That’s great to know.  The current president of NOM disagrees with those of his supporters who want to lynch gays.  Now all I’m waiting for is a reply to my February email to NOM’s founder, Maggie Gallagher:  when a beauty pageant contestant called for the death of gays, [...]]]> Brian Brown is against the lynching of gays.

That’s great to know.  The current president of NOM disagrees with those of his supporters who want to lynch gays.  Now all I’m waiting for is a reply to my February email to NOM’s founder, Maggie Gallagher:  when a beauty pageant contestant called for the death of gays, why was your first response to praise her for standing up to hate?

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is just as important to the child as to the caterpillar.

They have a point.

But that doesn’t mean they’re right.

I have to admit, that graphic was not my most intellectual effort.  When I saw the [...]]]> Some people have given me flack on my NOM logo redesign.  They say it’s unfair because the original sign, the one with the his-and-his nooses, did not come from the NOM leadership.

They have a point.

But that doesn’t mean they’re right.

I have to admit, that graphic was not my most intellectual effort.  When I saw the original sign, my clock got punched and it felt like the only thing to do was yell.  But you know what?  I held back.  Before anything else that morning, I checked NOM’s reaction to the sign.  I checked NOMblog.  I checked NOM’s Facebook page.  I checked NOM’s Summer Tour Facebook page. 

I saw nothing. 

I’ve written before about how hard, how satisfying, and how hard it is to do write about these people (and yes, it is satisfying).  But you can only crawl through so much hateful crap, you can only address so much of it in a logical and factual and analytical way, before you’ve got to yell.   And when I saw that sign, I had to yell.

Now that I’ve calmed down (it’s sad how learn to quickly get over that stuff:  Oh, just another fanatic who wants us dead.  Tell him to get in line.) I have to ask whether I’ve been fair to NOM.  Can I hold NOM responsible for every nutjob who shows up in public with a sign?  No, of course not.  Rather, if I’m going to eviscerate NOM, I have to do it based on NOM’s choices.  Ultimately, though, that’s not hard to do.

I know what it’s like to throw a rally.  My first action as an activist was to organize a peaceful candlelight vigil/food drive in December 2008 to honor our lost marriage rights.  It wasn’t easy to do this one month after the Prop 8 vote and a lot of people hassled me for not being more confrontational.  I even saw a commenter on Queerty threaten to hijack the protest and make it more in-your-face.  I saw that he was a friend of a friend on Facebook, arranged to meet, and talked him down.  Hell, I convinced him to talk others down.  At our vigil (headquartered at a Christian church, by the way), we provided a storage area for confrontational signs.  We gave each group a briefing on the peaceful goals of the protest before sending them onto the streets, and we had reps on all the sidewalks to keep the messaging clear.

We did this with 500 protesters, 10 – 20 times the crowd NOM has drawn.  And we got the positive news coverage to prove it (even from the local FOX affiliate!).

That gives me a foundation for critiquing how NOM dealt with Larry Adams at this rally.  Here are the choices NOM should have made:

• When the sign appeared, a NOM rep should have gone to Adams and explained the peaceful, non-hating philosophy that NOM claims to spread.
• If Adams refused to put the sign away, they should have done the same thing with him that they do with other people they disagree with: send him from the immediate area.
• When Adams’ sign hit the news, they should have disavowed him as a supporter and explained why they didn’t ask him to pull back from inciting violence against gays.

Here’s my take on what NOM actually chose:

• Several people from NOM warned Adams to be careful in what he said to video cameras on our side, or not to talk to us at all.  Yet none of them asked Adams to put away his gay lynching sign.
• Even though NOM has consistently been willing to exile those they disagree with from their rallies — to point of involving the police — NOM chose not to exile Adams.
• Brian Brown and his fellow NOMmers have repeatedly praised the behavior of their supporters and condemned pro-equality protestors as hateful and intolerant.  It’s NOM who’s pushing the notion that people’s actions at these rallies reveal the character of the side they support.  But NOM has had nothing to say about Larry Adams.
• Finally, this wasn’t NOM’s first chance to address Adams’ favorite passage from Leviticus.  When a beauty contestant said gays “shall surely be put to death,” Maggie Gallagher’s only public reaction was to praise her for standing up against hate.  Yeah, you read that right.

These are all NOM’s choices.  They’re ugly choices.  Brought to you by your friends at NOM.

Sometimes ya just got to yell.

I had an email exchange with NOM president Maggie Gallagher.  By now you’ve probably heard the following quote from Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills (trying to become Miss California [...]]]> The current ruckus isn’t NOM’s first intersection with people who want to kill gays.  Here’s a repost of a blog entry from last February.

I had an email exchange with NOM president Maggie Gallagher.  By now you’ve probably heard the following quote from Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverly Hills (trying to become Miss California and then Miss USA):

The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says, “If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.”

Best case:  She doesn’t realize she’s saying we should kill gays.  Worst case:  She wants to kill gays.

Either she’s either dumb as a box of tiaras or she’s utterly craven.  She’s also easy to dismiss  — I mean, the city of Beverly Hills says there is no such contest or title, exposing her as a fraud.  As so often happens, conservative Christian moralists violate their morality while moralizing.

Then we get this statement from Maggie Gallagher:

I’m not surprised that Miss Beverly Hills, Lauren Ashley, opposes gay marriage — after all 45 percent of young Californians voted for Prop 8, as did 7 million Californians generally.  But I have to say, I am impressed with her courage in coming forward and for speaking up for Carrie. The elected officials of city of Beverly Hills are not demonstrating tolerance or kindness by continuing the avalanche of hatred against supporters of Prop 8.  [emphasis added]

Some interpret this as a total endorsement of Lauren’s statement.  I try to be factual here, so I did the obvious thing.  I wrote to Maggie.

I recently read your comments about Miss Beverly Hills on the Fox news website:

[And here I inserted the quote directly above.]

I feel certain that this cannot be your entire quote, since you’re responding to Lauren Ashley’s statement that gays shall surely be put to death.  Could you please let me know the full version of your quote, so that we can all be clear on where you stand on the “surely be put to death” portion?  Thanks.

And Maggie wrote back.  Here’s her full response:

No i’m not.  Maggie

What?

I was so confused, I first thought she was telling me she’s not Maggie.  Then perhaps:  No, I’m not going to let you know the full quote.  Finally, giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe:  No, I’m not a supporter of Lauren’s “surely be put to death” stance.  Of course, it’s a dangerous thing, giving Maggie the benefit of the doubt.  So I asked her to clarify.

Maggie, thanks for the quick response.  But I don’t know what you  meant by “No I’m not.”  Did you say anything about Lauren Ashley’s “surely be put to death” comment that Fox left out?  Or have you issued comment elsewhere?  I haven’t been able to find anything and would really appreciate knowing.  Thanks.

No response so far.  I’ll update this if I get any.

But let’s give her that benefit of the doubt and assume she doesn’t want gays put to death.  It’s still scary portrait, in miniature, of her mental landscape:  Maggie hears a mini-sub-almost-not-celebrity advocating death for gays…and her only response is to praise the speaker for taking a stand against hate.

Gay activists treat Americans who disagree with them about same-sex marriage like bigots.

They want to use the law to suppress and marginalize and stigmatize.

It’s just shameful and wrong for these activists to try and portray good Americans in that way.

That’s why the hatred…the [...]]]> Here’s Maggie Gallagher repeating her current strategy heartfelt reasons for opposing gay marriage:

Gay activists treat Americans who disagree with them about same-sex marriage like bigots.

They want to use the law to suppress and marginalize and stigmatize.

It’s just shameful and wrong for these activists to try and portray good Americans in that way.

That’s why the hatred…the harassment…the attempts to bully have actually created a huge echo chamber of people flocking to the National Organization for Marriage.

Aaaaand, here’s a sign from NOM’s Indianapolis rally, at which Maggie spoke.

That was yesterday. No comment from NOM yet. While we’re waiting, I mocked up a new logo for NOM. I hope they like it.  Here’s their old logo…

NOM's orginal logo

And here’s the redesign:

Finally, here’s an interview with the man who brought that protest sign:

H/T to Bilerico Project.

There was one couple (one of those bolder [gay] couples who came into the rally [...]]]> Poor Maggie Gallagher.  She hired active bigot Louis Marinelli to run the NOM Marriage Tour, and he just keeps screwing up.  In his description of the Columbus, Ohio, tour stop he spits in the face of adoptive parents everywhere:

There was one couple (one of those bolder [gay] couples who came into the rally itself) who were particularly disappointing. The two men decided not to just attend the rally but they brought a baby with them. Notice I said ‘a baby” because it isn’t “their baby”. It was clearly adopted. They were white the baby was not.

There you go:  Adoptive parents aren’t allowed to say their baby is “their baby.”  Seriously, my Mom and Dad adopted my brother before I was born, and if you ever told my Mom that my brother wasn’t her baby — oh lord, even Mama Grizzlies (real ones!) wouldn’t have been able to stand up to that fury.

But perhaps Maggie won’t disavow this comment.  She’s not afraid to sacrifice adoptive parents in her quest to ban same-sex marriage.  She loves to say that traditional marriage is how children can “love and be loved by their own mother and father” — meaning their biological mother and father.

NOM can’t get away from this ugly disdain for adoptive parents.  It’s the only way they can claim our families aren’t really families, worthy of all the rights and protections that “real” families enjoy.  NOM isn’t just bigoted against gays and lesbians.  They attack a good many straight married parents, too.

H/T to boxturtlebulletin.

A deliberate disinfo campaign has convinced tons of people that Ugandans want nothing short of gay genocide.  I decided to look deeper.  This isn’t my opinion, this isn’t Rick Warren’s opinion, this isn’t even MSNBC’s monolithic gay opinion.  This is what’s in [...]]]> Molotov Mitchell is the far-right video commentator who tells lies about Uganda’s Kill-the-Gays Bill:

A deliberate disinfo campaign has convinced tons of people that Ugandans want nothing short of gay genocide.  I decided to look deeper.  This isn’t my opinion, this isn’t Rick Warren’s opinion, this isn’t even MSNBC’s monolithic gay opinion.  This is what’s in the bill.  Uganda’s anti-gay bill formally extends the death penalty to homosexuals who commit pre-existing capital crimes.  They are as follows:

#1 — Pedophilia or sexual abuse of the handicapped.

#2 — Knowing that you are HIV+ yet continuing to spread it to others, and

#3 –  Using positions of authority to coerce others into performing sexual acts.

That is it.  That’s as far as the “genocide” goes.

“A deliberate disinfo campaign”?  Really?  Here’s a quick reality-based recap:

• The bill applies the death sentence to anyone with multiple convictions of having gay sex.
• It also sentences to death people convicted multiple times of not ratting out their gay friends (even if they themselves are straight).

I had a Facebook conversation on Mitchell’s wall yesterday pointing out his mistakes and posting a link to my Uganda video.  He answered:

Sorry Rob, but you’ve got shady info. There are multiple versions of the bill, even one that has no death penalty at all. The version I was discussing was the same one Pastor Ssempa was (and is?) supporting. The Left Wing is touting early versions and even fake versions of the bill, but they’re wrong. No bill calling for the execution of straight people will be presented or passed.

I told him what a relief that was.  I asked for a link to his version.  Can you guess the first words of his reply?

I don’t have a link, sorry. The version I was referring to was the one Ssempa was championing. He explained it to me over the phone. As you probably know, the bill has a lot of pressure to change various aspects and according to our friends on the ground, that is how different versions have been discussed among parliament members.

I based my video on discussions and emails with Ugandan rep’s.

He explained it to you over the phone?

I wrote:

Wait — you haven’t even read the bill?  Then there’s no way you should have said in your video,  “This isn’t my opinion, this isn’t Rick Warren’s opinion, this isn’t even MSNBC’s monolithic gay opinion.  This is what’s in the bill.” You can’t say something like that unless you’ve actually read the bill yourself.  Your video is very misleading.  You’re just repeating some politician’s spin without confirming it yourself.

At that point he defriended me (I can’t blame him for that) so I can’t read his wall.  But Facebook sent me an email notification that he’d posted this:

No Rob, I read the bill and communicated what was in another version, which is what Parliament will actually be voting on. I have contacts that MSM sometimes doesn’t, and this is one of those instances.

Wait and see what the final version, the version they will actually vote on, says. You will see that I’m right.

Click to view our exchange.

Can we sort this out?

• Apparently he read the original bill, so he knew all about the death penalty provisions.
• Nevertheless, he claims there’s been “a deliberate disinfo campaign” about the bill.
• This campaign led the sponsors to change the bill, even though there was nothing to change, because it was all disinformation to begin with.  So…they…changed it to take out stuff that wasn’t there?  What?
• Mitchell’s comments on the bill were based on some new secret version that he can’t share because he hasn’t read it, but he’s had some really nice telephone conversations with someone (who’s not a member of the Uganda parliament).
• When he told his viewers, “This isn’t my opinion…This is what’s in the bill,” he failed to tell them he wasn’t talking about the real bill that’s been introduced, but some altered future hypothetical version.  Which he hasn’t seen.
• Presenting factual information about the official version of the bill is “a deliberate disinfo campaign.”

I’m going give this kind of messy thinking a name, because I run across it so much:  the argument ex contradictio, or “argument from contradictions.”  It happens when you defend a statement by uttering another statement that contradicts the one you’re trying to defend:

• I can tell you exactly what’s in the bill…even though there are multiple, conflicting versions of the bill.
• A deliberate disinformation campaign has led us to take out the material that our opponents falsely said was there.

The argument ex contradictio is hard to refute precisely because it’s such a mess.  Your listeners have a to juggle conflicting statements, experience confusion, and then rise above the confusion to recognize that confusion is exactly what your opponent is trying to sow.

I wrote the other day how the truth about marriage equality helps us and hurts the other side.  We’ve got a similar case here:  our opponents are counting on confusion, while we strive for clarity.  Guess which one’s easier to achieve.