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?
It looks like Maggie leaving was the worst thing that could possibly happen. How many could have proedicted that she was single-handedly keeping NOM vaguely respectable? It looks like they’ve now shifted to the fast-track to the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups.
I expect that NOM is going to go bust in the next few months considering that they have been ruled against in several state courts making them divulge their funders. These people don’t want to be exposed for some reason (I suspect it’s because the funders are the hierarchy in the Mormon and Catholic churches). They are also going to have to pay for the Prop 8 trial. They are on the brink of closing their doors and are desperate.
Maggie is an unattractive woman whose life apparently has little purpose and she has no marketable talents. She’d been extremely irrelevant, but for taking on a controversial subject that doesn’t need her for it to be that way.
Brian Brown has seven little mouths to feed. His children could be shorted in the best of times even if he kept himself to home to attend to the needs of his family.
But he’s using a redundant cause to short his children even more of his time and effort with them.
Look at the demographic that represents NOM. The crowds were virtually all white, middle aged to elderly and with little cultural diversity. BB and MG themselves are colorless people who lack charisma. And this is true of their roster of speakers. Using a member of the King family who isn’t especially very bright, doesn’t seem to faze them.
These are strident people whose message is being taken to places where most voters feel satisfied their work is done, especially in the majority states where ss marriage is still illegal.
Their tour, is remarkably redundant. And in the midst of worries of layoffs, lacks in affordable health care and the cost of college educations. Maybe people were realizing that gay people aren’t a factor in those concerns. And married people are married, will be and aren’t affected in that quality whether gay people are or not.
There are much more urgent things to worry about. There are people who have lost sons and daughters to ambiguous wars that have lasted longer than any conflict in American history.
NOM is spending a lot of time and money trying to be relevant. And will use all manner of hyperbole, lies, scaremongering and tantrums to do it.
And when it’s all said and done, most people, I’m sure…even the few who did show at those rallies might wonder, what is NOM really doing anyway?
Mykelb has a strong point, I think.
I have a feeling those investors are about to be found out, so they want action and they want it NOW. So NOM is using the spaghetti method, throwing everything they can, even things they used to be “above” hoping something will stick.
They’re probably about to loose some major contributors, too, who either don’t want to be connected to NOM.
Checked out the home page, the most disturbing thing for me was that Triple A was a sponsor, having a banner ad on both sides of the page. Thinks they’ll be getting a phone call.
-Roger
[...] liars. But there’s another possibility. NOM’s president Brian Brown is, after all, a colossal screw-up. Perhaps he doesn’t know his Constitution very well. Perhaps he [...]
[...] liars. But there’s another possibility. NOM’s president Brian Brown is, after all, a colossal screw-up. Perhaps he doesn’t know his Constitution very well. Perhaps he [...]