The ever bloviating cow Maggie Gallagher and Brian "Brownshirt" Brown constantly claim that the National Organization for Marriage's only goal is to "protect marriage." Actions, however, speak louder than words - especially words coming from the lips of liars lake Gallagher and Brown. In addition to "protecting the sanctity od marriage" NOM has fully embraced the ex-gay lie and has moved on to out right denigrate and spread lies about LGBT individuals. These actions have caught the eye of the Southern Poverty Law Center which monitors hate groups in America. In a new report on NOM, the SPLC's take on NOM is blistering. And it's the lies and deliberate falsehoods that have triggered SPLC's analysis of NOM's true agenda. Stating religious belief is one thing. Seeking to dehumanize gays and depict them as enemies of society and western civilization is something quite different. Here are excerpts from the SPLC report:
About the worst thing said about gay men, an allegation that is regularly dragged out by certain religious-right organizations, is that they molest children at rates vastly higher than their heterosexual counterparts. It is as devastating a charge as one can make in a country where jailed pedophiles, known in prison parlance as “short eyes,” are frequently murdered by self-righteous fellow inmates.
But it is also completely false, a demonizing construct long ago debunked and denounced by virtually all relevant scientific organizations and serious researchers. That’s why the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the leading opponent of same-sex marriage but also a group that prides itself on keeping its criticisms of homosexuality both civil and factual, does not employ the accusation. Or does it?
Last Nov. 15, the Ruth Institute, a project of the NOM Education Fund, published the first eight paragraphs of an essay by anti-gay activist Michael Brown that asked what topic even far-right radio host Rush Limbaugh might be afraid to bring up in the face of “political correctness.” The part of the essay on the Ruth Institute website didn’t say what that topic was, but gave a “Keep Reading” link to a site run by an openly gay-bashing hate group, the American Family Association.
There, it took readers another three paragraphs to get to the red meat: “Could it be that the [Penn State] sex abuse scandal involved a man allegedly abusing boys, meaning that the acts were homosexual in nature? And could it be that even Rush Limbaugh didn’t have the guts to address this? (Contrary to the protestations of some, a man who is sexually involved with boys is a homosexual pedophile; a man who is sexually involved with girls is a heterosexual pedophile.)”
Anti-gay activists claim that all men who molest male children are homosexual. But researchers long ago established that there are two types of molesters: fixated and regressive. Fixated molesters — the stereotypical pedophile — typically molest children of either sex, but have no sexual interest in any adult and can’t be considered heterosexual or homosexual. Regressive molesters are attracted to adults, but may “regress” to children under stress; most of them have been found to be heterosexual in their adult relationships. That’s why the American Psychological Association has officially concluded that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men.”
For more than a year now, gay rights activists have alleged that NOM is playing a shell game, avoiding the most egregiously false defamations of gay people on its own website, but linking directly to others who don’t.
NOM seems hard-pressed to avoid talk of pedophilia as it campaigns against gay marriage. Just this Dec. 7, for instance, NOM’s Ruth Institute posted a gushing recommendation for a book titled Same-Sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk, a jeremiad by Mathew Staver, head of the anti-gay Liberty Counsel. “Anybody who cares about the future of our society should read this book,” NOM said.
The 2004 book that NOM says “gives you real answers” isn’t further detailed on the NOM site, but it is jam-packed with precisely the kind of misinformation that Gallagher suggests she abhors. Perhaps most remarkably, the book claims that “29 percent of the adult children of homosexual parents had been specifically subjected to sexual molestation by that homosexual parent, compared to only 0.6 percent of the adult children of heterosexual parents… Having a homosexual parent(s) appears to increase the risk of incest with a parent by a factor of about 50.” Staver’s citation for this hair-raising claim is remarkable — a debunked 1996 article co-authored by Paul Cameron,
Again and again, NOM seems to come back to pedophilia. Last June 8, it posted a video of U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) at the Eagle Forum Collegians 2011 Summit, countering arguments for same-sex marriage by warning that it would open the door to all kinds of marriages, including pedophilic unions.
And last Aug. 18, in a “Dear Marriage Supporter” open letter, NOM President Brian Brown wrote about a highly controversial group of scholars and others working to de-stigmatize those attracted to children who do not act on their impulses.
NOM also publicizes anti-gay material that is just plain nasty. . . . . Some of the material NOM pushes out, also dealing with children, is flatly untrue. In fliers opposing same-sex marriage sent to thousands of Rhode Island residents early last year, NOM made the claim that “Massachusetts’ public schools teach kids as young as kindergartners about gay marriage. Parents have no legal right to object!” Checking that claim out, PolitiFact found that the group’s only evidence was two isolated, 5-year-old incidents and rated NOM’s assertion “false.”
Similarly, NOM last September sent out mailers to thousands of New Yorkers warning of the “legal consequences” of gay marriage. Although virtually all of NOM’s assertions were questionable, one stood out — the claim that a sex ed teacher in Massachusetts “taught her students to perform lesbian sex.”
Like other anti-gay organizations, NOM sometimes displays a sense of aggrieved victimhood, picturing itself and other religious opponents of same-sex marriage as under assault by powerful and devious forces.
NOM’s claim of victimhood is the core element of its refusal, in the face of campaign laws in more than half a dozen states, to release the names of financial supporters of its many electoral efforts, . . . . Although FBI hate crime statistics show clearly that gay men and lesbians are by far the most targeted minority in America, NOM portrays donors to its many political campaign efforts as the real victims because a few who have been identified have been picketed by LGBT supporters.
Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown have repeatedly claimed that they are simply trying to protect marriage, that they bear no animus toward LGBT people or their sexual orientations. But again and again, signs of such animus have crept into the material issued by NOM: scary warnings about pedophilia, “addictive behavior,” “jihads” against Christians and so on. Now, as pressure ratchets up on opponents of same-sex marriage — Maryland this year became the eighth state to approve such unions, even as a federal judge found the anti-same-sex-marriage Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional — it remains to be seen whether NOM can avoid following other religious-right groups into a world of untrammeled hate.
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