But the tactic isn’t always dishonorable. A good talking point can have a great and lasting impact and still be true. We could [...]]]> Occasionally Jon Stewart compiles a montage of far-right-wingers all pushing some little catchphrase (death panels, or shoving it down our throats). These phrases are obviously contrived and distributed. They’re usually empty or false.

But the tactic isn’t always dishonorable. A good talking point can have a great and lasting impact and still be true. We could use one like that now, when a few New York state Town Clerks are refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, while our opponents hail them as heroes of religious freedom.

I’ve come up with something. How does it sound?

In New York, you’ve got state employees demanding you pass their personal religious test before they’ll help you. That’s not religious freedom. In fact, it’s the opposite.

It’s quick, to the point, and true. If I were to point out a key phrase, it would be pass their personal religious test, as in:

• Should you have to pass some bureaucrat’s personal religious test before you get the services your tax dollars paid for?

• Where in the Constitution does it say a government employee can make you pass their personal religious test before getting service?

• Government officials aren’t gods, they’re public servants — they can’t force me to pass their personal religious test before doing their job. 

And if you want to take the conversation further, offer hypotheticals that have nothing to do with gays.

• Do you want a Town Clerk refusing a marriage license to an interfaith couple because they don’t pass his personal religious test?

• Do you want a city official turning down your permit for a public gathering because you’ll have dancing and that doesn’t pass her personal religious test?

• Do you want the zoning committee to turn down your church’s building permit because your faith doesn’t pass their personal religious test?

If you like this approach it, take it. Post it. Share it. Pass it on.

Jon Stewart Makes Fun of RNC Chairman’s Debate

January 5, 2011 – 4:50 pm

That’s his job, and we love him for it. But here’s the interesting thing: He doesn’t dare show any of the ANSWERS [...]]]> I really want to parody this, but I can’t.  I just can’t.  It’s too ridiculous already. This is from NOM’s blog:

Jon Stewart Makes Fun of RNC Chairman’s Debate

January 5, 2011 – 4:50 pm

That’s his job, and we love him for it. But here’s the interesting thing: He doesn’t dare show any of the ANSWERS that RNC chairman candidates made to the question “what’s your best 30-second case for our marriage tradition?”

Kind of telling, huh?

My first reaction was this:
http://wakingupnow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/laugh.mp3

You know what makes it so funny/sad?  The “Kind of telling, huh?”  Without that, I might think NOM was just goofing around, having a laugh.  But no — they’re serious!  They imagine some Daily Show writers’ meeting where Jon Stewart and his team are positively quaking at the thought of broadcasting the 30-second eloquence of such luminaries as Saul Anuzis and Reince Priebus.

Actually, you know what’s really “kind of telling”?  The fact that NOM is once again resorting to silly rhetorical questions — once again pretending to make a point without actually saying anything.  This way they don’t have to tell us what was so dangerous in those 30-second bits.

I’m certainly not scared to present them. Here are those answers, rambling monologues that amount to Marriage is between a man and a woman because marriage is between a man and a woman.  If Stewart didn’t dare show them, it’s because he doesn’t dare broadcast 30 straight seconds (see that pun in there?  heh heh) of mind-numbing, empty boredom.  In fact, you might just want to skip this video and view the one below it, where Stewart has fun with the question itself.

Jon Stewart’s take on the whole debate:

Now this tactic seems to have trickled down to their followers.

On Tuesday, the Human Rights Campaign delivered [...]]]> Our opponents have gotten quite skilled at co-opting the language we use.  Maggie Gallagher and NOM in particular excel at this, calling us hateful, intolerant bigots for daring to disagree — loudly — when they question our basic human worth.

Now this tactic seems to have trickled down to their followers.

On Tuesday, the Human Rights Campaign delivered a 150,000-signature petition to Boyd Packer, a Morman Elder. Here’s what it said:

Dear Elder Packer,

I’m appalled that you chose this moment to deliver a sermon saying same-sex attraction is unnatural and same-sex unions are immoral. You have risked further alienating LGBT youth and potentially contributing to suicides of even more vulnerable young people. You’ve told them that their very identities are “impure and unnatural” and you’ve incited the violence and bullying that often drives them to suicide by repeating lies disproven by both science and the experience of millions of Americans who know their LGBT neighbors and care about them.

I hope you will cease putting young people in real peril and acknowledge the scientific truth: sexual orientation cannot be changed, nor should it be.

You know what NOM supporters are calling this?

Bullying.

I kid you not. Here are a couple comments from NOM’s Facebook page.

And I thought homosexuals were “anti-bullying”. I guess not. Just goes to show how stuck on stupid they really are.

Bullying is a two way street……when gays and lesbians bully others to change their thinking it is still bullying.

Yeah, bullying.  The strategy here is obvious — and dangerous.  Bullying has led to well-publicized gay suicides, wrenching any normal human heart and making decent people wary of our opponents’ casual, horrific, anti-gay propaganda.  Our opponents can’t surrender that propaganda, though, so their only option is to trivialize the concept of bullying itself.  It works like this:

• A petition is bullying.
• Expressing disagreement is bullying.
• Petitions and disagreement are American traditions.
• Bullying is an democratic tradition, an American tradition, an American ideal.
• Opposition to bullying is bullying!

Think that’s ridiculous?  That’s not the path they’re on?  Think again.  Our opponents are already pushing the meme that opposition to intolerance is intolerant.  That opposition to anti-gay bigotry is anti-religious bigotry.

In fact, we see another of these Orwellian turn-arounds in that same comments section.  NOM supporters believe that the act of delivering a petition is an assault on their liberties:

Whata!? I’m not a Mormon, but this is outrageous. This could set a terrible precedent on religious freedom.

How dare the HRC think they have the right to change the faith of an entire religion??! Joe Solmonese is Satan’s Lil helper! This is a perfect example of the evilness in this world. Evil is being shown as righteousness and righteousness is being called evil! SO SICK AND SAD!!!! Stay bold and pray for discernment!

It just goes to show that the activists will not simply be happy with legalization os SSM. They will continue until the government forces all churches to accept and include their lifestyle in each religion’s belief system. This is why the fight is so important.

Are we not living in America anymore? Cause last I heard America had FREEDOM of SPEECH meaning that we could say what we want and not have to re-tract what we said. So why must Elder Boyd K. Packer re-tract what he spoke? Did America all ready leave the earth and I missed the memo??

That’s right folks.  Exercising our freedom of speech violates the principle of freedom of speech.  But even that commenter didn’t go to this extreme:

How astoundingly egotistical for anyone to walk up to someone ELSE’S religion (leaders) and demand that they change THEIR belief!!! (Because that person doesn’t like/doesn’t agree.) DUH!
Thats the most ridiculously laughable thing I ever heard.

Then again, on reflection, its not so far away from Islamic terrorists who demand you change to their way or thinking (believing) or they will kill you.

Signing a petition is not so far from becoming a terrorist.  Given how many signature-collectors linger outside my local grocery, I wonder how this woman manages to buy her milk and bread.

To be fair, NOM’s leadership didn’t write these comments.   Their own official statement is pretty strange, though:

It’s kind of an extraordinary moment. LDS Elder Boyd Packer reiterated the Mormon church’s long-held view that sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is wrong. HRC President Joe Solmonese, perhaps egged on by Judge Walker’s ruling that religious beliefs hurt gays and lesbians, decided to attempt to change the LDS church’s religious doctrines, delivering a petition signed by 150,000 folks telling Elder Packer to change his faith’s tenets.  This is weird, strange new territory.  A signal of where the gay rights movement is headed?

Good Lord, this is unprecedented!  If our ancestors had allowed people to question the religious beliefs of others, our nation might have ended up with a new faith forming  in the early nineteenth century, and we might have later seen this religion struggle to reconcile its marriage doctrine with American law, eventually becoming a church fourteen million members strong — in large part by sending out missionaries to knock on the doors of nonbelievers and question their religious beliefs.

And NOM and LDS surely wouldn’t have wanted that to happen.

The argument is tough to analyze — it changes based [...]]]> We’ve already seen that one of NOM’s favorite claims — that they’re protecting voters’ rights — is just a deceitful pose.  NOM has another argument:  They defend religious liberty against intolerant gays.  Let’s see if that one holds up any better.  [SPOILER ALERT: It does not.]

The argument is tough to analyze — it changes based on whom they’re speaking to.  Writing for the uber-conservative Townhall website, Maggie Gallagher frets that churches will lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to marry gays.  But when addressing an audience less eager to fall into an orgy of anti-gay fear-mongering, she admits, “Clergy may be protected by the First Amendment.”  Though even there, she’s being dishonest in saying they only may be protected.

Still, you’d expect NOM to be happy when the California legislature passes a bill saying,

The bill would specify that no priest, minister, rabbi, or authorized person of any religious denomination would be required to solemnize a marriage that is contrary to the tenets of his or her faith. The bill would state that any refusal to solemnize a marriage under that provision shall not affect the tax exempt status of any entity.

But no, NOM’s unhappy.  NOM’s youth outreach affiliate, the Ruth Institute (“Making marriage cool again!”), says this:

The real intent behind this bill is to make it appear as though it eliminates one of the main objections to same-sex marriage, that it jeopardizes religious freedom, in what gay activists hope will be an effort to get gay marriage on the ballot in California in 2012. They think that doing this will make gay marriage seem more acceptable to the voters of California and make it easier for such an amendment to pass…

The bill modifies several sections of California law and would change the word ‘marriage’ to the phrase ‘civil marriage.’ But a wedding is already a civil ceremony! Again, why would they want to modify these portions of the civil code? Well, the idea is to pave the way for two different kinds of legally recognized marriages: religious marriage and civil marriage.

But you know, the Public Religion Research Institute recently surveyed Californians and discovered support for marriage equality zooms to 61% with a law like this one in place.  It’s what the voters want.  And yet NOM and the Ruth Institute are against it.  Funny — first they condemn us for opposing the vote of the people, and then they condemn us for supporting the will of the people.  It’s almost as if…as if…as if NOM would condemn us no matter what we do.

Okay, so it’s not about clergy.  Then what is NOM worried about? Maggie keeps bringing up Catholic Charities of Boston, which shut down adoption services because it could no longer legally discriminate against married same-sex couples.  Maggie considers this a violation of Catholic religious freedom.  Hmm.  Where does this reasoning take us?

Same-sex marriages are just one type of marriage the Church refuses to recognize.  The Church will recognize as valid a marriage between, say, a Lutheran and a Methodist conducted in a Methodist church.  But it will not recognize a marriage between a Catholic and a Methodist conducted in a Methodist church.  Now, Massachusetts law forbids Catholic Charities from discriminating against such a couple, even though the Church doesn’t view the marriage as valid.  Yet Catholic Charities never threatened to shut down adoption services over it.  Why not?

Oh, hell, let’s go even further.  I had this email exchange with Maggie in April, 2009 (I’m in italics; she’s in bold):

Do you believe that accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior is necessary in order to go to Heaven?

Thanks

I believe that the only way to the Father is through the Son.

Is the a mass email or a personal question directed at me?

(Do I know you?)

Maggie

This is not a mass email, but your work has been in the news lately and I’ve been curious about your religious beliefs, since most of your work seems to focus on secular evidence about marriage.

Thanks for your quick reply.  Your answer could have several meanings, though.  I’m not sure if your answer means that one must accept Jesus as one’s lord and savior in order to be granted access to Heaven.  Is that what it means?

I believe God sent his Son to die for us and it is only through Jesus that we are saved.

And that God does not force salvation on anyone so yes we have to choose to accept Jesus.

Maggie

Thanks for the clarification.  I hope you don’t mind if I share this with others who might be wondering as you continue your work.

My faith is not a secret so sure.  (I am a Roman Catholic)  Maggie

Thanks.  I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, too, and was an altar boy even.

There’s one thing that some of my Jewish friends find troubling about this issue.  They interpret it as a statement that Jews cannot go to Heaven unless they convert.  That offends them.  Is there a way to counter that belief (does God give an exemption for his Chosen People) or is this something that has no wiggle room?

That would be up to God, not me.

That’s what I found troubling about your question: I don’t put restrictions or issue edicts to God about what is necessary for Him to save people.

I believe he sent his Son to do this.  Maggie

Near as I can tell, Maggie thinks only Christians can go to Heaven, unless God grants a special exception.  The implication for adoption is clear, then:  Placing child with Jewish parents (for instance) would put that child’s eternal fate in jeopardy.

So does Maggie think Catholic Charities should be allowed to discriminate against Jews?  I’ve never heard her say so.  I doubt that she does believe so, even though it’s a clear implication of her rhetoric about religious freedom.  It’s almost as if…as if…as if she only cares when it comes to teh gays.

That’s bad enough, but as is so common with NOM, it gets even worse.  Go back to the Ruth Institute article about California’s religious liberty bill, and you’ll find this worry:

[W]hat about the county clerk who refuses to conduct gay marriages because of his faith…

Wow.  They’re no longer talking about clergy, or charities, or even some random private individual.  They’re talking about a government employee, hired to provide services to the American public, and paid with taxpayer dollars.  They think government employees should be able to freeze out any  American citizen they like, as long as they can shout, “Religion!”  And still keep their jobs.

As far as I know, NOM complains a lot about religious freedom, but they’ve never fully defined the  protection they’re looking for.    Would they dare?  Because I think it comes down to something like, People can ignore any law they want if they can give a religious pretext for doing so.

Wait, that’s not right.  If that were right, then people of faith would be able to do any religious thing they wanted — even marrying same-sex couples despite state law to the contrary.  And we know NOM doesn’t want to extend that liberty, no matter how religiously motivated.

Geez.  It’s almost as if…as if…as if NOM’s vision of religious liberty consists of allowing people to do whatever NOM wants them to do.

No wonder they’re so vague.

They referenced World Net Daily.

NOMblog has an entire entry quoting [...]]]> It’s clear that ever since Brian Brown stepped in for Magger Gallagher at the National Organization for Marriage, the group is becoming more and more of a fringe organization.  Even so, they surprised me today with an entry on their blog.  You know what they did?

They referenced World Net Daily.

NOMblog has an entire entry quoting 9 paragraphs of a WND editorial.  That’s astounding.  If you’ve never heard of WND, that’s because they’re waaaay on the extreme edge of America’s political conversation.  Take a moment and scroll down their homepage to see what I mean.  Not only did they publish a forged “Kenyan” birth certificate for Obama, not only did they break a “story” about secret emails between Obama and the Kenyan government, not only do they search for reasons to call Obama a Muslim, but they still haven’t given up on birtherism. 

Birtherism.

And, of course, as you might expect, they hate teh gays.  They long for the good ol’ days when homosexuality was illegal, and they present video commentary saying Uganda is right in its attempt to execute gays.

Oh, and they worry Obama wants to create Nazi-style concentration camps for political opponents in the US.

As far as  I know, NOM has never linked to WND before.  This is a huge change in tone for them.  Frankly, from a strategic point of view, it doesn’t even matter what the article said.  Merely citing WND is enough to call your credibility into question, even in some quarters of the Right.

Under Maggie Gallagher’s leadership NOM labored mightily to be seen as a serious organization, the kind CNN might call on for a debate about marriage equality.  Now that Brian’s in charge they seem increasingly politically tone-deaf, like a drowning organization flailing in every direction for something to grab on to.

What on earth could make them so desperate?

Please share if you like it.  Note that the Closed Captioning button is active if you want subtitles.

In Great Britain, thanks to a new ruling, the principle of nondiscrimination now trumps religious liberty and common sense. [...]]]> Brian Brown is enough to make me (almost) respect Maggie Gallagher.  Brian has taken over some of Maggie responsibilities at the National Organization for Marriage, and he just posted this on NOM’s blog:

In Great Britain, thanks to a new ruling, the principle of nondiscrimination now trumps religious liberty and common sense. Catholic adoption agencies will be closed unless they agree to place children with gay couples on an “equal” basis.  No preferences for the natural family are permissible any longer, even if it means fewer orphaned children find good homes. The sky is not falling, because the sky never does fall, but there is a large crack opening up in our civilization’s foundations.

I didn’t even bother to see whether Brian has the story right, because it’s ludicrous and nasty even if you take it at face value.

First, the ludicrous part.  Brian thinks expanding the pool of potential adoptive parents will result in fewer orphans getting adopted.  However, this reasoning — oh heck, I’m done.  I can’t point out the illogic any better than that.

The nasty part was this:

No preferences for the natural family are permissible any longer…

Emphasis added.  Now when Maggie says crap like that, she’s using making some offensive (and wrong) comparison between biological and adoptive parents.  But Brian here isn’t making that particular distinction.  He’s saying opposite-sex adoptive parents make families that are natural, while same-sex adoptive parents make families that are…not.

When Maggie ran NOM, she tried to maintain the fiction that the group had nothing against gays or our relationships.  NOM’s primary concern was allegedly to create the best environment for children (even if she couldn’t back that up with facts).  Animus against gays had nothing to do with it.  Here’s Brian, though, not only telling gay couples that they’re, well, unnatural, but telling kids that their whole family is unnatural, too.

(Am I being unfair here?  “Unnatural” is such a loaded term.  This is usually the part of the interview where Brian sweats and cackles and stammers, “I didn’t mean, uh, unnatural, I just, uh, meant, not natural.”)

I’m ready to believe Maggie agrees with Brian on this.  She’s savvy enough not to say it, though.  Savvy enough to spin her message in positive terms.  She talks about what NOM is for and tries to avoid saying what they’re against.  But Brian’s clumsy.  His real feelings are easier to see, and under his leadership NOM will find it tougher to duck charges of bigotry and hate bias and disdain.

Gay marriage advocates are now hoping for a technical knockout — for the 9th Circuit to rule that the voters of California have no standing to challenge Walker’s ruling. This may be a sign they understand how extreme and [...]]]> Maggie Gallagher must really be struggling in her search for good news. She posted this yesterday:

Gay marriage advocates are now hoping for a technical knockout — for the 9th Circuit to rule that the voters of California have no standing to challenge Walker’s ruling. This may be a sign they understand how extreme and weak Walker’s ruling actually is, how unable it is to withstand substantive review by higher courts. Ted Olson goes on TV claiming he has proved there’s no possible case for opposing gay marriage. Now he’s in court trying to block any higher court from reviewing his handiwork.

Does that sound like the behavior of people with an airtight logical case to you?

Actually, Maggie, it sounds like the behavior of a lawyer who won a spectacular victory against your side, achieving everything he wanted (and more), and who would love for the decision to stand exactly as is. Seriously, Maggie, have ever heard of a lawyer who wanted his complete and utter demolition of his opponent to go on to appeal?

Here’s an old piece of advice Maggie should keep in mind next time she’s tempted to write a column: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.