Ride: Oklahoma City, OK. Soulforce is spending all week this week in the Sooner State capital, and today’s schedule is a full one. It begins with a “Direct Action” at Oklahoma Baptist University from 9:45 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The public is welcome to join. The gang will then go to Sips Downtown Kafe on 114 E. Main St. in Shawnee for a Bible discussion on “approaching scripture in a queer-affirming way.” That goes from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Then it’s on to a potluck dinner at 6:00 p.m. at the Church of Open Arms UCC (3131 N. Penn) followed by a panel discussion at 7:15. All events are open to the public.

Pride Celebration This Weekend: Exeter, UK.

Other Celebrations This Weekend: BFI London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, London, UK; Dinah Shore Weekend, Palm Springs, CA.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bloomington, IN; Ft. Worth, TX.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Dirk Bogarde: 1921. He was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde, but his friends and fans called him Dirk. After serving in the Queen’s Royal Regiment in World War II as an intelligence officer, he became one of Britain’s top matinee idols in the 1950s. In the 1960s he decided to do away with his heart-throb image with more challenging roles, including that of the closeted Melville Farr in 1961’s Victim and the sinister Hugo Barrett in 1963’s The Servant, and the gay lead in the 1971 art house film Death in Venice. Warner Brothers tried to drop the distribution of Death in Venice because they feared it would be banned for obscenity. They relented after Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Anne attended the premiere in London.

If it was brave for a popular actor to take on gay roles like that, it was doubly brave of Bogarde because he never officially came out. And yet he remained dedicated to his lifelong partner Anthony Forwood, whose death in 1988 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and liver cancer led Bogarde to become an advocate for assisted suicide. Bogarde died in 1999. It wasn’t until 2004 when his brother Gareth Van den Bogaerde finally acknowledged publicly that his brother was gay.

And yes, yes, yes of course. Today is Lady Gaga’s twenty-sixth birthday.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

This your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

NOM’s problem: black people just aren’t as stupid as they thought

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.

NOM Looking for “Glamorous Non-Cognitive Elites”

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?

Maggie Gallagher: “I Need a Picture… He’s Black, He’s On Our Side”

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.

Julian Bond Sees “Evil Hand” in NOM’s Strategy

The shocking revelations of NOM’s written strategy to pit LGBT Americans against African-Americans has really shaken civil rights leader Julian Bond. He was among the first out of the gate with an official response earlier today. He has since told The Hill:

“It confirmed a suspicion that some evil hand was behind this,” former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond told The Hill.

The civil rights leader said the strategy appeared to have been implemented already, pointing to a gay-marriage push in Maryland that failed in 2011, which he said was largely due to opposition from black politicians. (Gay marriage was reintroduced in 2012 in Maryland and passed, although opponents are trying to reverse it through a referendum).

“I would not be surprised to find this group and its filthy hand in crafting this situation,” Bond said.

NOM’s Brian Brown: “I Need Crazy Pictures of Our Opponents.”

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

NAACP Responds to NOM’s Race-Baiting Tactics

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.

Yes, Maggie Gallagher, You Have Blood on Your Hands

In late 2010, Maggie Gallagher responded to the epidemic of gay teen suicide by asking:

Do I have blood on my hands?

To no one’s surprise, her answer was No. But now, with the release of NOM’s confidential 2009 report to its Board, we can firmly tell her:

Yes, Maggie, you do have blood on your hands.

One bit of NOM’s strategy is getting special attention. As reported earlier today, in a section called, “Not a Civil Rights Project” NOM’s document states:

The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks…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.

You read that right: NOM, while publicly calling for a civil dialog on marriage, privately pinned its hopes on fanning hostility between gays and blacks. Does that make you angry? Never mind; stupid question; of course it does. But don’t forget this:

Gays and blacks are not separate groups.

They overlap. And not just within society, but within families as well. NOM has committed up to $5,000,000 to fanning hostility not just between gay and black constituencies, gay and black neighborhoods, or gay and black churches, but between straight black parents and their young gay teens.

Let’s hope the strategists at NOM aren’t trying to rip families apart. Let’s hope it’s not their primary intention. But hostility is a flame, not a scalpel, and those who fan it can’t control who gets burned. NOM, apparently, must have decided that gay black teens are acceptable collateral damage. Or they were just blind to the concept. But now, let me remind you of this:

Parental acceptance is a major factor in preventing gay teen suicide.

The numbers are scary. And the research has just been reaffirmed. Even worse, the parents’ first reaction is key — not the delayed and considered reaction, once parents have had a chance to take a breath, but the immediate reaction, the one inflamed by NOM’s millions of dollars spent fanning hostility.

When Maggie faced the question of blood on her hands, she claimed she felt a “moral obligation” to find out whether it was true. Her moral obligation led her to detail every possible cause of suicide that directed attention away from NOM. It did not lead her to detail the millions of dollars she’d committed to fanning hostility between minority parents and their gay children.

For Maggie, I guess, that just wasn’t a moral question.

NOM Doc Dump: Money Spent to Drive A Wedge WITHIN (Not Just Between) LGBT Families

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.

North Carolina Money Bomb to Defeat Amendment 1

Advocates to defeating North Carolina’s proposed anti-marriage amendment have organized a “money bomb” this week to support the campaign to defeat Amendment One. That ballot proposal goes to voters during the May 8 primary, and would constitutionally ban marriage equality. Last night’s document dump of National Organization for Marriage’s strategy for pushing their agenda shows you what they are up against. The goal is to raise $1 million by April 2. Yesterday’s goal was $25,000, but they fell short, raising only 22,331. Please do what you can to help today.

NOM Tactics Revealed in Court Docs Dump

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.”

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, March 27

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Bob Mizer: 1922. Before there was the internet and its most lucrative offering, online porn, and before the proliferation of dead-tree porn in the late 1960s through the 1980s, there was the “physique” magazines that sprang up after World War II. Bob Mizer was the mild-mannered publisher and photographer for Physique Pictorial, one of many such magazines that published “beefcake” photographs under the guise of bodybuilding and health. His photography studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), specialized in men (gay and straight) doing bodybuilding poses or wrestling in pairs. But that thin guise — almost as thin as the posing pouch that his models wore — wasn’t enough to keep him from being convicted in 1947 of unlawful distribution of obscene materials and serving a nine month sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California.

That setback barely put a dent into Mizer’s career. In addition the Physique Pictorial, Mizer added Young Adonis in 1963 and Grecian Guild Studio Quarterly in 1966. When obscenity laws were relaxed in 1968 allowing full male frontal nudity, Mizer quickly adapted with the times. Through it all, AMG was very much a family affair, with Mizer’s mother (her skills as a seamstress was put to use in creating a line of skimpy briefs and posing pouches) and brother (an accountant) playing important roles in the business. Mizer would photograph thousands of men and take nearly a million different images. He also produced over 3000 film titles from the 1950s to the 1980’s, which mostly consisted of film )(and later, videotape) of his photo sessions. He died in 1992, and AMG went dormant for a while. But under new ownership, Mizer’s archives are being catalogued and digitally remastered. Mizer never thought of himself as an artists, but his work has garnered a significant re-appraisal in the past two decades, which influenced artists like Robert Mappelthorpe and David Hockney. The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2004 that “Mizer’s pictures are historically important because they capture a time, place and attitude so vividly that it still seems to be with us. His photographs are inspiring because they were not made to fill a market niche that already existed. Instead, they created the niche and then filled it with aplomb.” In 2009, Taschen Books released the monograph Bob’s World: The Life and Boys of A.M.G.’s Bob Mizer. You can see some of his films on YouTube here.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

This your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?