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A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Wednesday put support for gay marriage at 53 per cent, its highest level yet. Opposition fell to a new low of 39 per cent. The increase in support was driven by an 18-per-cent jump (to 59 per cent) among African-Americans, but the small sample size of black voters may have skewed the results.
“There is not a chance in God’s green earth that African-Americans support same-sex marriage,” Frank Schubert of the National Organization for Marriage said in response to the poll. (Blacks have traditionally opposed gay marriage more than whites.)
Because, you know, black people uniformly support one political position. Since they’re black and all.
However this turns out, it’s certain to be an incredible and ridiculous sight.
It is my contention that homosexual practice is a more serious violation of Scripture’s sexual norms than even incest, adultery, plural marriage, and divorce.
-Rob Gagnon, new speaker for NOM’s Ruth Institute
“I asked Maggie if she was still living in New York, and she told me that she moved to Washington, DC nearly three years ago. What about her husband Raman Srivastav? She allegedly married this East Indian man 19 years ago after living as an unwed mother for 11 years. No one has ever seen Maggie with Raman. Wonder if they really did get married? If so, maybe so he could get a green card?”
Karger also flags the absence of a wedding ring on Gallagher’s finger.
NOM in panic after whistleblower leaks major donors: John Templeton, Knights of Columbus and more
Yesterday, the National Organization for Marriage issued a press release calling for a federal investigation of the Human Rights Campaign and the Internal Revenue Service. This follows the publication last week of a portion of NOM’s 2008 tax return (PDF) provided to the Human Rights Campaign by a whistleblower. The document lists dozens of major donors from that year. NOM president Brian Brown now claims: “It’s clear that the tax return was stolen, either from NOM or from the government.”
While the majority of media attention has been focused on a $10,000 donation by Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong America political action committee, much greater contributions were made by a number of other donors. The largest donation on the list was $450,000 from John Templeton, president of the John Templeton Foundation. The foundation is best known for its grants to scientists whose research supposedly demonstrates the compatibility of science and religious belief, and it’s been criticized for blurring the lines between science and religion. Another $100,000 was given by Josephine Templeton. John Templeton also donated $1.1 million to pass Proposition 8 in California.
$250,000 came from the Knights of Columbus, an organization for Catholic men which also gave $1.4 million to pass Proposition 8. An additional $25,000 came from the California State Council Knights of Columbus. $172,500 was donated by Terry Caster, the chairman of Caster Companies, which owns A-1 Self Storage. Another $83,700 was given by other members of the Caster family. The Caster family also donated nearly $700,000 to pass Proposition 8. $150,000 came from Michael Casey, president of the Delivery from Heaven Foundation in Rhode Island, whose purpose is “to make contributions to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations”. And $100,000 was given by Sean Fieler, chairman of NOM’s American Principles Project, which campaigned to keep the Guantanamo prison open.
These are only a handful of NOM’s donors, yet this one document dating from 2008 has them calling for a federal investigation. This is what they don’t want us to see: the people and organizations enabling them to take away the rights of American citizens. NOM and their donors wanted to deny us our equality with no accountability whatsoever, and increasingly, it looks like that’s not going to be so easy. So far, this hasn’t been a very good year for NOM. Let’s hope there’s a lot more where that came from.
I think I finally get what the argument is, why it’s usually so opaque, and what all the ancillary business about the supposed “natural complimentarity” of the genders had to do with it. Gallagher ultimately conceives of marriage as a sort of Noble Lie: Her argument seems incoherent because if the rationale for structuring the institution in a certain way is stated explicitly, it ceases to function, which is why she becomes so oblique when she reaches what ought to be the core of her case.
Gallagher’s core concern is that people both see marriage as intrinsically desirable and automatically connected to childbearing and childrearing. This is, in essence, the only reason she thinks it’s a matter of public or governmental concern. The problem is that to state explicitly that marriage is about regulating sexuality for the purpose of childrearing evidently gives people insufficient incentive to take part in it. So you need a broader mystique of marriage—one that makes it about love and fulfillment as well.
This sets up a tension. I think Gallagher’s view is something like this: If you’re too explicit about marriage (as a civil, legal institution, anyway) being just about regulating procreation, it loses the mystique that pulls people into it. So you can’t just reserve the institution for people who have or are having children. Marriage, on this account, is a little like the “here comes the plane, flying into the hangar” game you play with an infant when you want him to eat his strained spinach. If you’re too overt about the function of the game, it won’t serve that function.
Today HRC got a hold of internal NOM documents that shed light on the anti-LGBT movement’s overall strategy. These documents were just unsealed in Maine mid-afternoon. The docs are part of the ongoing investigation by the State of Maine into the campaign finance activities of NOM in that state. …
“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…”
“The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: 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 - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”
Because a bunch of white people are the ones who should decide what Latino identity means.
Reality: Another gay person against all marriage!
Bindel says: “[Gay people gaining the ability to marry] is really, quite frankly, a waste of time and effort. [Some] will be surprised at me saying this but, I would like to abolish marriage for everyone and say that we should have the right to civil partnership should we so wish.
So, the National Organization for Marriage, which dedicates itself to “protecting marriage”, is willing to cite someone who’s “against gay marriage” only because they oppose marriage entirely? How does that possibly fall under being “for marriage”?
Dirty little secrets
Don’t tell anyone that the Bible supports slavery, or NOM will throw a fit and demand your withdrawal as a state Supreme Court nominee.
