I’ve been working to try to understand the recent arguments America’s Right Wing has been trying to make against marriage equality. If you have been following the reports from Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal trial that will determine the constitutionality of Proposition 8, or have read, “Gay People Cannot Be Allowed To Marry Because Straight People Cannot Be Trusted?,†my piece detailing the, dare I say, “ridiculous†arguments America’s Right Wing is using against same-sex marriage, you’ll know what I’m talking about. But even well before Prop 8, America’s conservatives have been actively involved in maintaining second-class citizenship for gay and lesbian Americans.
Whether you have or you haven’t been following along, let me share with you (even more of) the reasons why I say America’s Right Wing’s anti-marriage equality arguments are, indeed, ridiculous.
Love And Money. Especially Money is part four in our week-long series, America’s Right-Wing’s Ridiculous Anti-Marriage Equality Arguments. Come back tomorrow for the final installment: part five: The Purpose of Marriage.
Part Four: Love And Money. Especially Money.
America’s Right Wing is blessed with a rich and deep treasure, and treasurer. The Church, be it Catholic, Christian, Evangelical, Baptist, or Mormon, has endowed the creators of the hate-fest against the LGBT community with unabashed riches. That the Mormon Church could spent $27 million to buy the results of California’s Prop 8, and that Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage continues to refuse to divulge its funding sources is amazing. That politico-religious hate-based organizations like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defense Fund, the Family Research Institute, the American Family Association, and others are not only able to exist but to thrive is troubling, and terribly disturbing.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, is “a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.” It lists more than a dozen “Active Anti-Gay Groups” and in their “Intelligence Files,” they write,
“For Christian Right leaders, the gay rights movement and its so-called “homosexual agenda” are the prime culprits in the destruction of American society and culture. In the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the battle against gay rights is essentially a “second civil war” to put control of the U.S. government in the right hands, meaning those who reject gay rights.
“The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing homosexuals as “perverts” with “filthy habits” who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and “convert” them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging “facts” about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the “bestial” black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.”
The question really has to be, who is funding all these hate groups, be they more “mainstream,” like the National Organization for Marriage, or more radical and, by definition and design, according the the SPLC, a true “hate group,” like the Family Research Institute?
It’s no surprise that four of the top ten stories in the list of Top Ten Religion Stories of 2009 were about gays — and not necessarily in a positive, supportive way. And it’s also no surprise that the donors who supported the efforts to repeal Prop 8 were aghast, (so aghast they brought a lawsuit,) that their names were in the public domain.
How, exactly, is it that the Mormon Church was able to spend a reported $27 million in support of California’s Prop 8, not to mention all the volunteer work and in-kind donations they provided?
Californians Against Hate believes that the Mormon Church actually created the National Organization for Marriage.
“The Mormon Church appears to have created the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in the summer of 2007 to qualify California’s Proposition 8 for the November 2008 ballot. They set it up as a Mormon front group, exactly as they did with a very similar organization called Hawaii’s Future Today (HFT) in that state in 1995. HFT was established to pass a constitutional amendment in Hawaii to ban same-sex marriage. Sound familiar? They have now expanded NOM into seven more states, specifically to fight same-sex marriage in those states.”
By it’s own admission, “NOM was the largest contributor to qualifying Prop 8 to the ballot and is helping raise funds to defend its constitutionality.”
NOM describes itself as “a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.” In other words, “give us your money because marriage and religion are in danger from the gays.”
But imagine what will happen when same-sex marriage becomes law. What will happen to NOM? Will it disappear? Their entire business model is dependent upon “protecting marriage” as one-man, one-woman. That will be a challenge to them, but the closer we get to the visible possibility of marriage equality, the more money NOM will make, because of the fear they are able to instill in America’s wealthy Right Wing.
Make no mistake. The religious wars (better known as “the Crusades”) waged by the Holy Roman Empire have given way to a far less-violent but costly and hateful war against the LGBT community. The Church in America can afford to hide and spend untold millions against gays, same-sex marriage, and the “homosexual agenda.”
Love And Money. Especially Money is part four in our week-long series, America’s Right-Wing’s Ridiculous Anti-Marriage Equality Arguments. Come back tomorrow for the final installment: part five: The Purpose of Marriage.
(image: kevindooley)