Phyllis Schlafly and others at the launch of The Center for Marriage Policy, October 2011.

The Concerned Women for America-affiliated Center for Marriage Policy has released a new “report” alleging that marriage equality is responsible for “the most serious avoidable health problems of our time.” Equating homosexuality with promiscuity, the report blames bisexuals for being a “broad gateway” to infecting unsuspecting heterosexual Americans with HIV and other diseases. It then compares that supposed health crisis to smoking:

Homosexuality has been “legitimized” in our schools.  It is considered an act of hate to question or oppose sexual perversion.  Why do we teach homosexuality in our schools while strongly encouraging our children not to use drugs or smoke? Fatality data indicates that promiscuity and homosexuality are at least as dangerous to health and life as smoking or drugs.[...]

Smoking is banned everywhere in America because of the risks imposed to others.  We are tough on drinking and driving for the same reasons.  We can no longer give homosexuality a free pass because the grave healthcare burden it imposes on the rest of us.  The taxpayers cannot “leave the room” to avoid being harmed.

The rest of the “report” seems to be a hodgepodge collection of anti-gay talking points, including a condemnation of “multicultural marriage” for bringing about the destruction of society:

We must rescind irresponsible homosexual public policy from the lawbooks across-the-board and discourage homosexual behavior.  We must not allow pansexuals to take over the conservative movement like they did the American Psychiatric Association.  Their invasion is as dangerous to our socioeconomic fabric as the Occupy movement is to free enterprise.

America is burning down because of the demise of heterosexual marriage. Marriage-absence is the greatest socioeconomic problem we face.   Our focus must be on restoring heterosexual marriage as the social norm.

The Center also offers an accompanying flier that includes a list of companies that support “the homosexual agenda.”

These flagrant, unsubstantiated attacks against the gay community are incredibly harmful, representing some of the bizarre conspiracy theories extremists are capable of concocting when motivated solely by animus.

Equality Matters blogger Carlos Maza regularly tracks the anti-gay rhetoric of the National Organization for Marriage, but last month he had a special opportunity to go behind the scenes at the “It Takes A Family To Raise A Village” (ITAF) conference, organized by NOM’s Ruth Institute. Donning a cover story as a practicing Catholic engaged to a woman, Maza attended the entire four-day conference, asking questions of the speakers and taking notes about candid comments they made in a less-than-public space. Here’s Maza’s reflection after the third night:

ITAF’s overt conflation of Christianity with intense homophobia left me dumbfounded.  When I decided to attend the conference, I expected to be exposed to a good deal of pseudoscience about gay parents and same-sex relationships. For the most part, NOM has been open about its willingness to misinform people about LGBT families in order to slow the advance of marriage equality.

But what I saw at the conference – selling a book that labels gay people as pedophiles worthy of death, distributing Bible quotes to college students similarly calling for gays to be killed, hosting entire speeches devoted to condemning gays and lesbians as deviant sinners – represented a brand of anti-gay extremism that I assumed even NOM would have shied away from.

And unfortunately, it wasn’t over.

Indeed, one of the featured speakers of the conference was Robert Gagnon, one of the founders of the Restored Hope Network, a splinter ex-gay organization committed to transforming “broken sexual sinners” with ineffective, harmful therapies. Speakers throughout the weekend also cited the deeply flawed Mark Regnerus study, claiming it is a valid resource for understanding same-sex parenting. While Maza’s entire report is worth a read, here are a few examples of what he heard there from Gagnon, Ruth Institute president Jennifer Roback Morse, NOM spokesperson Thomas Peters, Brigham Young University professor Jenet Erickson, economist Douglas Allen, and others:

• MORSE: The appointment of Salvatore Cordileone, “godfather” of Proposition 8, as archbishop of San Francisco is “a poke in the eye to Castro Street.” (Cordileone, incidentally, was arrested for drunk driving this week.)
• ERICKSON: Same-sex relationships are “inherently unstable,” “dysfunctional and erratic, and not stable.”
• PETERS: Endorsing ex-gay therapy, Peters explained, “As a Catholic, the Church doesn’t believe in gay and lesbian people, per se, in the way they do.”
• GAGNON: “A homosexual relationship is worse than a polygamist one…. a direct attack on the foundation because it says there is no male-female prerequisite.”
• ALLEN: Lesbian relationships experience instability and dissolution because they “get on the same menstrual cycle.”
• ALLEN: Citing the Regnerus study, he claimed “If you grew up in a same-sex household, by his definition, you are multiple times more likely to face sexual abuse, for example.”
• ERIKSON: Children of same-sex couples are “more likely to become same-gender attracted themselves.”
• GAGNON: Homosexuality is “self-degrading” and inflicts “measurable harm” on its participants. Gay people are not “born that way.”
• MORSE: Gay people should form “chastity clubs” to preserve their “sexual integrity.”

And of course, there was the joke that NOM’s photographer told: “Two gay guys walk into a mosque… they were never heard from again!”

Since its founding, NOM’s public message has been only about defending “traditional marriage,” but that is simply a façade hiding a true animus against gays and lesbians, and a pointed effort to demonize and condemn them. Maza should be commended for his courage for enduring what was surely a trying weekend to bring forth these details about what NOM promotes behind closed doors. Read his full account to fully appreciate exactly what NOM stands for.

Pastor Patrick Wooden, holding a cell phone like the kind he believes gay men insert in their anuses.

The National Organization for Marriage is following its own recipe to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks” with a new radio ad running on R&B and Urban Gospel stations in North Carolina. The ad features radical anti-gay pastor Patrick Wooden, who has called being gay a “death style” and believes gay men insert cellphones in their anuses. Wooden encourages North Carolina African-Americans to turn against President Obama because of his “strong endorsement of the homosexual movement.” NOM’s president Brian Brown defended the race-wedging ads:

BROWN: African Americans in North Carolina were quite understandably proud of Barack Obama for his historic election in 2008. But President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, his administration’s determination to repeal DOMA and the Democratic Party’s call for the repeal of North Carolina’s marriage amendment puts Obama at odds with the values of the African American community.

The goal of our advertising campaign is to issue a wake-up call to the African American community in North Carolina that President Obama does not represent the values that they have fought to protect. We urge all North Carolinians to join Dr. Wooden in rejecting the anti-family policies of President Obama this November.

Listen to the ad:

Brown is not one to be claiming any knowledge of “anti-family policies,” seeing as how he’s completely incapable of even recognizing a family when he’s in their own home. It’s also sadly ironic that NOM has spent the last two weeks trying to suggest it’s the LGBT community that incites violence, then uses a spokesperson like Wooden who believes it’s perfectly “normal” to react violently to gay people. And of course, any attempt to speak on behalf of the entire African-American community is troubling, especially given NOM’s explicit goal of “fanning the hostility” between people who are black and LGBT. NOM seems willing to sink to any depth to turn society against same-sex marriage and the loving families for whom it’s an important goal.

Last night, Bill O’Reilly invited Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center onto his show to refute claims by the Family Research Council that “hate group” labels incite violence. Potok attempted to explain the many lies FRC tells to demonize the LGBT community, such as claims that pedophilia is a “homosexual problem,” but that point essentially derailed the conversation. O’Reilly pushed back, defending FRC’s point that same-sex child abuse is more common than opposite-sex child abuse:

O’REILLY: So they are pointing out that in this area, there is a higher percentage of gay pedophilia, homosexual pedophilia, than heterosexual pedophilia. Are they a hate group for pointing that out?

POTOK: But Bill, they’re not pointing something out that’s true; they’re making a false allegation.

O’REILLY: You say that’s not true, what they said?

POTOK: That’s what I’m saying. They also say that gay people are “fundamentally incapable of being good parents.” That also is false and that has been shown by many studies, conducted not by the Southern Poverty Law Center—

O’REILLY: I think the statistics are that the male-boy pedophilia problem is much more intense than the male-girl pedophilia problem.

Watch it:

O’Reilly simply does not understand pedophilia. There is no such thing as “homosexual pedophilia” or “heterosexual pedophilia,” because an attraction to children has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Girls are more likely to experience sexual abuse than boys, and yet the high-profile reporting on male-boy sexual abuse, such as in the Catholic Church or Boy Scouts, suggests the opposite to be true. In addition, most — if not all, in some cases — of the “homosexual pedophilia” documented in studies FRC cites was committed by heterosexual men. To distort that reality into a “homosexual problem” is to intentionally demonize the gay community, which is exactly why the SPLC labels FRC a “hate group.”