Cartoon via SlapUpsideTheHead.com.

Nothing has catalyzed religious conservatives in recent years quite like idea of “religious liberty,” and the notion that the expansion of LGBT and women’s rights will somehow infringe upon that freedom. It has been at the core of the National Organization for Marriage’s agenda against same-sex marriage, and in the 2009 confidential memos released this week, the anti-gay group proudly celebrates its success with this messaging. If marriage equality advances, NOM sees religious liberty as a way to “protect” conservatives from having to recognize same-sex couples:

Although these religious liberty protections are in some ways more narrow than one might desire (focusing primarily on religious institutions, to the exclusions of individual professionals and business owners), they nonetheless mark a turning point of sorts in the gay marriage debate. Three of the four states to have passed a same-sex marriage bill this spring, did so only after the inclusion of real, substantive religious liberty protections, validating NOM’s frequently expressed concerns for the religious liberty of traditional faith groups if same-sex marriage is adopted without specific protection.

This is NOM engaging in post hoc spin, because in the same memo, NOM admits that this “religious liberty” rhetoric is manufactured — a gimmick the organization hopes to deploy in Europe:

We have learned how to make the coercive pressures on religious people and institutions an issue in the United States. We will use this knowledge to raise the profile of government attacks on the liberties of religious people and institutions in Europe, both for internal domestic consumption in Europe and to halt the movement towards gay marriage worldwide. Our goal is to problematize the oppression of Christians and other traditional faith communities in the European mind.

The most important takeaway from these memos is that NOM’s strategy has very little to do with actually making a case against same-sex marriage. The concept of “religious liberty,” like all of NOM’s tactics, is just another scare tactic designed to alienate constituencies and stigmatize gays, lesbians, and bisexuals:

• Scare the black community into taking exclusive ownership of the notion of “civil rights.”
• Scare the Latino community into believing that supporting marriage equality constitutes an abandonment of tradition and assimilation into “Anglo” culture.
• Scare parents with threats that their children will be “sexualized” through education about homosexuality.
• Use “glamorous non-cognitive elites” to scare progressives with evidence that anti-equality voices can find traction in the media.
• Rally anonymous donors with falsified and exaggerated threats of “boycotts, picketing, and occasional violence” from LGBT activists.
• Recruit young spokespeople from prestigious universities to spread the message that gay relationships are harmful to society.
• Convince the people of society that gay rights can only advance at the expense of religious freedom.

In his first inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asserted his firm belief that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” At the end of the day, NOM is nothing more than an insidious fear factory. No doubt, the dark hour of inequality will end in victory when “met with that understanding and support of the people themselves.”

Mayors for the Freedom to Marry

DC Mayor Vincent Gray and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, both Mayors for the Freedom to Marry, have spoken out against the National Organization for Marriage’s race-baiting tactics as revealed this week in confidential memos:

VILLARAIGOSA: We need to come together as a country if we are going to tackle our biggest challenges. NOM’s divisive effort to pit one group of Americans against another is offensive and takes us in exactly the wrong direction. If we believe in family values, we must value all families; and I believe that every adult – regardless of race, religion, gender or ethnic heritage – should have the freedom to marry the person they love.

GRAY: Across our nation, gay and lesbian couples seek equal marriage rights because they believe in the same values we all do – commitment, stability, responsibility and family. That’s why it’s especially confounding that an organization that claims to support family values would seek to pit groups against each other in a hateful and cynical effort to deny equal rights to some families.

NOM’s co-founder Maggie Gallagher followed through on those very tactics this morning, telling MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts, “I don’t apologize for any of it.”

The National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher made her first public appearance today on MSNBC with Thomas Roberts, four days after confidential memos detailing NOM’s race-wedging tactics were released. In her appearance, she continued NOM’s incredulous PR strategy of continuing to spotlight people of color who oppose marriage equality and attempting to win their favor by defending them from charges of bigotry:

GALLAGHER: It’s insulting to suggest that these African-American or Latino leaders are standing up because NOM is manipulating them. Obviously the only reason anyone stands up for marriage at this point in this culture is out of principle because we believe it’s a good thing.[...]

We didn’t cause or create this, and frankly if we could get together with the gay community, and take the idea that it’s bigoted or discriminatory to stand up for marriage off the table for black people or for white people, we’d be happy to do it.[...]

I don’t apologize for any [of the projects listed in the memos]. Although, I don’t like the suggestion that somehow we have the power to make gay marriage advocates call other people bigots or haters. We don’t, we wish they would stop. Or that we have the power to make African American or Latino Democrats do anything. We’re really grateful and respect the leadership that they’ve shone for the values that they hold dear and that we share.

This is NOM “fanning the hostility” between blacks and gays exactly as described in the strategic documents.

Debating Gallagher was openly gay Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger, who has hounded NOM for attempting to circumvent state finance disclosure laws. It was just such an investigation into NOM’s operation in Maine that led to the release of these internal documents. When Gallagher tried to claim that the controversy makes the organization sound like it’s “way too big for our britches,” Karger and Roberts both pointed out that NOM continues to inject millions of dollars into anti-equality campaigns across the country. Watch it:

The Pride logo Hands On refused to print.

A Kentucky t-shirt company called Hands On recently refused to print apparel for Lexington’s upcoming LGBT pride festival, claiming to be a Christian company. The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization of Lexington filed a complaint with the city’s Human Rights Commission, which protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. National conservative groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council have picked up on the controversy and are defending Hands On, but in doing so reveal a clear intent to demonize and ostracize the LGBT community. Here are recent remarks by FRC’s Tony Perkins and the Family Foundation of Kentucky’s Kent Ostrander, as reported by FOTF’s CitizenLink:

PERKINS: Whether it’s a t-shirt company, wedding photographer, or the church, homosexuals will not be satisfied until they compel us to either spread their perversion or promote it. Unfortunately for these activists, the Constitution doesn’t award its rights on the basis of political correctness.

OSTRANDER: The sad part is that this family, because of this intimidation, bullying factor, might lose their business, or a substantial portion of it, because the University of Kentucky and the public schools side with the gay component (and may pull their business).  It’s just wrong for government to be involved in this.

Unfortunately for Perkins and Ostrander, the United States has a free market. That market is only free if all citizens have access to it, which is why non-discrimination laws exist. And if individuals wish to avoid a certain business because of its practices, that’s not “intimidation” — that’s life.

These conservatives’ complaints are ironic when juxtaposed with the National Organization for Marriage’s boycott of Starbucks over its support for marriage equality. The campaign continues to be a dismal failure, outpaced nearly 20 to 1 by the Thank You, Starbucks response and rebuffed by a a sharp increase in Starbucks’ stock value. Apparently, though, it is acceptable to challenge a business for supporting gay rights, but not for openly discriminating against gay people.

Despite all the incriminating language found within the confidential memos released this week, nothing has shone the National Organization for Marriage in a negative light quite like its intention to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks” by provoking “the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.” Specifically, NOM points out that it wants to spotlight people of color who oppose the freedom to marry so that they receive the brunt of objection from equality activists.

In his fundraising email this week, NOM’s president Brian Brown offered a second response to the controversy — not by apologizing or taking any responsibility for the insidious tactics, but by spotlighting people of color who oppose the freedom to marry and provoking LGBT activists to call them bigots:

BROWN: Let me be the first to say that the tone of the language in that document as quoted by the press is inapt. Here’s something I know from the bottom of my soul: It would be enormously arrogant for anyone at NOM to believe that we can make or provoke African-American or Latino leaders do anything. The Black and Hispanic Democrats who stand up for marriage do so on principle—and get hit with a wave of vituperative attacks like nothing I have ever seen. We did not cause it, nor can we claim credit for these men and women’s courage in standing up in defense of our most fundamental institution: marriage.

To Joe Solmonese and the Human Rights Campaign and Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry I would say: This is your movement. You are its leaders. Only you can hope to change the vicious attacks being made on Black and Hispanic Democrats (or white Republicans for that matter!) who don’t agree with you on gay marriage.

In addition, the email features a video of North Carolinians — almost all of whom are black — speaking in support of the discriminatory Amendment One, which bans all same-sex unions.

NOM’s gall in this matter is incredulous. There are no “vicious attacks” on any racial group coming from the LGBT movement, but opponents of equality are blatantly manipulating communities of color in an attempt to create a wedge. Even though this is now obvious from the memos and responses so far, it seems NOM has no intention of changing its tactics anytime soon.

Watch Julian Bond’s full conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the controversy, in which the civil rights veteran points out that “we ought to be happy that other people, including gays and lesbians, and many other people have imitated the black movement for human rights”:

It cannot be overstated that if Anchorage’s proposed LGBT non-discrimination protections pass, it could have a huge impact on the future of LGBT rights in Alaska. Currently, polling shows the measure known as Proposition 5 winning with 50-41 support from voters. Nevertheless, the campaign is getting ugly and attracting national attention as a result.

The campaign against Prop 5 is being led by an Anchorage megachurch known as Anchorage Baptist Temple, which has donated 61 percent of the nearly $80,000 effort. Claiming that there’s no evidence of “widespread discrimination” and that “Anchorage is already a tolerant city,” these opponents are disproving their own point with a series of ads that portray transgender people in incredibly negative ways. One ad portrays trans people as “transvestites” who are somehow a threat to children while another shows a cross-dressing man using a women’s locker room to the detriment of a gym owner’s business. Watch them:

A third ad tries to bait gay bar owners into thinking they’d have to hire straight bartenders — as if they don’t already.

That these attitudes are so candidly on display proves the need for Proposition 5 to pass. The Yes on 5 campaign has responded with an ad of its own, featuring a real transgender person discussing his real experiences to counter the offensive animated portrayals. Watch it:

Anchorage votes on Prop 5 next Tuesday, April 3.