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So the National Organization for Marriage is FINALLY commenting on the controversy regarding its theft of photos from Obama rallies. NOM’s president, Brian Brown had this to say on its blog:
Rachel Maddow and her friends on the left are all atwitter about a photo collage created for the www.NHforMarriage.com website that NOM is sponsoring with allies in New Hampshire who are working with us to repeal same-sex marriage there.
. . . It’s no accident that Maddow and her allies in the gay activist community chose Tuesday to issue their breathless “expose” about NOM’s photo “controversy”—on Tuesday the New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee voted overwhelmingly to repeal same-sex marriage! Neither Maddow nor her friends at the Human Rights Campaign can defend imposing same-sex marriage on New Hampshire with no vote of the people. So they issue “reports” and press releases criticizing NOM over a photo collage! They object to us using a photo of a crowd scene, which symbolizes the tens of thousands of New Hampshire voters who are part of our effort. They’re upset that the photo was not taken at a NOM rally. Seriously?! NOM using a common use photo in the public domain is considered a great scandal, yet they can redefine marriage—the most important social institution of society against the wishes of New Hampshire voters—and nobody is supposed to object? It’s as if the institution of marriage gets mugged, and they complain about speeding in the neighborhood when someone rushes it to the hospital!
Naturally Brown ends this post with a request for money to “save marriage.”
Brown, if you haven’t caught on by now, is lying through his teeth and I almost wish that the old adage about “getting struck by lightning would apply here.”
NOM did not use a common use photo. It used a photo specifically taken at a rally for Obama:
You can even see Obama in both photos.
Never have I seen such incredible arrogance. NOM gets caught stealing photos to boost up its number of supporters and its response to being called out is to play the victim.
That’s like a thief crying foul because a homeowner hit him too hard in the middle of a break-in.
But that’s the caliber of NOM. It’s the level of underhanded hypocrisy which the gay community has come to expect from the organization.
Related posts:
NOM continues to embarrass itself in photo scandal
‘NOM condemned from all sides for photo stealing’ and other Wednesday midday news briefs
7 Comments
Alvin, I believe your choice of the phrase “incredible arrogance” sums up the NOM attitude completely. Caught telling a pictorial lie, the organization’s President really is trying to play the victim card — it truly is “incredible arrogance” to not only state that the organization’s actions aren’t problematic, and that pointing out their pictorial lie is a pictorial lie is in their minds is the wrongheaded action.
I would say “unbelievable” to this justification of their deceiptful behavior, but with NOM, this kind antithetical behavior and perverse justification just seems par for the course.
It hardly matters whether the photo was in the public domain or not. That’s not the scandal. The source of the scandal is the fact that NOM fraudulently presented the photo as if it were of one of their own rallies. A lie is a lie, even if it’s in the public domain.
So, NOM wants all kinds of laws passed to restrict my Rights and would yell and scream if I violated those laws, yet they willfully violate laws (Copyright, financial disclosure, etc) that they find inconvenient.
Jim Young, and every other photographer who’s photos have been stolen by NOM, should be suing and not just for cease and desist.
That fundraising letter disguised as a “response”: does it use “O-b-a-m-a” anywhere?
nope
hmm
I would have thought Reuters would be all over this.
So, does Facebook, Twitter and YouTube endorse them? Did they receive permission to use their copyrighted logos?
So Obama appears in both photos?
Will the Obama campaign display the same kind of courage they did during the Prop 8 campaign, when bigots used Candidate Obama’s voice and image in campaign materials opposing marriage equality, demanding that the candidate’s voice and image be removed and that the Prop 8 campaign correct the impression the candidate backed Prop 8?
Oh, right — they did not do any such thing then. And they probably won’t now.