Juxtaposition: NOM’s anti-gay strategy revealed
Here’s a quick compare and contrast exercise for you. First, an excerpt from a slobberingly fawning profile of Brian Brown, Executive Director of the National Organization for Marriage. Second, highlights from the newly-unsealed internal NOM strategy documents, marked confidential. Note that both these were written at roughly the same time. (Emphasis added throughout.)
Washington Post Profile
But this country is not made up of people in the far wings, right or left. This country is made up of a movable middle, reasonable people looking for reasonable arguments to assure them that their feelings have a rational basis.
Brian Brown speaks to these people. He has a master’s degree from Oxford, and completed course work for a doctorate in history from UCLA. He shoulders the accusations of bigotry; it’s horrible when people say that your life’s mission is actually just prejudice. He tries to help people see that opposing gay marriage does not make them bigots, that the argument should have nothing to do with hate or fear, and everything to do with history and tradition.
The reason Brian Brown is so effective is that he is pleasantly, ruthlessly sane.
[…] Bishop Harry Jackson, the Beltsville pastor who has been one of the most vocal gay marriage opponents in the area, sees a happy partnership between his followers and Brown’s group. Jackson says Brown and NOM “have a sense of dignity about human beings. They simply believe that marriage between a man and a woman is the best for society. But they’re not gay bashers.”
[…] He takes nothing personally. He means nothing personal. He is never accusatory or belittling. His arguments are based on his understandings of history, not on messages from God that gays caused Hurricane Katrina.
Unsealed, Confidential NOM Strategy Documents
Gay marriage is the tip of the spear, the weapon that will be and is being used to marginalize and repress Christianity and the Church. What does the gay marriage idea mean once government adopts it? It means faith communities that promote traditional families should be treated in law and culture like racists. It means that the authority of parents to transmit moral values to children will be eroded.
If marriage is going to be preserved as between a man and a woman in the United States, two things must happen: the pro-gay agenda of President Obama must be defeated in 2012, and it must be replaced by one that expressly articulates a pro-marriage culture.
Expose Obama as a social radical. Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders and parties and develop an activist base 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 (www.americanprinciplesproject.com)
In addition, APP has launched a project to contact Congress on keeping the Guantanamo prison open and in opposing the appointment of Kevin Jennings to the Safe Schools position at the Department of Education.
[from The Latino Project: A Pan-American Strategy] Our ultimate goal is to make opposition to gay marriage an identity marker, a badge of youth rebellion to conformist assimilation to the bad side of “Anglo” culture.
THE STRATEGIC GOAL OF THIS PROJECT IS TO DRIVE A WEDGE BETWEEN GAYS AND BLACKS-TWO KEY DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUENCIES. FIND, EQUIP, ENERGIZE AND CONNECT AFRICAN AMERICAN SPOKESPEOPLE FOR MARRIAGE; DEVELOP A MEDIA CAMPAIGN AROUND THEIR OBJECTIONS TO GAY MARRIAGE AS A CIVIL RIGHT; PROVOKE THE GAY MARRIAGE BASE INTO RESPONDING BY DENOUNCING THESE SPOKESMEN AND WOMEN AS BIGOTS. NO POLITICIAN WANTS TO TAKE UP AND PUSH AN ISSUE THAT SPLITS THE BASE OF THE PARTY. 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.
WE HAVE LEARNED HOW TO MAKE THE COERCIVE PRESSURES ON RELIGIOUS PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS AN ISSUE IN THE UNITED STATES. WE WILL USE THIS KNOWLEDGE TO RAISE THE PROFILE OF GOVERNMENT ATTACKS ON THE LIBERTIES OF RELIGIOUS PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS IN EUROPE, BOTH FOR INTERNAL DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION IN EUROPE AND TO HALT THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS GAY MARRIAGE WORLDWIDE. OUR GOAL IS TO PROBLEMATIZE THE OPPRESSION OF CHRISTIANS AND OTHER TRADITIONAL FAITH COMMUNITIES IN THE EUROPEAN MIND.
And according to the memos, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Indiana are next. They’ve already introduced the ballot measure for a constitutional amendment in North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, the amendment has stalled in the state legislature again. In Indiana, they’ve managed to get a discriminatory amendment passed by one legislature; it needs to be passed again in 2014 before it will come to the voters in 2014.
