The Growing Stridency of the Anti-Gay Industry

Yesterday, I lay the responsibility for anti-gay bullying and hate crimes where it belongs: at the feet of religious bigots and extremists. In a post on the Huffington Post, activist and opponent of the ex-gay myth, Wayne Besen (Wayne and I worked together to expose ex-gay fraud, Michael Johnston some years ago) , looked at the unequal progress that the movement for LGBT equality is facing even as more and more of the general public is becoming accepting of same sex marriage and gay couple adoption. Wayne rightly describes a so-called anti-gay industry. The term is appropriate because some of the leading hate merchants - NOM's Maggie Gallagher and the unhinged Catholic League's William Donohue are but to examples - are making lucrative six figure incomes. Judas' piece of silver pale in comparison. Meanwhile, the bogey man of the "gay agenda" keeps funds flowing into registered hate groups such as Family Research Council. While it is comforting to know that these groups and individuals are slowly but steadily losing the "culture wars," the slow pace - especially in backward states such as Virginia - is at times maddening. Moreover, as society shifts increasingly against the haters, their viciousness and stridency will likely increase. They are today's equivalent of rabid segregationists and active members of the Klan. In my view, there will be no true freedom of religion in the USA until the toxic hate and religious based discrimination of these people is erased from the nation's laws. Here are highlights from Wayne's post:
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To boil it down, there are two distinct reasons why LGBT people do not have full equality:
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1) Our greatest source of new support are younger Americans who came of age in a Will & Grace world. However, younger voters are the least likely to head to the polls, which extends the fading power of the aging homophobic demographic.
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2) The concentration of anti-gay sentiment among white fundamentalists - who are well-organized and more likely to vote - has created a situation that allows the political climate to lag behind a broader cultural shift.
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Examples of such retrograde politics can be seen in the anti-gay views expressed by virtually every GOP presidential candidate. At the federal level, the Republican Party is enthusiastically defending the (un)constitutionally of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In the states, the Minnesota Senate approved a 2012 ballot measure asking voters whether the Constitution should be amended to "provide that only a union of one man and one woman" be recognized as marriage. However, even before social conservatives could celebrate, a Star Tribune Minnesota poll found that 55 percent of respondents said they oppose adding an amendment while 39 percent favor it. The newspaper said that this is "a sharp reversal of poll results seven years ago."

The surge in acceptance has caused anti-gay activists to become more strident and extreme. . . . Speaking of NOM, the group's former strategist, Louis Marinelli, released a new video this week expressing his support for marriage equality in New York. Equally frustrating for NOM was the recent influx of more than $1 million into the pro-marriage equality campaign by major New York GOP financiers, such as Paul Singer and mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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If this was not troubling enough for the anti-gay industry -- LGBT people are now challenging traditional bastions of homophobia. For example, in the middle of the National Basketball Association playoffs, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts came out of the closet.
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Anti-gay efforts to target African Americans will also be hampered by this week's coming out of CNN anchor Don Lemon. And, most disconcerting for extremists are efforts from within the church, highlighted by a recent New York Times article titled "Even on Religious Campuses, Students Fight for Gay Identity" and the Presbyterian Church USA becoming the fourth mainline Protestant church to approve ordination of gay people.
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If it seems like opponents of equality are increasingly taking the low road, it is because they have clearly lost the high ground of public opinion.