Ben Jealous speaking at the National Conference on LGBT Equality in January, 2012.

The National Organization for Marriage’s confidential memos released this week reveal the group’s insidious attempts to foster racial divisions to further its opposition to the freedom to marry. The leaders of various groups that advocate for African-Americans are now speaking out to condemn the exploitative tactics.

Adding to comments made by Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond earlier this week, NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous rebuked any attempt at creating a wedge as “artificial”:

JEALOUS: This memo only reveals the limits of a cynical agenda. The truth is that no group, no matter how well-funded, can drive an artificial wedge between our communities. People of color understand what it is like to be the target of discrimination. No public relations strategy will make us forget that.

Sharon Lettman-Hicks, Executive Director and CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition, also spoke out, expressing her concern that NOM has exploited the black faith community to advance a hateful agenda:

LETTMAN-HICKS: 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. 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.

NOM President Brian Brown responded to the controversy this week by bragging, “We proudly bring together people of different races, creeds and colors.” Clearly, that is not the case.

NOM funded two thirds of StandforMarriageMaine.com's 2009 campaign budget.

Despite all the disturbing race-wedging, parent-scaring, and dummy celebrity-co-opting found in the National Organization for Marriage’s confidential memos, it’s important to remember one other aspect of the anti-gay group’s sneaky tactics — the very tactic that failed and allowed these documents to see the light of day. In every one of its efforts, NOM intentionally avoids any action that would require it to disclose the identities of its donors. Consider this passage from one of the memos:

A victory in 2009 in Maine is critical to stopping the momentum of the same-sex marriage movement in the Northeast. The total budget for Maine is $3.5 million. We cannot designate any money given to NOM to the Maine effort because of disclosure requirements. But we do plan to contribute a total of $1 million to the campaign.

In a later memo, NOM admitted to funding $1.8 million of the approximately $3 million raised in Maine. Regardless of whether the intention was to circumvent or outright violate Maine’s laws, the goal was the same: avoid falling under the purview of finance disclosure while still playing a significant role. Of course, it was thanks to NOM’s failed challenge to Maine’s laws that these documents have been released.

What’s particularly insidious about NOM’s fervent protection of its donor identities is the way the organization ties this effort to its messaging that the LGBT community is a violent threat to society. In one portion of the memos, NOM discusses its “State Emergency Reserve Fund,” an extra cache of cash set aside in case same-sex marriage suddenly appears as an issue in a state they haven’t budgeted for:

Given the threats of intimidation to donors who support marriage in California and nationwide, we face a serious hurdle in getting state ballot initiatives and candidate campaigns funded because donors must be disclosed. However, if NOM makes a contribution from its own resources that are not specifically designated for one of these efforts donor identities are NOT disclosed.

In other words, NOM believes it can anonymously influence any state-wide marriage effort so long as it acts as an independent player and that it deserves such anonymity because of the “threats” to its donors. Under the auspicious heading of “Donor Protection Litigation,” in another memo, NOM references its own campaigns “attempt to draw attention” to this supposed “antagonism”:

The antagonism faced during the campaign ultimately paled in comparison to the hatred leveled at Prop 8 supporters by gay marriage activists after the election. Boycotts, picketing, and occasional violence — much of it targeted at Latter-Day Saints and local family businesses — were orchestrated by local gay marriage advocates and tolerated by all the national and statewide organizations.

NOM was responsible for the only organized response attempting to draw attention to the bigotry and intolerance being displayed by the supposed forces of “tolerance.” NOM’s “AboveTheHate.com” campaign gathered nearly 6,000 signers to a petition standing with the LDS church in the face of religiously motivated attacks — supporting their right to speak out in support of marriage.

Boycotts and picketing do not constitute “hatred” (unless NOM really “hates” Starbucks), no LGBT organization has ever condoned violence, and 6,000 signatures really isn’t that many, but all of that is beside the point. NOM’s effort to portray itself as the victim seems to serve as preemptive self-justification for circumventing campaign disclosure laws. But NOM has lost court challenges in both Washington and Maine, time seems to be telling that this plan isn’t just duplicitous, it’s just plain ineffective.

Dr. Alveda King speaking at a NOM rally.

Last year, Louis J. Marinelli came out for marriage equality after being exposed to hundreds who protested the National Organization for Marriage, for which he worked. Since then, he has revealed many of the anti-gay group’s internal documents, and today he added some fuel to the fire created by the confidential memos released earlier this week.

Marinelli has posted various internal emails that prove NOM has placed an emphasis on race, seeking to elevate the voices of anti-equality blacks to create barriers from the white-dominated gay community. Throughout the messages, Maggie Gallagher repeatedly requests pictures of black religious leaders participating in protests (typos are her own):

GALLAGHER: I believe these are COGIC bishops, black bishops. That’s why I’m saying make sure we feature and focus on thejm.

GALLAGHER: He’s black, he’s on our side, he’s COGIC, I need a closeup please advice.

GALLAGHER: I’m told the rally was two-third blacks. All the photos we have up are taken behind white people. Any phot that shows the crowd as it was? Please send it to me and Eve tushnet for use in this week’s newsletter.

GALLAGHER: Eve, take a look at these and see if any of them reflect a. large crowd 2-1 black and/or b. Fauteroy.

In two other emails, project leader Joe Giganti confirms that he has collected photos that portray a group of black NOM protesters clashing with white LGBT counter-protesters:

GIGANTI: I’ve been reviewing these shots this morning. From this first email, there are several good shots that demonstrate a majority Black American crowd.

GIGANTI: This is a great contrast shot of our people all happy and smiling (majority black, only one non-black in picture) versus the angry counter-protesters… Keep this one close for future use—maybe a dynamic picture point that rotates between positive, happy shots of our people versus our angry foes?

Like the Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out, NOM is blatantly using the African-American community to further its opposition to the freedom to marry. This is unfiltered animus in action.

GLAAD has noticed another interesting tidbit in the National Organization for Marriage’s confidential strategy documents that the Human Rights Campaign released this week. Apparently, the organization wanted to find “non-cognitive” celebrities through whom it could feed its anti-marriage equality talking points:

Here’s the bottom line: Hollywood with its cultural biases is far bigger than we can hope to be. We recognize this. But 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. (This is applying the Witherspoon and IAV model to non-intellectual elites.) When people are isolated they are silent and ineffectual; in community they gather courage and also give courage (by being visible to others). Precisely because Hollywood is currently so massively biased, there is an opportunity for a small countercultural community to have a disproportionate cultural impact.

NOM goes on to explain that “All the beautiful people are supposed to be for gay marriage,” and so when someone like Carrie Prejean — the Miss USA 2009 first runner-up — comes out against marriage equality, she gets a lot of attention. Of course, she got so much negative attention that NOM went from using her in ads to disavowing her as a spokesperson. This memo seems to suggest, however, that everything went according to plan.

GLAAD, which has profiled many of NOM’s spokespeople through its Commentator Accountability Project, countered this revelation with a mock-up “Help Wanted” ad NOM might wish to post:

As details from these strategic memos continue to come to light, it becomes increasingly evident that one of NOM’s overarching tactics is to simply take advantage of “non-cognitive” thinking. Whether it’s fostering racial divisions, scaring parents with threats to children, or feeding talking points through celebrity dummies, NOM seems intent on not actually allowing direct discussion on the issue of marriage. They must know that denying freedom to same-sex families isn’t an idea with which they can win.

Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) each made appointments to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and both chose candidates known for infringing upon others’ religious freedom and fostering hate against minorities.

Boehner’s pick was Robert P. George, co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, a group making headlines this week for its confidential memos revealing an intent to divide racial groups and scare parents as tactics to oppose marriage equality. George has explicitly participated in the effort to paint gays and lesbians as a threat to children through the Preserve Innocence project, for which he made a video warning about President Obama’s appointment of Kevin Jennings as Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. He also helped draft the Manhattan Declaration, which encourages Christians to defy the law to uphold their anti-gay, anti-choice beliefs. By working to ban same-sex marriage, George eagerly imposes upon the religious freedom of all faiths who support the freedom to marry.

George shares a connection to his fellow new appointee through their promotion of Islamophobia. McConnell appointed Zuhdi Jasser for his pick, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Most see Jasser as a “mere sock puppet” for those who spread animosity about the Muslim community, and Jasser’s group in turn has called the leadership of many U.S. Muslim groups “malignant.” He has testified before Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) “radicalization” of Islam hearings and supports spying on innocent Muslims. Both Jasser’s group and the Bradley Foundation (of which George is a board member) featured heavily in last year’s Fear, Inc. report by the Center for American Progress, documenting the roots of the U.S. Islamophobia network. The Washington Post mistakenly described George as having a “less controversial profile” than Jasser.

These appointments are further evidence that the Republican agenda is not about defending so-called “religious liberty,” but about ensuring that their conservative values continue to have a prominent voice over other points of view.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was quick to add its voice to those decrying the National Organization for Marriage’s confidential memos that recommend creating racial divisions to fight marriage equality, but directed its message directly at its black constituents:

Black folks, this is a message for you: The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the country’s preeminent group fighting against same-sex marriage, really, really likes you. They even want to make some of you famous!

Have NOM’s principal leaders, former president Maggie Gallagher and current leader Brian S. Brown, stood up for African Americans before? Well, not so much. But it turns out that they’ve decided that you’re actually very important.

It turns out that the SPLC had already planned to publish a separate post yesterday exposing how NOM avoids taking responsibility for its anti-gay messaging by simply linking to others’ antagonistic content on its blog:

Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown have repeatedly claimed that they are simply trying to protect marriage, that they bear no animus toward LGBT people or their sexual orientations. But again and again, signs of such animus have crept into the material issued by NOM: scary warnings about pedophilia, “addictive behavior,” “jihads” against Christians and so on. Now, as pressure ratchets up on opponents of same-sex marriage — Maryland this year became the eighth state to approve such unions, even as a federal judge found the anti-same-sex-marriage Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional — it remains to be seen whether NOM can avoid following other religious-right groups into a world of untrammeled hate.

What the confidential documents show is that NOM’s public relations are spun to sound innocent, but anti-gay animus is clearly the intent behind its race-wedging, parent-scaring tactics, just like it is for all of its conservative partners in crime. As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said in his response, “Our nation was founded on the principle of liberty and justice for all people—regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. NOM is clearly opposed to these basic ideals that so many Americans hold dear.” In the past, diverse communities may have been fooled by NOM’s malicious ideas, but now is the time to unite for the equality and fair treatment of all people.