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Opinion: Anti-Semitism Also Part Of NOM’s Hateful Wedge Strategies

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When a judge ordered the release of the so-called National Organization for Marriage’s anti-gay, race-baiting strategy documents, the towering civil rights leader Julian Bond said, “It confirmed a suspicion that some evil hand was behind this.”

The NOM strategy document said, apropos of NOM’s obnoxious “Not a Civil Right” gay-bashing campaign: “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks— two key Democratic constituencies.”

NOM’s hate document also stated that “Fanning hostility” — between anti-gay African-Americans, and LGBTers — (many of whom, of course, are African-Americans) — is “key” to its War on Gays.

The deliberate, shameless, disingenuous lying that NOM officials have been doing about their wedge strategies since the documentation was released only confirms that those officials are absolutely despicable gay-bashing bigot monsters.

Just as NOM’s race-baiting strategies involving African-Americans and Hispanics were manifest and evident before the release of that documentation, it has for a long time been manifest and evident that NOM uses similar, ruthless tactics involving other minorities.

NOM is not entirely antisemitic per se — NOM co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Robert George‘s wife was born to a Jewish family — but National Organization For Marriage bigots exploit antisemitic sentiment in parts of the population, when doing so advances NOM’s War on Gays.

Often, NOM is confined to using dog whistles for Jew haters, because in some parts of the U.S. today, antisemitism is viewed as unacceptable, so can not be spoken forthrightly out loud, in the manner NOM gay bashes daily at the top of their lungs.

What is the historical background of anti-Semitism in the United States? How is NOM able to profit from hatred of Jews?

In colonial Maryland, it was illegal not to believe in Jesus; the third offense got non-believers the death penalty. Jews did not have the vote in the state until 1826, and even then, to vote, they had to sign a paper saying they believed in an afterlife. The reason the United States first had “Jewish” hospitals, was that most Anglo-Saxon-led hospitals would not hire Jews. In the 20th century, most top universities placed maximum quotas on Jews permitted to enter, so there would not be “too many.” The stereotype by which all Jews are rich — and not coincidentally, viewed with suspicion — in this society, that all too often views with contempt the plight of its poor — distracts from the fact that there are indeed poor Jews living in the United States.

My point would be that while antisemitism is far from being the most severe of anti-minority bigotries in America, it exists. The white supremacist vote is a key swing Republican vote; you will almost never hear a Republican candidate unambiguously condemning white supremacists. And, white supremacists hate Jews at least every bit as much as they hate blacks. There are many such groups, with enough supporters that former KKK Grand Wizard and Republican Louisiana State Representative David Duke has been able to make a career off of Jew haters.

President Richard Nixon frequently disparaged Jews. He was especially fond of pointing out that among American conscientious objectors who would not fight in his dirty southeast Asian war — (where innocent men, women and children were maimed and killed with napalm) — Jews were “disproportionately” represented. Understand what Nixon was doing; he was cultivating support for his dirty war among antisemitic Americans — who already thought of Jews as being “not really American” — by leading them to think that the Jewish conscientious objectors were “anti-American.”

On an international level, Jews have been maligned — and often still today are maligned — as the masterminds of world capitalism, socialism and communism.

NOM, of course, is eager — very eager indeed to exploit antisemitism towards anti-gay political ends.

During Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, South Carolina’s Senator Lindsey Graham made a point of asking the Jewish nominee where she had been on Christmas. That was a dog whistle for anti-Semites. Nothing about Graham’s question was relevant to her qualifications.

NOM, too, uses dog whistles for anti-Semites. Last week, when the First Circuit court found DOMA unconstitutional, NOM’s Brian Brown said: “It’s obvious that the federal courts on both coasts are intent on imposing their liberal, elitist views of marriage on the American people.”

“Coast,” “liberal,” “elitist;” Brown was using the dog whistles to suggest “Jews.” Notice that Brown talked about the “coast,” “liberal,” “elitist” judges “imposing” equality “on the American people,” (as though gays were not part of the American people, and as though “coast,” “liberal,” “elitist,” (bigot dog whistle code for: Jews) were not part of the American people; this is similar to Nixon’s dirty trick of hinting that Jews are not real Americans, or even perhaps, that they are anti-American, simply because of a progressive human rights-related view.

Brown and NOM have few if indeed any evidence-based, constitutional arguments to make against equality — (in talking about “elitist coast liberals,” they conveniently forget to mention that Iowa judges ruled for equality) — but now NOM seeks to identify — in their gay-bashing bigot followers’ minds — federal court votes for equality with “Coast,” “liberal,” “elitist;” — you know, like Elena Kagan. Where was she on Christmas?

Sometimes NOM subcontracts the antisemitism to its best friends, in hopes of avoiding having the accumulated stench of all of it sticking only to NOMzis. In the Kagan confirmation matter, for example, NOM was raucously beating the drums against Kagan. One NOM online donation form actually allowed donors specifically to give money to “expose” Senators who were supporting Kagan. Notice 1) that Vision America’s Rick Scarborough has appeared at conferences together with NOM’s Brian Brown and Jennifer Roback Morse, and then notice 2) that NOM friend Rick Scarborough published a piece titled Elena Kagan and the War Against Christianity.  Get it? Kagan equals Jew equals a war against Christianity. Nice! Logical!  Here, if you can bear to look at them, are photos of a conference attended by NOM’s Maggie Gallagher and John Eastman along with their very close anti-gay bigot ally Phyllis Schafly.  What did Schafly say to demonize nominee Elena Kagan? Schlafly used, as a weapon against Kagan, that Kagan as Dean of the Harvard Law School once had invited — as a speaker — former Israeli Supreme Court Judge Aharon Barak, who favors equality.  Schafly, obviously, calculated a value to smearing Kagan with her association with another Jew who not only favors equality, but also happens to share, with the man who nominated Kagan, the Middle Eastern-sounding name Barak/Barack. And, there was a broader, fraudulent effort among U.S. Christian, anti-gay reactionaries to tar-and-feather the Jewish Kagan with the Jewish Barak and the Jewish Barak with the Jewish Kagan.  It was a giant “Where were you on Christmas?” festival. Despite Kagan having once referred — for reasons of her own — to NOM’s Robert George as one of the country’s “most respected legal scholars,” NOM was busy ripping Kagan a new one, accusing her left and right of “sabotaging” a DOMA-related case as Solicitor General. (Meanwhile, after House Speaker John Boehner appointed Robert George to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, he was sworn into that office by the Jewish woman his Catholic NOMzis had pursued with unrelenting vengeance, Justice Elena Kagan).

How else is NOM willing to exploit hatred and resentment of Jews in order to further its War on Gays?

Maryland State Senator Anthony Muse, an anti-gay African-American minister, works closely with NOM, who have made robo-poll calls for him. The stated aim of the robo-polls was “to identify marriage equality opponents who they can push to support Mr. Muse in the Democratic Primary.”

Look what Muse did here. He created a campaign flyer that suggested President Obama had endorsed Muse in the 2012 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, when in fact, Obama had endorsed the incumbent Senator Ben Cardin, a Jew who has co-sponsored legislation to repeal DOMA. The Muse campaign flyer shows the “Composition of the 112th Senate,” purportedly broken down by race. There are no African-American U.S. Senators. On whom does Muse pin the blame for that? On the Jews. His racial breakdown gives “White” and “Jewish” as separate races. The Muse hate document shows that there are 84 “white” Senators, and that “whites” are 62% of the U.S. population, and it shows that there are 12 Jewish Senators, and that Jews are 1.8% of the population, while blacks are 12% of the population.

This sickening, cynical hate document has NOM’s fingerprints all over it. We know that NOM actively planned to “drive a wedge” between other minorities; we know that NOM said that “fanning hostility” between minorities is “key” to its strategy. The Muse pamphlet very conspicuously sought to “drive a wedge” and to “fan hostility.” Remember; NOM’s goal in the Democratic primary was “to identify marriage equality opponents who they can push to support Mr. Muse in the Democratic Primary.” Having identified Democratic marriage equality opponents — many of them African-Americans — Muse sought to stoke African-American resentment and/or hatred of Jews by separating whites from Jews as “races,” and showing that while there are fewer Jews than blacks in the population, there are 12 Jewish U.S. Senators, but no African-American ones. Of course, the Jew-clobbering strategy was dependent on Muse’s opponent, Senator Ben Cardin, being a Jewish LGBT equality supporter.

Cardin won the primary, but NOM’s involvement in the Muse campaign left the area poisoned with elevated antisemitic feeling and enhanced hatred of gays and lesbians.

NOM’s boycott of Starbucks, because of Starbucks’ support for equality, also manifests appeals to antisemitism. Microsoft and Apple are at least as dedicated to LGBT equality as Starbucks, but Bill Gates and Tim Cook are not Jewish, while Starbucks’s Chairman Howard Schultz is. Do you get it? “Coast,” “liberal,” “elitist;” “Schultz.” The NOMzi gay-bashers simply can not get enough of saying his name, either, because in American Jew haters’ minds, the words “coast,” “liberal,” “elitist,” and “Schultz” just naturally are a fit for negative stereotyping and resentment. Maggie Gallagher — who has deliberately and shamelessly lied about NOM’s race-baiting strategies — published an article about Schultz and Starbucks in the National Review. It’s title? Church of Starbucks, with the conspicuously Jewish-sounding complete name Howard Schultz mentioned twice.  Do you get it? Jews don’t go to churches — and Gallagher is mocking Schultz’s heritage, beliefs and philosophy by talking sarcastically about Schultz’s Jewish, pro-gay-rights “Church of Starbucks;” this is another NOM antisemitic dog whistle. “Starbucks is no Christian church,” Gallagher seems to be telling her readers, “and this homosexuals-loving Jew Howard Schultz sure as hell doesn’t go to any other Christian church, either,” she seemingly implies. If Gallagher now attempts to deny that she was making a calculated appeal to the anti-Semites in her NOM base, just tell her to shut her lying mouth.

Does this mean that NOM will not now come up with one of its outlier nutbag gay-bashing Jewish supporters to say they do not mind all of this intentional appeal to antisemitism?  Meet NOM’s loony friend Yehuda Levine, who says that acceptance of gays causes God to send earthquakes. Not exactly consensus Jewish-American thinking.

NOM’s international presentation of its Starbucks boycott, too, relies on appealing to hatred of Jews. That NOM has translated its anti-gay hate materials into Arabic and placed them online, for consumption in those countries that have barbaric, murderous anti-gay attitudes at the official government level, is in itself detestable.

Yet additionally, the complicated Starbucks corporate picture in the Middle East must be taken into account. Firstly, it is essential to know that standard-issue Arab propaganda says that all homosexuality in the Middle East is the “fault” of Jewish Israelis. There are no Starbucks in Israel. You can find some anecdotal reports, not necessarily credible, alleging that the Israelis simply did not take to Starbucks coffee. It is possible, meanwhile, that in order to gain entry to the wider Middle East market, Starbucks entered into tacit agreements not to set up shop in Israel. However that may be, NOM has stepped into the Middle East picture, identifying Starbucks as a Jewish-led company that — horror of horrors — supports gay rights.

Get it? NOM is hoping to simultaneously stoke resentment of Jews and Israel, to Middle East populations that widely allege that all homosexuality in the Middle East is the “fault” of Jewish Israelis. NOM’s malevolent intent to deal Starbucks fatal blows, no matter what it takes, is evident. Extremely troubling is NOM’s publication of maps showing the precise locations of every Starbucks in Saudi Arabia, and other such places, with instructions for gay-bashers — who in those environments, could eventually turn out to be suicide bombers — to go to those mapped locations to protest Starbucks’s support for gay marriage.  There is no chance that Saudi Arabia is about to institute marriage equality; so think about NOM’s broader, evil goals in pushing its Starbucks boycott in such a place.

Additionally, it is hardly a coincidence that in its fund-raising video starring the “Spirit Day” gay basher Daniel Glowacki, NOM prominently featured this gay Jewish reporter’s articles about the lying Glowacki.

NOM of course also is stoking anti-Muslim bigotry in order to advance its War on Gays; that will be the topic of a future article.

NOM is comprised entirely of monsters.

And oh — I almost forgot. NOM’s founder Robert George also is founder of the American Principles Project. George sent Thomas Peters — also involved with both NOM and the American Principles Project — to attend a conference in Poland hosted by the notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Father Tadeusz Rydsyk. Rydsyk’s “Radio Marija” once mounted an on-air defense campaign for a cleric charged with child molestation and anti-Semitism.

This tells us everything we need to know about Robert George’s and NOM’s “Principles.” And the amoral Mitt Romney has a lot to answer for, as regards his signature on the hateful NOM pledge.

Remember what Julian Bond said about the document — had only through court-ordered release — that confirmed NOM’s despicable tactics:  “It confirmed a suspicion that some evil hand was behind this.”

New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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News

‘Vulgar and Lewd’: Trump Judge Cites Extremist Group to Allow Drag Show Ban

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A federal judge in Texas known for a ruling that attempted to ban a widely-used abortion drug is citing an extremist anti-LGBTQ group in his ruling allowing a ban on drag shows to stay in place.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former attorney for an anti-LGBTQ conservative Christian legal organization, and a member of the Federalist Society, in his 26-page ruling dated Thursday cited the “About” page of Gays Against Groomers to claim, “it’s unclear how drag shows unmistakably communicate advocacy for LGBT rights.”

Judge Kacsmaryk, appointed by Donald Trump twice before finally assuming office in 2019, suggests the First Amendment does not provide for freedom of expression for drag shows, calls drag “sexualized conduct,” and says it is “more regulable” because “children are in the audience.”

READ MORE: ‘The Public Deserves to Know’: Abortion Pill Banning Judge Redacted Details About Millions of Dollars in His Stock Portfolio

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern adds, “Kacsmaryk’s conclusion that drag is probably NOT protected by the First Amendment conflicts with decisions from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Montana which held that drag is constitutionally protected expression. It also bristles with undisguised hostility toward LGBTQ people.”

Calling the judge “a proud Christian nationalist who flatly refuses to apply binding Supreme Court precedent when it conflicts with his extremist far-right beliefs,” Stern at Slate writes that Kacsmaryk ruled drag “may be outlawed to protect ‘the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.’ In short, he concluded that drag fails to convey a message, while explaining all the reasons why he’s offended by the message it conveys.”

Stern does not let Kacsmaryk off the hook there.

“From almost any other judge, the ruling in Spectrum WT v. Wendler would be a shocking rejection of basic free speech principles; from Kacsmaryk, it’s par for the course. This is, after all, the judge who sought to ban medication abortion nationwide, restricted minors’ access to birth control, seize control over border policy to exclude asylum-seekers, and flouted recent precedent protecting LGBTQ+ equality,” Stern says.

READ MORE: Far-Right Judge Under Fire for Failing to Disclose Interviews on Civil Rights – but LGBTQ Community Had Warned Senators

“He is also poised to bankrupt Planned Parenthood by compelling them to pay a $1.8 billion penalty on truly ludicrous grounds. And he is not the only Trump-appointed judge substituting his reactionary beliefs for legal analysis. We have reached a point where these lawless decisions are not only predictable but inevitable, and they show no sign of stopping: Their authors are still just settling into a decadeslong service in the federal judiciary.”

West Texas A&M University President Walter V. Wendler penned the letter that sparked the lawsuit.

Titled, “A Harmless Drag Show? No Such Thing,” Wendler wrote: “I believe every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, a person of dignity. Being created in God’s image is the basis of Natural Law. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, prisoners of the culture of their time as are we, declared the Creator’s origin as the foundational fiber in the fabric of our nation as they breathed life into it. Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not.”

Journalist Chris Geidner concludes, “It’s an extremely biased ruling by a judge who has established that he does not care about being overturned — even by the most conservative appeals court in the nation.”

READ MORE: ‘Corruption of the Highest Order’: Experts ‘Sickened’ at ‘Definitely Bought’ Clarence Thomas and His ‘Pay to Play’ Lifestyle

 

 

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News

Gaetz Praises GOP Congressman Who Echoes His Call for Change ‘Through Force’

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U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL). largely seen as pushing Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s Republican-majority House of Representatives toward shutting down the federal government, is praising and promoting remarks made by a freshman GOP lawmaker that appear to suggest the use of violence. U.S. Rep. Eli Crane‘s comments, posted Friday (below), call for change “through force,” remarks echoing Congressman Gaetz’s recent comments which were denounced by an expert on authoritarianism as fascistic.

“The only way we’re going to see meaningful change in this town is through force,” wrote Congressman Crane, Republican of Arizona atop a three-minute video in which he frames what is now an almost guaranteed government shutdown as a “spending fight.” In his video he says, “the only way you’re gonna get any change in this town is through force.” Gaetz in August had said, “we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.”

Congressman Crane is a former Navy SEAL. He has promoted the false “Big Lie” conspiracy theory that there was massive fraud in the election President Joe Biden won, and called “on the state legislature to decertify the 2020 election.” He is one of six House Republicans who voted against McCarthy’s speakership all 15 times in January.

READ MORE: White House Mocks GOP With ‘Worst Person You Know’ Meme After Matt Gaetz Blames McCarthy for Shutdown

“Congressman Eli Crane is a fountainhead of political courage,” said Rep. Gaetz Friday afternoon. “He holds the line.”

Crane recently came under fire for calling Black people “colored,” during debate on his legislation that would force the U.S. Armed Forces to not use any diversity requirements in its hiring practices.

READ MORE: ‘Corruption of the Highest Order’: Experts ‘Sickened’ at ‘Definitely Bought’ Clarence Thomas and His ‘Pay to Play’ Lifestyle

Just days before he won his House seat last year, The Washington Post reported Crane had urged an “audience to look up an antisemitic sermon at a recent campaign stop.”

“Crane said that he was motivated to run because of ‘radical ideologies that are destroying this country’ and that he was most concerned about ‘Cultural Marxism,’ which the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as an antisemitic baseless claim gaining traction on the American right.”

“He encouraged the audience to watch a speech by a right-wing pastor who blamed cultural change on a group of German Jewish philosophers and condemned Barack Obama for having a ‘homosexual agenda.'”

“If we don’t wake up,” Crane said, according to the Post, “if we don’t study what they’re doing, and if we don’t put people in influential positions that understand what this war is all about, what they’re trying to do and have and have the courage to call it out, we’re going to lose this country.”

In August, while standing next to Donald Trump at a campaign rally, Congressman Gaetz said, “Mr. President, I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country. They are opening our borders. They are weaponizing our federal law enforcement against patriotic Americans who love this nation as we should.”

“But we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C. And so to all my friends here in Iowa, when you see them come for this man, know that they are coming for our movement and they are coming for all of us.”

At the time, Raw Story reported, “historian and author Ruth Ben-Ghiat called Gaetz comments alarming.”

READ MORE: Pete Buttigieg Just Testified Before Congress. It Did Not Go Well for Republicans.

“What he is saying is that they are not going to have change through elections or through legislation or through reform. They are going to have change through violence,” she warned.

“And that’s how fascists talk,” Ben-Ghiat added. “So, even if Trump is out of the picture, these are people who have adopted methods very familiar to me as a historian of fascism, that violence and corruption and lying that’s what the party is today.”

 

Image via Shutterstock

 

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COMMENTARY

‘See How Easy That Is to Say?’: GOP Mocked for ‘Weaponization’ of DOJ Claims as Democratic Senator Gets Indicted

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The U.S. Dept. of Justice unsealed an indictment against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez late Friday morning, accusing the New Jersey Democratic lawmaker of bribery as prosecutors showed photos of gold bars and nearly half-a-million dollars in cash stuffed into a jacket that bears his name and the seal of the U.S. Senate.

Many on the left immediately demanded Senator Menendez resign, a demand he is refusing. He will step down as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, which Senate Democrats require when a chair is criminally charged.

It took little time for liberals to mock Republicans who have been claiming President Joe Biden and Democrats in general, along with the “deep state,” have “weaponized” the Dept. of Justice against conservatives, especially after Donald Trump’s four indictments on a total of 91 criminal felonies.

“Let me get this straight,” wrote journalist and progressive SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah. “To the GOP, when DOJ indicts President Biden’s son and a senior Democratic US Senator that is great. But when DOJ indicts Donald Trump for attempting a coup and for 32 counts of Espionage that is DOJ’s ‘weaponization’ of criminal justice?!”

READ MORE: Pete Buttigieg Just Testified Before Congress. It Did Not Go Well for Republicans.

“This is the second time that Sen. Bob Menendez has been indicted for corruption. He needs to resign and allow Gov. Murphy to fill that vacancy with someone who does right by the people of New Jersey,” wrote former Human Rights Campaign press secretary Charlotte Clymer. “See how easy that is to say, GOP?”

Journalist, author, and former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin posted video of the prosecutor announcing the indictment.

Boykin later sarcastically commented, “There goes Biden again weaponizing the Justice Department to prosecute political leaders in his own party.”

“President Joe Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice has now indicted Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and *checks notes* Joe Biden’s son,” observed veteran intelligence officer, activist, and social media personality Travis Akers.

Attorney and former Republican George Conway quickly responded, saying, “senile sleepy Joe is playing 65-dimensional chess again.”

READ MORE: ‘Sexy’: Comer Obtains Unredacted Emails to VP Biden Revealing Women ‘Privately Mused’ They Found Him Attractive

“Menendez should resign. Today,” demanded historian and author Kevin M. Kruse.

“One of the nice things about rule of law is that truly believing in it ensures that you don’t end up as a partisan hypocrite,” observed The Atlantic’s Brian Klaas, an associate professor in global politics at University College London. “If Menendez is guilty, he should go to prison as anyone else would. (And it would be prudent to resign swiftly).”

Meanwhile, some used Friday’s indictment of Sen. Menendez to focus on other political figures.

Foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf, warned, “The Memendez case should have Jared [Kushner] and Clarence [Thomas] ordering extra strength Tums today.”

Rachel Bitecofer, the political strategist and analyst also appeared to point the finger at Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni.

READ MORE: ‘Total Breakdown’: House Sends Members Home – Experts Warn ‘Republicans Can’t Govern’ And Have No ‘Working Majority’

 

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