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The National Organization for Marriage’s unsuccessful fight to skirt Maine’s financial disclosure laws just backfired majorly on the group by revealing a distasteful part of its game plan to stop marriage equality.
According to a court document that was uploaded online, NOM specifically worked to drive a wedge between the black and gay community on the subject of marriage equality:
According to page 11 of this document called Marriage: $20 Million Strategy for Victory:
3. Not a Civil Right ProjectThe strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.
NOM has portrayed whatever African-American opposition to marriage equality its spotlighted as spontaneous attempts by leaders and members of the black community to keep its civil rights legacy from supposedly being “tainted” by a comparison to gay equality.
But now we see that there was nothing spontaneous about this. It was a cynically planned effort by NOM – which the organization continues to exploit – in order to drive a wedge between blacks and gays.
And notice how NOM says that one of the purposes of creating this division was to create a negative reaction from gay equality supporters against the African-Americans speaking out against marriage equality.
One doesn’t have to spell out how this benefits NOM’s efforts. The two sides attack each other with extreme anger causing magazine articles to be written about the division, news programs to focus on the division, and venomous chats to occur on places like Facebook and Twitter.
Some heterosexual African-Americans will let loose with homophobia against the gay community. And some white lgbtqs will express racist comments about the black community. Both communities will be at each other’s throats. There will be no intelligent conversations on the matter and neither community will benefit an iota.
And NOM will sit back and reap the benefits of causing this chaos.
It reminds me of an Aesop fable I once posted:
An Eagle had made her nest at the top of a lofty oak. A Fox, having found a convenient hole, lived with her young in the middle of the trunk; and a Wild Sow with her young had taken shelter in a hollow at its foot. The Fox resolved to destroy by her arts this chance-made colony. She climbed to the nest of the Eagle, and said: “Destruction is preparing for you, and for me too. The Wild Sow, whom you may see daily digging up the earth, wishes to uproot the oak, that she may, on its fall, seize our families as food.” Then she crept down to the cave of the Sow and said: “Your children are in great danger; for as soon as you shall go out with your litter to find food, the Eagle is prepared to pounce upon one of your little pigs.” When night came, she went forth with silent foot and obtained food for herself and her young; but, feigning to be afraid, she kept a look-out all through the day. Meanwhile, the Eagle, full of fear of the Sow, sat still on the branches, and the Sow, terrified by the Eagle, did not dare to go out from her cave; and thus they each, with their families, perished from hunger.
Moral – Gay folks and black folks can argue all day as to who gets to be the “sow” and who gets to be the “eagle.” But both groups better damn well recognize who the hell the fox is.
This sort of vile divide and conquer strategy is nothing new. History is filled with instances of communities, particularly communities seeking equality, are being pitted against one another by a third group with ulterior motives.
We just got lucky this time. It just so happens that the third group in question was dumb enough to put its evil in writing.
The question now is what do we do about it, especially the folks in North Carolina who set to vote on Amendment One, one of those vile things that NOM is pushing.
Related post -NOM’s deliberate manipulation of black, gay communities is nauseating
15 Comments
Alvin — Back in 1992, the Cincinnati City Council enacted an ordinance which protected people from discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In reaction, a cabal of religious reicht fanatics gathered to create the hate group Citizens for Community Action to oppose the ordinance.
As part of their wedge tactics, they obtained and distributed to *every* black church in the city the propaganda film Gay Rights, Special Rights, which is *directly* targeted to the black community.
For those who haven’t seen the film, the theme film is that TLBGs never had to deal with Jim Crow, never had to deal with lynchings, never had their right to vote suppressed, ad nauseum.
Sadly, these church leaders bought into the lies of the film and campaigned with the hatemongers of the CCV to repeal the ordinance.
So this tactic is nothing new to those of us political junkies who remember Cincy’s Issue 3 battle…
I’ve gone through this document, although not thoroughly, and I wonder how another aspect of their strategy will play with the black community: painting the president as a radical with the aim of defeating him in the general election. That’s something that should be publicized, and heavily.
If I recall correctly there was a somewhat parallel situation in Calif between the Hispanic community and Prop 8 opponents. Maybe not to this extent though. . .
As a political scheme this is perfectly understandable. As a symptom of what’s is so putrid about our political system this just another ho-hum story. As a strong supporter of the Occupy Everywhere Movement this is a good example of why it is, and has to remain, a moral movement and not a political movement. When everyone in power is looking up at a snake’s butt for clues as to how to win the next election, the contract, etc; what we poor stupid saps get is the fallout. And it stinks. And it’s why most people hold politicians, business people and journalists in lower regard than used car and siding salesmen.
I just can’t believe that NOM was so arrogant as to document this strategy so extensively.
Frankly if I were an organization like NOM, I would exploit the divide too.
Any bets NOM has done the same thing with Hispanic Preachers?
Obama has a great chance now to unite Gays African Americans and Hispanics by going on the attack and attacking any who try and divide conqueror as tools of the the man.
Any mention of NOM’s supporters? Are they or were they a tax free organization, if we know their supporters how many advertiseor use to advertise with with Rush Limbaugh?
Link Rush to NOM through the advertisers and we get attention to this story the Media seems to be paying attention to Rush now and wants more Rush stories.
Obama won’t touch this and he certainly won’t speak to it directly. The people this appeals to and those who find it repulsive have already figured out what this is. But the fact remains, ” More people have died from religion than any other disease known to mankind. ” And the dyin’ ain’t nearly over with yet. It’s resting, like a boxer between rounds, and restoring its’ strength in its’ quest to destroy the opponent in the other corner. The Big Cloud Guy is not an impartial referee, either.
I agree Obama won’t touch this but imagine how many votes he could get if he energized his base by taking a STAND for once.
it was the black community that prop 8 supporters in california were doing divide and conquer with and unfortunately did have some success with.
With million dollar companies such as chik fil la supporting these groups they have the backing to do whatever they want unfortunately…and to be fair to Obama he has made a stand for gays quite often but lets be realistic he is a politician and the president of this country…that be said to say this the welfare of this whole country needs to be handled first…he is only man with millions against him and if he doesn’t handle the economics factor first he wnt be re-elected and will have bigger issues than this for lgbt community
Good God folks, this is not about Obama. Forget him for a second. We need to make noise about this and not to solely make Obama do what he needs to do. We need to make noise about it in the media. Hell has anyone contacted Rachel Maddow. We have the power to make this go BIG. It’s all about us, not Obama. He would be some help but in the long run, it’s what WE do with this info, not what he does with it.
I understand that it’s already been mentioned on MSNBC.
Yep and there needs to be more noise. One mention ain’t gonna cut it. And every chance we get, we need to throw this up in NOM’s face. Every. chance. we. get.