NOM in hot water for memos on pitting gays vs. blacks

by Anthony Glassman

Washington, D.C.--The group leading the national campaign against marriage equality has been widely criticized� after documents were released last week showing it tried to drive a wedge between the LGBT and African-American communities. The memos also described efforts to recruit pretty but vapid celebrities to counter Hollywood�s influence on the �culture wars.�

The National Organization for Marriage�s papers were obtained on March 26 through a Maine Ethics Commission complaint filed by Fred Karger, a California LGBT activist who has been battling the group because of their involvement in Proposition 8. They were publicized by the Human Rights Campaign.

The Maine case came about after a 2009 campaign to void a new marriage law there. NOM, which routinely dodges campaign contribution laws to hide its donors, is contesting a Maine requirement that it reveal them. So far, it has not done so.

NOM has said it will campaign against a new Maine initiative to enact full marriage by ballot this fall.

The group�s August 11, 2009 National Strategy for Winning the Marriage Battle includes �The Latino Project: A Pan-American Strategy,� the �Not a Civil Right� Project and the Next Generation Leaders Project, among other initiatives.

That document includes the statement, �We also recognize the opportunity--the disproportionate potential impact of proactively seeking to gather and connect a community of artists, athletes, writers, beauty queens and other glamorous non-cognitive elites across national boundaries.� They note Carrie Prejean, the beauty queen who spoke out against same-sex marriage.

The part of the strategy document that has raised the most ire, however, is the �Not a Civil Right� Project, which claims, �The majority of African-Americans, like the majority of Americans, oppose gay marriage, but Democratic power bosses are increasingly inclined to privilege the concerns of gay rights groups over the values of African-Americans.�

It called for a $1.5 million budget to �fine, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a national media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right.�

It also called for establishing opposition to same-sex marriage as a marker of Latino identity, and as a form of rebellion for youth to oppose assimilation into Anglo society.

�NOM�s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if black Americans remember their own history of discrimination. Pitting bigotry�s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together,� said Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the NAACP.

The National Black Justice Coalition�s executive director, Sharon Lettman-Hicks, noted, �These documents expose NOM for what it really is--a hate group determined to use African American faith leaders as pawns to push their damaging agenda and as mouthpieces to amplify that hatred.�

�NOM is fighting a losing battle,� she added. �With these memos made public, the black faith community must refuse to be exploited and refuse to deny their fellow brothers and sisters equal protections under the law.�

She also noted that Coretta Scott-King and Rep. John Lewis, both civil rights pioneers, supported same-sex marriage.