Haters caught out

In the video above, MSNBC’s David Shuster interviews Brian Brown, the executive director of the hate group National Organization for (man-lady) Marriage. In the interview, Brown makes outright lies and distortions.

Brown mentioned catholic adoptions in Massachusetts and a New Jersey methodist group’s tax troubles, even though both cases have absolutely nothing to do with same sex marriage—the cases involved ordinary anti-discrimination laws. And his facts were wrong, too, as has already been explained.

The main reason for the interview, though, was that NOM was caught out making a deliberate distortion: In their latest ad, they invite people to go to their website “to read about the legal conflicts that scholars say gay marriage creates”. One small problem: As David Shuster pointed out, those scholars didn’t actually say that. Instead, they really said there might be problems without exemptions for religions. This was a deliberate distortion.

Brown also makes the absurd claim that Americans “overwhelmingly oppose” same sex marriage. That’s a lie. CBS News poll, April 27, 2009: 42% say same-sex couples SHOULD be allowed to marry, 25% support Civil Unions, and a mere 28% say there should be no legal recognition. Technically, you could say a bare majority—53%—don’t support marriage equality, but you could equally say that Americans overwhelmingly—67%—support some sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll (April 30, 2009) found that 49% of Americans support marriage equality and only 46% oppose it—the first time they’ve found supporters outnumbering opponents. The new poll found that a majority—53%—believe that same sex marriages performed in one state should be recognised in their own state (as the US Constitution actually requires).

So, when NOM and other rightwing christianists claim that Americans “overwhelmingly oppose” marriage equality, they’re completely wrong. I have no doubt that they’re aware of that fact, but they deliberately ignore the truth because the truth is that they’re losing. This means that they’re lying.

Shuster manages to get Brown to admit the real purpose of NOM. While Brown admitted that two men or two women in a relationship don’t affect any heterosexual’s marriage, he argued that if same-sex couples are allowed to marry, it will mean that their relationships will be as legitimate as heterosexuals’. That would mean that gay and lesbian people will have to be treated as equal citizens. NOM’s real agenda, then, has very little to do with opposing marriage equality: Their real goal is to keep gay and lesbian people second-class citizens and the victims of religious bigotry and oppression.

This is why NOM is a hate group. Their board is loaded with right wing religionists—one of whom is an extremist among extremists, calling for criminalisation of homosexuality and overthrowing the government if same-sex marriage is legalised (by the way, the technical term for that is “treason”). This is why so many normal people refer to the people of NOM as “NOMnuts”.

There’s no doubt that the incompetent and delusional NOM has provided hours of entertainment to normal people, and their first ad quickly became one of the most parodied videos on YouTube. But these people are not a joke—they’re a dangerous hate group, using the language of the left to try to portray themselves as “victims” when they are, in reality, oppressors and religious bigots.

Fortunately, there are plenty of people who will no longer let hate groups like NOM get away with lying and spreading religious bigotry. That’s a great development—for all sane and rational people in America.