You’re making this week’s Money Bomb Blogswarm a huge success – over $58,000 raised online to fight Amendment One since Monday, with nearly $40,000 of that coming through ActBlue! Over 900 people have given.

It’s amazing to see just how much PR distress the proponents of Amendment One are in this week as more prominent conservatives in the state publicly slam the discriminatory ballot initiative.

1. NOM’s race-based, divide-and-conquer strategy template backfires on Vote for Marriage NC: After HRC published internal strategy papers unsealed by a federal judge pitting the black and gay communities in his hate campaign to “protect marriage” there has been silence from the local NOM clone run by Tami Fitzgerald. She can’t say much, quite frankly, because Vote for Marriage NC follows the exact same game plan — trying to foment division between the religious black community and the LGBT community to pass discriminatory legislation.  It was perfectly illustrated by the embarrassing spectacle of Rev. Patrick Wooden, of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh (a rent-a-pastor for NOM, Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality and Vote for Marriage) at an Amendment One debate at Meredeth College on Monday night.

2. The Republican leader who rammed Amendment One legislation through predicts its repeal if it passes.

One firestorm that has had enormous repercussions here were the remarks of the Speaker of the NC House, Republican Thom Tillis, who engineered the passage of the legislation that put A1 on the ballot, is on video predicting its repeal if it does in fact pass, saying “It’s a generational issue. The data shows right now that you are a generation away from that issue.”

This comment sums up this hot mess quite nicely.

“Apparently the speaker believes it is OK to discriminate against people for the next 20 years or so until the people inevitably rise up to stop it,” blogged Chris Fitzsimon of the liberal N.C. Policy Watch.

Tillis is the same “leader” who allowed Rep. Dale Folwell, the number three pol in the body, to host a press conference in the General Assembly featuring black pastors whose rank and grotesque homophobia out of the NOM playbook that he had to later disavow support of.

3. More major conservative figures in NC react to Tillis’s remarks and come out against Amendment One. Former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, who is also  former executive director of the conservative (and Art Pope-funded) North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, said this:

“Any provision that has to be put into the ‘miscellaneous’ section of the constitution immediately raises questions about whether it should be in the state constitution,” he said. “It’s probably not a provision that ought to be in.

And yesterday, Former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot, a conservative who was the GOP’s nominee for governor in 2000, clearly had enough with Tillis’s foolishness, and released this statement about Amendment One:

Vinroot on Wednesday said Tillis’ comments reinforced his opposition to the amendment.

“My reaction, was, ‘My gosh, the legislature wants us to put something in the constitution that the leader of our party – the speaker of the House – doesn’t think will stand the test of time for more than a decade,’ ” Vinroot told the Observer. “I can’t imagine amending the constitution for something he believes is that tenuous.”

As you can see, these folks are drop-kicking Tami and friends by saying that not only is this amendment unnecessary, but that its presence on the ballot exists for craven reasons that have nothing to do with protecting marriage or “religious freedom,” only to score political points with the base by generating fear and division.

Desperate times call for desperate measures on their side

“It would lead people who love dogs to marry dogs and people who love ice cream to marry ice cream.”
–  Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor of Christian ethics Daniel Heimbach, who believes that’s what’s in store for North Carolina if the amendment is not passed on May 8.

On Wednesday, there was a pro-Amendment event held in Wake Forest that can only be described as deranged and desperate. The professional anti-LGBT orgs were called in to rally the attendees  – Richard Land, president of the convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and a VP from Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group Family Research Council. Anti-LGBT DVDs were passed out by the FRC rep at  Binkley Chapel, where the event was held. Land tried to spin the activist judges line.
“Make no mistake, those (Supreme Court) justices are watching what the people of North Carolina say about this issue. If we lose, they will exercise their judicial imperialism. That’s what’s at stake.”

But Land argued the debate is not limited to disagreements over the Bible and Christian teaching. Pro-amendment forces are also rooted in First Amendment protections of religious freedom, he said, arguing that amendment foes want to normalize the idea of gay marriage and thereby ostracize traditional Christians to “the level of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“This is not a question of sexual freedom, it’s a question of religious freedom,” he said.

The KLAN?! Really? Land is a disgrace; he and his cronies are trying to impose their specific flavor of evangelical Christianity upon everyone in NC — I don’t see religious leaders in jail, forced to marry same-sex couples or any of the nonsense he’s trying to sell. As I said, the rhetoric is so beyond the pale, even juvenile, particularly when placed alongside the measured comments by conservative voices in the state who are rising up against this lunacy.
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Continue spreading the word about the Money Bomb  - Zach Galifianakis is!

Actor and comedian (and Wilkesboro, NC native) Zach Galifianakis (@galifianakisz) tweeted his support for the Money Bomb:  https://secure.actblue.com/page/ncmoneybomb