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Brian Brown’s Shocking, Ugly Response To His Marriage Debate With Dan Savage

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The National Organization For Marriage late last night released a fundraising email loaded with shockingly offensive commentary about NOM President Brian Brown‘s dinner table marriage debate with noted LGBT author and activist Dan Savage. The email, a whopping 2525 words, uses hackneyed NOM tricks — like hate mongering, fear mongering, claims of religious and biblical superiority — and of course, ends with a fundraising plea, a pretty tacky exhibition of pure greed. Overall, Brown displays the fact that he’s unwilling to engage in true debate, consider anyone else’s position — and is a very bad guest.

Watch: Dan Savage Vs. Brian Brown — The Dinner Table Marriage Debate

“Let me pose a question to the Dan Savages of the world,” NOM President Brian Brown posits, dehumanizing his host as he fear-mongers to his supporters. “Once gay people were a powerless and defenseless minority.”

Now, you have organized, protested, and become powerful through the use of democratic freedoms and intellectual debate, a powerful cultural force in our time. What use do you intend to make of your power?

“Liberty when men act in groups is power,” as Edmund Burke said, and before we congratulate them, or they congratulate themselves, it behooves us to look at what use they intend to make of the growing cultural power.

[All bolding is Brian’s, not ours.]

What does Brian want his supporters to think we’re going to do with our “power”?

As an aside, here’s an excellent graphic, via Zack Ford at Think Progress, that addresses this very issue:

So, what are we going to do with this so-called power that the LGBT community supposedly has (which we don’t)? Get married. Raise families. Try to be happy, and live our lives.

In another breath, Brown states:

Dan Savage called us here at NOM liars. He thinks we are telling lies, because we say things he doesn’t believe.

“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor’,” he told me. “I do believe NOM is in the bearing false witness business and routinely bears false witness against LGBT people.”

“NOM tends to do it through linking and surrogates,” he said, echoing the absurd arguments of Scott Rose and now also Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

NOM and its related businesses, like the Ruth Institute, have blatantly ignored truth and the law. And  yes, it is true that “NOM tends to do it through linking and surrogates,” as with the pastor who spoke at NOM’s anti-gay marriage rally, and said, as NOM officials stood by, not uttering a word in response to this statement, translated from Spanish:

“Gays are worthy of death.”

NOM did not issue a statement apologizing or refuting that statement. The only acknowledgment of it came fro  Maggie Gallagher, who wrote in the comments section of one of the many articles we published on the subject.

On that note, NOM certainly was quick to blame the LGBT community and the Southern Poverty Law Center for the Family Research Council shooting. NOM not once has come out to support our community or offer condolences — much less take any responsibility for contributing to a climate of hate  — when pastor after pastor after pastor has announced children who might seem to be gender non-conforming be “knocked” and beaten, that all gay people should be rounded up and put in pens, to “die out,” or that gay people are responsible for any one of a number of natural tragedies, like hurricanes and earthquakes.

Not. One. Peep. Courtesy of the folks at NOM, the National Organization For Marriage.

Meanwhile, often, sometimes daily, the anonymous “NOM staff” blogger(s) on the NOM Blog will publish excerpts of articles designed to attack the LGBT community, so NOM can claim it didn’t state those lies and half-truths and cherry-picked items, someone else did. Perhaps Brian should start actually reading the NOM blog?

We should note Brown mentions The New Civil Rights Movement’s own Scott Rose, who has written dozens of articles on NOM, and the Regnerus flawed anti-gay “parenting” study, which Brown brought up during his debate with Savage. Rose is responsible in large part for the actions taken by the University of Texas and the publisher of the Regnerus “study” that have led those associated with the Regnerus study to, as one reviewer employed by the publisher stated, call it “bullshit.”

Certain members of the gay community, embraced and endorsed by as powerful a voice as Dan Savage’s, are out trying to destroy a young scholar’s career—not debating and refuting his study, or accepting the challenge of coming up with random samples of gay parents raising children as Regnerus did—but trying to end his career because he published a study in a peer-reviewed journal—but Dan absurdly claimed that this attempted destruction of Prof. Regnerus’ career is our fault.

Well, that’s false. Regnerus’ peers and the LGBT community are trying to stop NOM, anti-gay organiztions, and hate groups from using a debunked and wildly flawed “study” that harms the entire LGBT community, the children we are raising, and empirical truth and facts. Regnerus’ career is not our focus, but he traded his reputation to advance his anti-gay agenda and his bank account, and that is unacceptable.

Sadly, the Regnerus study has now appeared in Supreme Court amicus briefs and a federal court judgment against a same-sex marriage case.

Almost the entire fundraising letter is skewed, fictional, divisive, attacking, offensive, and just plain ugly, but Brown couches it in religion so thinks that makes him right. It does not.

And he positions himself as the battling warrior hero, which is just plain dumb.

Comments like, “As I told Dan face to face,” “I went on to tell Dan in his own home,” and this gem:

I called for this debate with Dan Savage to show that I—with your support and help— that we would go anywhere to defend the principles that you and I hold dear.

Even into the Seattle, Washington home of a homosexual and his “husband,” right, Brian? Because that’s what you really wanted to say, isn’t it?

Jeremy Hooper at Good As You pointes to this passage from Brown’s email:

But leave it to the National Organization For Marriage, while thanking Dan for having him to his home, to pointedly downgrade Terry and Dan’s status:

Let me first begin by saying thank you to Dan Savage for the invitation to come to his home and the chance to meet his partner and his child.

Dan has since told the moderator, Mark Oppenheimer, that he regrets having the event at his home because his role as host interfered with his full prosecution of me (and through me, all NOM supporters):

“Playing host put me in this position of treating Brian Brown like a guest,” he said. “It was better in theory than in practice — it put me at a disadvantage during the debate, as the undertow of playing host resulted in my being more solicitous and considerate than I should’ve been. If I had it to do over again, I think I’d go with a hall.”

So I want to make sure and thank Dan Savage and his partner for opening their home to me.

And Hooper notes:

Probably not that big of deal to Brian, since his career is quite literally built around taking away certain kinds of Americans’ legal statuses. But surely a huge deal to Dan, Terry, and *their* son.

Perhaps we should just be thankful Brian didn’t go with colleague, associate, or Player #2.

Yes, overall, Brian Brown is a bad guest. But he’s also a bad citizen, working hard to jam down people’s throats his idea that marriage can only be the union of one man and one woman — not two men or two women — and making the LGBT community out to seem evil.

That not just bad public policy, that’s not just bad citizenship, that’s not just bad business practice, that’s just plain bad.

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News

Potential Trump VP Pick Says ‘If You’re a Billionaire’ You Should Vote for Trump

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4 hours ago

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May 1, 2024

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One of the possible picks to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, seen as “rapidly ascending” the list, is urging billionaires to vote for the ex-president.

North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum “is quickly moving up former President Trump’s list of possible vice presidential picks because Trump’s team believes he would be a safe choice who could attract moderate voters,” Axios reported on Sunday. “Burgum is on a long list of VP contenders, but Trump’s rising interest in the North Dakota governor has been clear in recent weeks — and reveals his latest thinking about how he thinks his running mate could help him with undecided voters.”

Praising Governor Burgum, the National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty on Monday wrote he was “the only candidate in 2024 to easily exceed expectations in the debates.”

“He is a well-liked governor from a small state. He projects seriousness and sobriety, two qualities Pence also had that were important to balance the 2016 Republican ticket. Burgum is also good at championing Republican policy, including our desperately needed policies of energy abundance and supply-side reform. He is also the right age — 67 — with no signs of slowing down. Burgum needs to survive the millions poured into opposition research, but, if he does, I think he would bring credit and balance to the Republican ticket.”

READ MORE: ‘Next Week, Absolutely’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Will Move to Oust Speaker Johnson

On Tuesday, Gov. Burgum, appearing on Fox News, told Laura Ingraham, “when you see someone who cares this deeply about this country, what he’s going through and what the Democrats and the liberal media is putting him through, and how he gets up and fights for every day people in America every day, and then his policies are all in the right direction.”

“If you’re a billionaire and you care about your shareholders, you care about your family and your grandkids, you should be voting for someone that’s going to bring prosperity to America and peace to the world, that’s what President Trump is going to do, that’s what he did for us when he was president,” Burgum claimed.

The Hill adds, “Ingraham suggested a lot of billionaires are still planning to support President Biden, especially those that are the ‘Wall Street types.’”

Last year, asked if he would ever do business with Trump, Bergum told NBC News, “I don’t think so,” and added, “I just think that it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep.”

Some reports call Bergum a billionaire, while Forbes last year reported it “estimates Burgum’s net worth to be at least $100 million.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Would Not Oppose State Pregnancy Surveillance or Abortion Prosecution

 

 

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‘Next Week, Absolutely’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Will Move to Oust Speaker Johnson

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7 hours ago

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May 1, 2024

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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), standing in front of posters showing Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson casually embracing Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and behind a podium with a sign calling Johnson the “Uniparty Leader,” announced she will call up her “motion to vacate,” to try to oust Johnson “next week, absolutely.” She made her announcement despite public and private remarks and signals from top Republicans opposing the move, and despite it having little to no chance of passing.

Speaking Wednesday morning at a press event, Greene lashed out at the Republican House Speaker and Democratic Minority Leader after  Jeffries announced Democrats will vote to keep Johnson as Speaker.

“Now we have Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats coming out, embracing Mike Johnson with a warm hug and a big wet sloppy kiss.”

She later claimed taxes will go up if Democrats take the House in the November election because Johnson and Jeffries are “holding hands together.”

READ MORE: DeSantis Declares NYC ‘Reeks’ of Pot Amid Florida’s Battle for Legalization and 2024 Voters

Backing herself into a corner, the far-right Georgia MAGA Republican has positioned herself as the outraged opposition to her own party, with a small following – just two other House Republicans have announced they will support her move to oust Johnson.

Early into her remarks Greene said she had the right to try to oust Johnson because “I elected him,” also adding that she had voted for Johnson for Speaker.

Greene then unleashed a lengthy list of grievances against Johnson.

“Americans all together gave Republicans the House they gave us the House in 2022,” she said, according to a rush transcript. “You want to know why? Because they were fed up with the Democratic agenda that is destroying this country, wide open borders. An economy that’s crashing, freedoms being stolen, COVID shutdowns, all the horrors that happened when Joe Biden took the White House and Democrats took full control.”

The COVID shutdowns happened during Donald Trump’s presidency and were ordered by governors of both parties.

“He passed three continuing resolutions, and then he finally passed a two part omnibus that fully funded Joe Biden’s agenda and the Democrat agenda, funding the Department of Justice,” she said, adding that funding DOJ is effectively putting “President Trump in jail for the rest of his life, which is a death sentence.”

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“Mike Johnson fully funded the FBI which raided Mar-a-Lago and gave them a brand new building as a gift. Pro-life Mike Johnson funded full term abortion clinics, funded the trans agenda on children that 70% of Americans are completely against on both sides of the aisle. And he fully funded Joe Biden’s open border policies, the number one issue in America.”

“Mike Johnson fully joined the disgusting business model of Washington, D.C. to fund forever wars. Yeah, that’s what this is. The uniparty is Make Ukraine Great Again. The uniparty is all about funding every single foreign war. They think this is the business model that needs to be done.”

She went on to angrily complain about funding “the murder and killing in foreign countries.”

“Our economy should not be built on the blood of wars in foreign countries. That’s not what our economy should be built on. That’s not how you grow jobs in America. That is that is horrific. It is evil it needs needs to end but that’s what the uniparty does. And that’s what they continue. Mike Johnson fully embraced it. And he funded $61 billion to Ukraine, funded war in Israel, while he funded Hamas and Gaza. How do you support Israel when you’re funding Hamas? And give more money away while our border stays open? And today 300 Americans will die from fentanyl tomorrow 300 Americans will die from fentanyl and the next day 300 more Americans will die from fentanyl poisoning because there’s a war on America. Led by the cartels in Mexico and nobody in Washington, D.C. gives a damn and has enough courage to face it.”

Watch clips of Greene above and below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: ‘Let’s Get a Warrant for Her Backyard’: Noem ‘Done Politically’ Right Wing Pundits Say

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DeSantis Declares NYC ‘Reeks’ of Pot Amid Florida’s Battle for Legalization and 2024 Voters

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23 hours ago

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April 30, 2024

By

Standing behind a sign that says “Freedom Month,” Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday blasted efforts to pass a constitutional amendment in the Sunshine State to make recreational use of marijuana legal. DeSantis also denounced efforts to pass a ballot initiative that would make abortion legal in his state.

“Look what’s happened in Denver, Colorado. Look what’s happened in Los Angeles, New York City. You know, I’ve talked to people that have moved from New York and they’re like, they used to have, you know, an apartment somewhere and it used to (smell differently). Now, what does it reek of? It reeks of marijuana. I don’t want the state to be reeking of marijuana,” DeSantis said (video below), as Florida Politics reported.

The Florida governor’s remarks come on the same day the Biden Administration announced plans to decrease the classification level of marijuana, which is currently listed in the same category as heroin, methamphetamines, and LSD. The proposed reclassification, which NBC News reports is expected to be approved, would move marijuana to the same category as Tylenol, codeine, and steroids.

In 2022 and 2023, President Joe Biden pardoned thousands of people serving time in prison for simple pot possession.

READ MORE: Noem Doubles Down With ‘Legal Cover’ For Shooting Her Puppy to Death

DeSantis’ remarks also come just days after he met with Donald Trump in a private meeting designed to “bury the hatchet,” and help the ex-president’s re-election efforts. The Florida governor ran in the Republican presidential primary against Trump, and both unleashed strong attacks. DeSantis, who is term-limited and cannot run again for governor in 2026, is expected to help Trump with fundraising and help him try to win the state of Florida.

“DeSantis kisses the ring in Miami meeting with Trump and it might just pay off,” the Miami Herald Editorial Board noted Tuesday. “Kissing the ring — to America’s detriment — has worked in the past, and it might work again for Florida’s ambitious governor.”

The Biden campaign believes Florida is in play, and political analysts say with both abortion and marijuana on the ballot there, Florida is a battleground state and one the President could win. NBC News reported earlier this month the Biden team sees Florida as “winnable.”

“’Make no mistake: Florida is not an easy state to win, but it is a winnable one for President Biden, especially given Trump’s weak, cash-strapped campaign, and serious vulnerabilities within his coalition,’ Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, wrote in a memo,” NBC News had first reported.

READ MORE: Trump Would Not Oppose State Pregnancy Surveillance or Abortion Prosecution

Calling it “a sign that he is serious about winning the state,” Axios reported last week the Biden campaign is opening a field office in Florida.

On Tuesday the Associated Press reported that “Florida Democrats hope young voters will be driven to the polls by ballot amendments legalizing marijuana and enshrining abortion rights. They hope the more tolerant views of young voters on those issues will reverse an active voter registration edge of nearly 900,000 for Republicans in Florida, which has turned from the ultimate swing state in 2000 to reliably Republican in recent years.”

Watch DeSantis’ remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Pretty Strong Views’: Trump Vows ‘Big Statement’ on Abortion Pill in the ‘Next Week or Two’

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