Opinion: NOM’s Maggie Gallagher And Her ‘Wall of Hatred’
Nobody should expect any integrity from the National Organization of Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher, who routinely lies her head off to further her group’s hateful message that gays are sub-humans undeserving of rights.
NOM’s denial of gay people’s humanity is manifest in, for example, an all-day anti-gay hate fest held at Liberty University, where William Duncan, who is with NOM’s Ruth Institute, held a session titled “Homosexuals or Homo sapiens; Who Deserves  Protected Class Status.”
Get it? NOM tells people that gays are not human.
Nonetheless, no matter how low you believe NOM may already have sunk, you can be sure it will always sink lower.
Gallagher, for example, just last month published on The National Review a transparently duplicitous post “Is Maggie Gallagher a Victim?”
The post is classic Gallagher, lying through her teeth while talking out both sides of her gay-bashing bigot mouth. She quotes Andrew Sullivan who said: “Listening to Maggie Gallagher this week, you may be struck by how she sees herself as the victim.†Gallagher of course does not inform her readers of the context in which Sullivan made his observation; she does not even link to his post. His post is titled “The Politics of Spite.” He describes spitefulness in Gallagher’s motives, and then says that despite her spiteful anti-gay motives, Gallagher disingenuously is claiming victimhood. Gallagher jettisons Sullivan’s idea, plucks out of it his observation that she likes to paint herself as a victim, and then instructs her followers to say that they are victims, of a “Wall of Hatred” coming against them from homosexuals.
Sullivan of course was on to something essential about Gallagher in her current gay-bashing bigot’s evolution, but what he was on to needs further clarification.
The point is not that Gallagher cares most about portraying herself as a victim, though that is indispensable to her and she will not stop doing it. The most important thing to understand is that Gallagher is communicating to the anti-gay bigots in her target audience the dirty-tricks strategy by which they should fraudulently claim victimhood, the better to attempt to run a steamroller over gay people’s civil and human rights. In fact, as we are gong to see, Gallagher’s post is a gross dirty trick, telling her readers that no, she does not consider herself a victim — though Sullivan (and many others) have caught the pathological liar portraying herself exactly that way — but that they — her Godly followers who know about sins and abominations — are facing a “wall of hatred” from homosexuals who — as NOM has already reminded them, and reminded them, and reminded them — are not human and do not deserve rights.
Gallagher actually says that it would be “absurd” for her to claim to be a victim — and it is absurd — but the fact is, she has been very actively portraying herself as a victim, to get her gay-bashing bigot followers to think of themselves as victims of homosexuals. The hateful hypocrisy is towering, and Gallagher’s intent to instruct her bigot audience, to give them their marching orders, transparent. Gallagher is in essence telling her followers “You are victims of the homosexuals. Go forth and tell everybody that in our fight to defend our unwillingness to let the government extend anti-discrimination protections to homos, we are the victims.” Gallagher’s behavior in this is a textbook case study in scapegoating a minority.
It must not go ignored that standard NOM propaganda will say that the organization is concerned only with the issue of marriage, yet in Gallagher’s post, we read that the alleged “Wall of Hatred” is “now directed at anyone who opposes gay marriage or traditional understandings of sex and gender.” Â Make notes to yourselves; Gallagher has said she is on the warpath over “traditional understandings of sex and gender.” If you do not act precisely as Gallagher and her bigot henchman believe you should be acting, according to their expectations for your gender, look for them to clobber you. Who knows? Maybe Gallagher can develop a side-interest in getting Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden banned from school libraries; the novel has androgynous characters who engage in gender play-acting.
Remember, NOM and Gallagher want every last gay person stuffed back into the closet, and for no gay person ever again to mention the notion that a gay person should have rights. Gallagher has said that she is “unwilling” to live in a country with anti-discrimination protections for gay people. In her 2001 column “Fixing Sexual Orientation,” Gallagher insultingly called homosexuality a “dysfunction,” and referred to homosexual orientation as a “lifestyle choice.” She praised Dr. Robert L. Spitzer as “a brave man” for having carried out an unscientific, biased study about “pray away the gay” quackery — a hoax which Spitzer has since unambiguously renounced and apologized for. Wayne Besen and others of Truth Wins Out have frequently asked whether Gallagher will acknowledge that Spitzer admitted his “study” was a hoax; Gallagher’s silence is deafening.
Maggie are you there? Surely you have noticed that many people are asking if you will acknowledge Spitzer’s apology for his hoax. Where are you? Why are you silent on this?
One of Gallagher’s aims is to annul by force the marriage of every last same-sex married couple in the United States, with no empathy for her victims. Gallagher the gay-bashing bigot, in fact, wants to inflict hurt. Gallagher wants to lead an army of gay-bashing bigots to inflict harm on innocent people they do not even know. An anti-gay bigot is by definition malicious and sadistic, beating down cruelly on the minority, and alleging that unless the minority is beaten down, the bigot will not be able to live, and civilization will end. What is it, if not cruel, to organize heterosupremacists en masse with the goal of forcibly ending loving gay couples’ marriage recognition? In what other circumstances have we heard of a bigoted majority organizing to take away the rights of a minority?
Like a cockroach, Gallagher is a dark night feeder, grabbing up and digesting all of the nastiest, most unhygenic morsels of bigotry she can find in the blackness, and in the process, contaminating the living environment for others, leaving behind her a trail of bigot debris. When light shines on her bigot lies, she scampers away, to lie in wait for her next feelers-waving, skittering, repulsive attack on the environment.
Repeatedly on national television, Gallagher caught out in her absolutely endless lies has claimed she never said such things, but then immediately, the documentation that she did indeed say such things is found and published by multiple bloggers. With her lies, she has disgusted U.S. Congresspeople during hearings; she knows no shame. Her fellow bigots love her; no decent person would. She is, in spirit, a nexus of horror of every schoolyard anti-gay bully who shoved a victim into lockers and yelled “Fag!” at them. Gallagher may not use the word “Fag!” in public, but if you examine the aggregate of her thought, it has the precise meaning of “God hates fags!” Why else, at an Evangelical university — where it is endlessly emphasized that one must “accept Jesus” — Â are we seeing NOM officials leading such sessions as “Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens; Who Deserves Protected Class Status?“?
Gallagher in her post talks about an alleged “wall of hatred” that meets people trying to block gay rights. She has the unmitigated gall to allege that the “wall of hatred” defines the marriage equality movement. Let that sink in a minute, that Gallagher the pathological bigot liar is instructing her bigot followers to say that the gay rights movement is about hatred, that gay rights supporters are motivated above all by hatred. Let it sink in, what Gallagher is doing, how she is lying about, and inciting others to lie about, gay human beings’ motivations in wanting their rights. Immediately after marriage equality passed in New York in June, 2011, Gallagher began organizing a “protest” of the first marriages, which were to take place on July 24.
New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén DÃaz — whom Gallagher calls her “hero” — participated in the protests of the marriages. Just two months earlier, DÃaz had looked on and smiled at a NOM-sponsored anti-gay hate rally in the Bronx where a NOM-approved speaker told the mob that homosexuals are “worthy to death.” At the July protest against the love relationships of other people — (gay people whom DÃaz and Gallagher think are sub-human and “worthy to death,” only because they are homosexual) — DÃaz told his gay-bashing followers, with Gallagher nearby, that to gather strength to fight the horror of the same-sex marriages, he wanted them to feel filled with the Holy spirit, as did the apostles in the days following the resurrection. Gallagher is instructing her bigot followers and donors to feel intense resentment that the disgusting fags and lezzies have even dared to ask for rights. According to Gallagher and her hero DÃaz, this is God’s world, God hates fags, and fags have no business asking for a Constitution to be based on ungodly civil laws. Gallagher and DÃaz cultivate in their bigot followers the notion that these loathsome abominations in God’s eyes should not even be daring to impose a request for rights on them– when they so rightfully are not willing to live in a country that gives sub-human fags and lezzies anti-discrimination protections — and all of that proves that they, as followers of God’s word — should not have to face this wall of hatred from fags and lezzies daring to ask for rights that they so clearly do not deserve as sub-humans. The fag-and-lezzie movement for “special” rights has nothing to do with fags and lezzies; it is all about sub-human homos wanting to mount a wall of hatred against you, a heroic, God-fearing defender of civilization.
Let us be clear about this. On July 24, 2011, when gay couples were first able to marry in New York, for those couples, the day was all about love. Many couples together for decades celebrated their decades together by finally getting married, and their heterosexual family members, friends and associates joyously celebrated with them, thrilled that state-level sexual orientation apartheid in marriage had finally come to an end. The day was about love. The gay marrying couples and their gay and heterosexual family member, friends and associates were not mounting a “Wall of Hatred” against Gallagher and her bigot goons. Gallagher should tell it to The Horse Marines. Along with Gallagher, the Westboro Baptist Church came to New York to protest the marriages. And, it must be noted that one of the Westboro protesters held a sign that said “Thank God for 9/11.”  Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University — (where NOM’s William Duncan held a session on the theme that homosexuals are not human) — blamed gays for 9/11 and said that the attacks were “probably deserved.” After heavy criticism for those remarks, Falwell walked them back, only later to tell CNN’s Christine Amanpour — shortly before he died — that he was standing by them. That is the company NOM keeps, while fraudulently alleging that homosexuals are sub-humans “worthy to death” mounting a “Wall of Hatred” against NOM and its associated fanatics.
Gallagher simply has no shame. Where same-sex American couples are able to marry, she is in the malevolent fight of her life to get their marriages annulled against their wills, and to prevent all additional same-sex couples from marrying — ever  — whereas no outsider — Not. A. Single. One.  —  is trying to dissolve her marriage to Raman Srivastav. Yet the gay-bashing bigot has the nerve to say that the marriage equality movement is not about live-and-let-live. She organized protests of marriages — marriages! — (who protests a marriage?) — on a day when she could instead have been helping the homeless — indeed, she refused my offer to help her to do so — and now, here she is riling up her bigot following, fanning their hostilities against gays, telling them that gay rights are not about live-and-let-live. What bad thing would have happened to this nasty piece of NOM work, if she herself had lived-and-let-live, instead of protesting on the happiest day of other people’s lives — people this gay-bashing propaganda witch does not even know? If Gallagher is so interested in “live-and-let-live” — if live-and-let-live is a virtue she values — then why did she organize a protest of other people’s marriages, and spend the day of the protest far away from her cipher husband Raman Srivastav, and their son Bair Srivastav, who, as a junior-league bigot, gay-bashes on Facebook?
Gallagher has zero interest in helping people to have richly-developed, satisfying, enduring loving relationships. She does not in her person know anything about such relationships; she spent time separated from her cipher husband Raman Srivastav, dragging their child back and forth between different houses for visits; were a gay couple to do that with their child, Gallagher would clobber them about it, and instruct her followers to clobber them about it too. Gallagher’s “interest” in marriage is focused virtually exclusively on carrying out malicious acts of political gay bashing.
When Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger openly questioned the status of Gallagher’s marriage, Gallagher repeatedly said that her own family circumstances are irrelevant to her fight against loving gay couples. Well, no they are not. Gallagher leaves her child without her guidance or presence on weekends to hate-monger against gays all over the country, and then that child — Bair Srivastav — is gay-bashing on Facebook. Where do you suppose Bair learned to mock people on the basis of homosexual orientation? Granted, in circles where children are taught to sing “Ain’t no homos gonna make it into heaven,” this behavior is applauded. But what do professional child psychiatrists think when children of bigots parrot their parents’ bigotry? Do not hold your breath, waiting for Gallagher to show this article to a number of professional psychiatrists to get a consensus opinion about her cultivating anti-gay bigotry in her son.
In any event, if Gallagher is genuinely interested in live-and-let-live, then I am a heterosexual opposed to gay rights!
Gallagher and NOM can fraudulently demonize gay human beings to NOM’s bigot supporters — and they can deny gay people’s humanity to those bigot supporters as well — but in court, under oath, NOM can not so readily get away with its gay-bashing lies. Relevant to Gallagher’s “wall of hatred” allegation, is that in every one of the campaign finance-related cases that NOM has brought, claiming that NOM’s supporters have received criminal threats and harassment, judges have ruled that those claims are without merit. Every single judge given to rule on that topic has ruled that NOM’s claims are without merit. NOM’s strategy of fraudulently alleging that gay rights supporters have made criminal threats is common to many political gay-bashers. After a Greensburg, Indiana church congregation was discovered abusing children by encouraging them to sing “Ain’t no homos gonna make it into heaven,” Reverend Jeff Sengle claimed he had received death threats, but law enforcement told reporters that there had been no such threats.
In her post, Gallagher fraudulently cites — as a victim of the supposed gay-rights-sourced “wall of hatred” — Daniel Glowacki, who disrupted his Howell, Michigan public school class on Spirit Day, 2010. Gallagher could not be bothered to link to Andrew Sullivan’s post, but she is all about linking to NOM’s fund-raising video with Glowacki as its star alleged victim of homosexuals. Spirit Day commemorates LGBT bullying victims lost to suicide. Teacher Jay McDowell had asked a student in the class to remove a belt with a Confederate flag buckle. The school district had recently suffered an incident of race-baiting, in which white supremacist students set up an anti-black, anti-other-non-whites hate page on Facebook, using the Confederate flag as its logo. Glowacki disrupted the class by asking McDowell why the student had to remove their Confederate flag garment, when others in the class were wearing purple “Tyler’s Army” Spirit Day shirts, which offend him as much as the Confederate flag offends McDowell.
Got it? Glowacki is offended by shirts commemorating bullied gay teens lost to suicide. Maggie Gallagher, too, apparently, is offended by shirts commemorating bullied gay teens lost to suicide; leastwise, she is willing to exploit a pipsqueak bigot who is offended by them to attract donations to fuel her political gay bashing. Keep in mind; an anti-gay bigot like Gallagher who believes that homosexuals are “worthy to death” really could get offended by shirts sorrowfully commemorating bullied gay teens lost to suicide.
After Glowacki refused to stop his Spirit Day gay-bashing, McDowell gave him a snap suspension. Other students in the class were commemorating students lost to severe anti-gay bullying; Glowacki was desecrating their memories, disrespecting his fellow students, and creating an inappropriate atmosphere of theologically-fueled, bullying non-acceptance of gay human beings. He repeatedly told McDowell that his Catholic religion is against “the homosexual lifestyle.” Through The Thomas More Law Center, Glowacki is bringing a first amendment lawsuit against the school. He thinks he should be able to gay-bash on Spirit Day, and Maggie Gallagher agrees with him. Â The Glowacki court pleading is not a professional, concise listing of alleged facts of the case. It is, rather, more of an apparent anti-gay hate-mongering fund-raising vehicle for The Thomas More Law Center, which does not charge clients, and which operates off of donations from the public.
Brazenly — hatefully — Glowacki’s attorneys claim in their pleading that Tyler Clementi committed suicide because he was homosexual, i.e. not at all because of anti-gay stigma and discrimination, to say nothing of criminal harassment that was directed against him in a bias crime. Gallagher and NOM have exploited Glowacki in a fund-raising video and elsewhere — Gallagher links to the fund-raising video in her “Is Maggie Gallagher a Victim?” post — yet the video does not specify that the Glowacki incident occurred on Spirit Day, and that Glowacki likened the offensiveness of the Confederate flag to that of purple Tyler’s Army shirts.
Not only is Gallagher guilty of manipulating the Glowacki case to get her gay-bashing followers to disingenuously reject the facts of connections between anti-gay bigotry, bullying, and gay youth suicide, Gallagher has a long record of lying about gay youth suicide statistics. As I have previously written:
Gallagher lied about Massachusetts gay youth attempted suicide statistics in her October 20, 2010 article Does Gay Marriage Prevent Gay Teen Suicide? In that article, Gallagher double-dealingly purports to answer whether the blood of gay bullying victims lost to suicide is on her hands – and then she lies about the bi-annual Center for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Survey results for Massachusetts. The survey, filled out by live students, does not report on the experiences of actual gay suicide victims, for the obvious reason that such victims are dead. In her article, Gallagher repeatedly alleges that the survey measured “LGBT†students. The actual survey questionnaires, though, have not yet even ever asked whether respondents identify as transgender. Gallagher’s claim that the survey represents transgender students is a lie. I have given Gallagher umpteen opportunities to acknowledge that these surveys have never mentioned transgender students; she has never done so. Another of Gallagher’s lies here is her reading of the survey numbers, in which Gallagher very deceitfully implies that youth suicide attempts have not at all lessened since equality became law in Massachusetts. While LGB students have continued to attempt suicide about four times more often than heterosexual students, (just as Gallagher in this same period has been very aggressively fanning anti-gay hostility in Massachusetts) the actual numbers of suicides for each group have overall, over time, gone down,confirming Dr. Mark Hatzenbueler’s study which shows that in more liberal areas, both LGB and hetero youth are less likely to attempt suicide than LGB and hetero youth living in conservative areas.
To spell this out; marriage equality in Massachusetts corresponds to a period of decreasing numbers of youth suicides among both gay and heterosexual youth, but Gallagher distorts the documentation to mislead people into believing that there has been no youth suicide reduction in Massachusetts since equality became law. So FYI, Ms. Gallagher-Srivastav; the period of marriage equality in Massachusetts does correspond to a reduction of all youth suicides in the state.
The point merits emphasis and articulation. With malice aforethought, Gallagher is engaging in a disinformation campaign related to gay youth suicide. Where there is a demonstrated correlation between enhanced gay rights and a decrease in youth suicide, Gallagher deliberately distorts the evidence, and lies about it, by saying that enhanced gay rights did not at all improve the youth suicide rate. As if that were not despicable enough, Gallagher inserts herself into a situation where a gay-bashing bigot in a public school desecrated the memories of gay youth lost to bullying, and declares that the gay-bashing bigot is a victim facing a “wall of hatred,” and she does so in a context that never mentions that her little bigot darling Daniel Glowacki disrupted his class with bullying theocratic non-acceptance of gay people on Spirit Day. As a reminder, the same year that Glowacki gay-bashed on Spirit Day, Arkansas school board member Clint McCance said: “Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide.” Just as — before NOM’s race-baiting strategy was verified through court-order-released NOM documents — it was evident to all that NOM was carrying out a race-baiting strategy — it is evident now that NOM has an intent to mount, and carry out, a disinformation campaign regarding gay teen suicide. You really have to watch the video of Gallagher receiving GetEqual’s Anita Bryant Bigotry Award: at the 1:05 point, GetEqual’s Michael Dixon reproaches Gallagher for spreading anti-gay hate that leads to some gay teens killing themselves. Gallagher then alleges that she “took the trouble“ to investigate the youth suicide rate in Massachusetts, and that “gay marriage is not a solution to the problem.” Meanwhile, the statistics clearly show that over time, since equality became law in Massachusetts, all categories of youth suicide have gone down in number. Yet the bigot wants people to know that she “took the trouble” to look at the statistics, and that “gay marriage is not a solution to the problem.”  This fiendish woman — claiming victimhood, and instructing her anti-gay-rights followers to claim victimhood, while lying through her teeth about youth suicide statistics, the better to beat down on gays —  is an apparently conscienceless monster. Gallagher’s derrière should be put under oath on a witness stand, where she can talk in front of a judge about how she “took the trouble” to examine youth suicide statistics for Massachusetts since equality became law there.
Gallagher and NOM made a separate fund-raising video with Florida public school teacher Jerry Buell, who in a non-confidential internet venue said that same-sex marriages make him want to puke. Buell, moreover, told his class — with a gay student present — that homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the military, at the front lines with hetero soldiers deserting them from behind.
If Gallagher can show us where a public school teacher has ever told his students that the only good heterosexual is a dead heterosexual, she should step right up with the evidence. Meanwhile though, Gallagher and NOM are still hate-mongering and fund-raising off a video promoting a bigot who told his class that the only good gay is a dead gay.
Gallagher has never apologized for sponsoring her anti-gay hate rally in the Bronx, where a NOM-approved speaker told the mob that homosexuals are “worthy to death,” just blocks from where there had been a gangland-style sequestration and torturing of gay victims. You can bet if somebody were up yelling at the public that Maggie Gallagher is “worthy to death,” Maggie Gallagher would understand why an apology was in order. Instead, she participates in an act of theocratic terrorism against the gay population (just blocks from where there had been a gangland-style sequestration and torturing of gay victims) and feels herself justified in doing it. Â With Senator Diaz of the Bronx constantly hate-mongering against gays, where do you suppose the thugs who carried out their tortures on those gay people in the Bronx ever got the idea to view gay people as inferior and “worthy to death“?
Gallagher the lying, scumbag, gay-bashing bigot — is personally responsible for so much anti-gay hate mongering,  that one would hardly be able to decide which element of it she should apologize for first, were she interested in apologizing for the tidal waves of hate she unleashes.
Maybe, though, we should not make it personal. Maybe we should ask Gallagher to apologize, in NOM’s name, for William Duncan’s seminar calling gays sub-humans: “Homosexuals or Homo sapiens; Who Deserves Protected Class Status.”
Think what it means — really think — that a candidate to be President of the United States — (which country’s actual Pledge promises “liberty and justice for all“) –  has signed the NOMzis’ gay-bashing bigot pledge, handed to him by these filthy political gay-bashers, for whom no dirty trick is too low-down, and who literally say that gay people are not human.
Don’t hold your breath, expecting Gallagher to apologize.
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.
Enjoy this piece?
… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.
NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.
Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.