Is NOM Lying In How They’re Trying To Defend Their Racially Divisive Tactics?

Brian Brown, president of NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, penned an op-ed in the uber-conservative Washington Times today, and decried as “false” the head of the Log Cabin Republicans’ charge that NOM is engaging in racially-divisive tactics.

What’s curious is that not just the R. Clarke Cooper, head of the Log Cabin Republicans, but almost the entire nation, who has denounced NOM’s tactics. Why pick on one person or one small organization? Could it be because it’s an LGBT group? It makes your work so much easier when you frame an argument as if it’s just “the gays” who disagree with you.

“NOM did not create the divide between blacks and homosexual-marriage advocates, and standing for marriage is not standing for division or discrimination,” Brown writes. “Nor is it patronizing for media leaders to treat the heroic stand of the black church against homosexual marriage as a product of hateful politics. Reaching out to blacks and Hispanics who share our view is something conservatives do and should do more of. NOM will continue to reach out to these communities.”

As is his usual strategy, Brown merely tweaks facts and ignores the ones he does’t like. It’s not that NOM is “reaching out” to minority groups, it’s that NOM’s executive board approved a tactic and strategy of pitting minority groups against each other, in an effort as some have said, to create a “race war.”

“The current round of media attacks on NOM for a single line in a 3-year-old document reflects the basic tactic of the political left: Use government to push a new moral norm, and when Americans with more traditional values object, attack them mercilessly, then blame conservatives (especially Christian conservatives) for being “divisive.” Their end game? Silencing the voices of millions of Americans,” Brown adds.

No, again, Brian, you’re wrong.

The media is not attacking NOM for “a single line in a 3-year-old document.” And how is this “using government”?

Since you won’t play fair, since you won’t disclose the truth, I will.

Here are just a few passages the media, and most of America, is denouncing and lambasting NOM for, direct from the unsealed court documents the Human Rights Campaign found and published:

 

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…”

“Expose Obama as a social radical. Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders and parties and develop an activist hase of socially conservative voters. Raise such issues as pornography, protection of children, and the need to oppose all efforts to weaken religious liberty at the federal level.”

“The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity – a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”

“We aim to identify young Latino and Latina leaders, especially artists, actors, musicians, athletes, writers and other celebrities willing to stand for marriage, regardless of national boundaries. …Here’s our insight: The number of “glamorous” people willing to buck the powerful forces to speak for marriage may be small in any one country. But by searching for these leaders across national boundaries we will assemble a community of next generation Latino leaders that Hispanics and other next generation elites in this country can aspire to be like. (As “ethnic rebels” such spokespeople will also have an appeal across racial lines, especially to young urbans in America.)”

For those who wish to do their own digging, here are the complete NOM unsealed court documents — have a look.

The question remains: Is NOM lying in how they’re choosing to defend their racially divisive tactics?