NOM Plots Shocking Strategy to Fan Racial Hostilities
Secret memos exclusively released last night by the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) outline the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) shocking and hateful strategy for fighting marriage equality in states across the country. In short, they planned to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks” by convincing them to fight over the language of “civil rights.” (They also outlined plans to drive a wedge between gays and Latinos.)
Check out the key passage here:
Here are some of the other lowlights from the previously confidential documents:
- Bait Latino voters to oppose marriage equality as “a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”
- Interrupt the “attempt to equate…sexual orientation with race” so that marriage inequality is not perceived as discrimination.
- Draw attention to the “bigotry and intolerance” displayed by equality advocates and “document the victims” through a rapid response media team.
- Emphasize the importance of “religious liberties” to limit the impact of marriage equality’s legislative advancements.
- “Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders” like pornography, “protection of children” and religious liberty at the federal level.
- Expose Obama administration programs that “have the effect of sexualizing young children” or threatening “childhood innocence.”
- “Find, train, and equip young leaders” to become a “next generation of elites” capable of opposing marriage equality.
- Foster closer relationships with Catholic bishops to “equip, energize, and moralize Catholic priests on the marriage issue.”
- Focus on “the consequences of gay marriage for parental rights.”
Progressives were quick to condemn NOM’s shameful and divisive plans:
“Nothing beats hearing from the horse’s mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is. Such brutal honesty is a game changer, and this time NOM can’t spin and twist its way out of creating an imagined rift between LGBT people and African-Americans or Hispanics.”
-HRC President Joe Solomonese
“NOM’s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination. Pitting bigotry’s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together.”
-Dr. Julian Bond, Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP
“If the success of the National Organization of Marriage’s movement depends on stirring up resentment between communities, it might want to rethink its strategies.
“African American men and women of faith are not a political football to be tossed around in a cynical game of resentment and division. We, like all Americans, struggle thoughtfully with issues of faith, family and politics. Anti-equality activists such as NOM consistently attempt to use a deeply cynical ‘wedge’ strategy to divide African Americans and the gay community, playing up what are now old and tired cliches. In the long run, this strategy will falter as African American and LGBT communities continue to work together for equal justice.”
-Minister Leslie Watson Malachi, Director of People For the American Way Foundation’s African American Ministers Leadership Council
“NOM isn’t the first organization to use such cynical marketing ploys, schemes that seem to have little do with the interests of the people they claim to represent, and it certainly won’t be the last. But the revelation of its bald attempt to exploit black people and Latinos should help end the idea that NOM is an honorable group that would never engage in race-baiting. Because that is precisely what it has done.”
–Southern Poverty Law Center
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