It’s a NOM bombshell: splitting the “blacks and gays” was the plan all along.
I got some push back last week when I laid out the case that African-Americans were unfairly being singled out for being anti-gay bigots and for being responsible for passing Prop 8. Turns out that the notion of trying to split African-Americans and black pastors and chuch-goers especially from the LBGT community is literally in playbook for the actual bigots at NOM.
Late yesterday, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil rights group, obtained “internal NOM documents” that were part of an ongoing investigation by the State of Maine into financial activities by the organization. NOM apparently fought hard to keep those documents sealed, and in reading portions of one of the documents (a 34-page document entitled “The National Strategy for Winning the Marriage Battle”) we understand why. Not only has this organization used ham-fisted approaches to attack the LGBT community, but there’s textual evidence that they aren’t afraid to use a ham-fisted approach to court black and Latino communities.
NOM’s strategy for courting black voters is called the mildly-inappropriate, “Not a Civil Right” Project (picture right). It sounds like a riff of the popular Proposition 8 talking point where the passage of the anti-gay marriage bill was partially pinned to African American voters in California. ”No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party,” NOM writes, and adds in another passage obtained by the HRC: “Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage … provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.” Setting up African American spokespersons as bigots is a solid strategy it seems.
You don’t have to look any further than the Trayvon Martin case or Newt Gingrich’s comments that President Obama was being racially divisive by bringing that case up for proof that the strategy works, and that the real opponents of equality in America are using them to great effect.
Sadly, it’s all too easy for this to take hold among some of the left. The fact that this is actually part of NOM’s strategy, to exploit how easy it is to blame minorities as bigots and discredit them further as racists should really give pause to the entire liberal movement. We’re being played and NOM is counting on us to do the work for them, to divide us so that they and their allies get into power and roll back rights for all of us: women, LGBT, racial and religious minorities, and anyone they want to bully or destroy.
We must hang together, as they say, or surely we’ll hang separately.
Woo Hoo! I am glad that this information has surfaced even as it sickens me. This is ugly, ugly politics.
My cousin started this investigation because it so outraged us Mainahs that money poured into the campaign to repeal marriage equality and there was no transparency or accountability. We have been leaders in clean elections and this really went against our tradition.
Where’s “Matt D”?
He seemed to be one of the reactionaries that got duped. Or he was a troll.
http://angryblacklady.com/2012/03/25/splitting-the-coalition-fractured-facts-on-blacks-and-same-sex-marriage/#comment-26329
Matt D | March 25, 2012 at 10:55 am |
“Well, the issue of the coalition is complex. And black voters will not vote based on this issue. But a majority of blacks did support Proposition 8. Exit polls showed that if only whites voted, Prop 8 would have failed. But obviously, blacks and Hispanics also voted. The study you cite only discusses churchgoers. But California is obviously more than those people.
So yes, this may not have the huge effect people say, but blacks and Latinos DID kill gay marriage in California in 2008.”
Hilarity ensued when Pam Spaulding posted about this on americablog, and was called “divisive” for it.
Right — that would be “Americablog” run by one Mr. John Aravosis, who worked for Ted Stevens, who voted for DOMA, right? (Hint: If you’re a gay man who worked for Republicans any time past the 1980s, when it was already crystal clear that the party was well on its way to being taken over by the Krazy Kristianist Kult and its homophobia, then you’re a demonstrable idiot who probably shouldn’t be considered an authority on what’s best for gay people — same as I wouldn’t trust someone who worked for Phyllis Schlafly to lecture me on feminism.)
Also — the same John Aravosis who wanted to sell out trans people in passing ENDA? And people take him seriously because why, again?
But but but Aravosis raised $30,000 for the Obama campaign! So he bought Obama fair and square, with other people’s money!
Ha, good one! Because those people just wouldn’t have known how to go to a website and click on the “donate” button, right?
And they claim that the left is involved in all sorts of conspiracies. Shocking.
I agree with hanging together as leftists. Black anti-gay activists should remember that there are tons of Black gays IN OUR CHURCHES. Let’s stop pretending that only Whites are gays.
Romney donated $10,000 to NOM in 2008:
https://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/one-of-noms-top-secret-donors-revealed-mitt-romney