Jennifer Roback Morse

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute has been particularly vocal over the past few months, promoting ex-gay therapy and suggesting that young people not have gay friends. In an interview published in Salvo Magazine in September, she was quite candid about the archaic stereotypes about same-sex couples that inform her anti-gay positions:

MORSE: If you look at same-sex couples, both at what they say and their behavior, neither permanence nor sexual exclusivity plays the same significant role. In other words, if you’re in a union that’s intrinsically not procreative, sexual exclusivity is not as important. Once you start thinking like that, you’ll see that everything people offer as reasons why same-sex couples should be “allowed” to get married—all of the reasons are private purposes. Sometimes it’s nothing more than how it will make them feel. It’s not the business of law to make people feel a certain way. When you see that redefining marriage is going to, in fact, redefine the meaning of parenthood, removing biology as the basis for parenthood and replacing it with legal constructions—then you see that there is quite a lot at stake in getting the definition of marriage right.

Morse is arguing that any couple that can not biologically reproduce is incapable of monogamy or life commitments to each other, a characteristic that applies to many straight couples as well. This argument neglects both the important legal protections of marriage and the fact that many same-sex couples raise families. For example, marriage inequality creates many unique challenges for LGBT older adults, especially economic and health inequities because of benefits they do not have access to from their partners.

Later in the interview, Morse defends heterosexism because “heterosexuality is normal in our species” and marriage equality and nondiscrimination protections “wipe out a belief that is actually true.” She is clearly concerned with maintaining a special superior status for heterosexuals, and she will employ any narrow stereotypes and assertions in pursuit of a discriminatory goal that has little to do with “preserving marriage.”

The National Organization for Marriage has sunk to a new low of intolerance. In a “Thanksgiving Message” from Jennifer Roback Morse of NOM’s Ruth Institute, she warns that young people are being “pressured” to support LGBT equality because they have gay friends and peers. Morse relates a story of a Catholic resident assistant (RA) at a college who didn’t want to participate in the “drag party” being organized by her gay supervisor. The supervisor was supposedly “really leaning on her” and trying to “make her feel bad, make her look bad,” an example of a pro-LGBT strategy that Morse feels is a much more significant threat than the media:

MORSE: I think a lot of our students are encountering this type of situation in their dorms and on their college campuses… What I want to say to you, is that the other side has RAs in the dorm where your young people are going to school. There’s no TV message that is going to do the job of countering that type of influence. Somebody’s got to be there talking to young people one at a time in the places where they’re hanging out and doing the things that they’re doing. There’s no mass media strategy by itself that will solve this problem. [...]

And this holiday season, when your young people come home from college, ask them about this. Ask them if they have a gay RA in their dorms… So please, talk to your young people about this and see what kind of pressure they may be under that maybe even they don’t realize how much it’s having an impact upon them.

Watch it:

Apparently, simply knowing a gay person now constitutes “pressure” that conservative Christians are unfairly subjected to. Morse’s inherent solution seems to be that young people should ostracize (or disobey, in the case of someone in a supervisory position like an RA) anybody who might be openly gay and to only talk to other equally anti-gay people, like those provided by NOM.

NOM is surely right to be concerned about the growing generation gap on marriage equality and overall LGBT acceptance. Encouraging a culture of exclusion, however, will not likely endear many young people to the group’s cause.

Reverend William Owens

An interesting social experiment this week has been watching how the National Organization for Marriage responds to its massive losses in the election. Yesterday, the group’s President Brian Brown offered that nothing would change and the group was no less convinced the American public stands on the side of discrimination. NOM also sent a message to supporters espousing that its mission against marriage equality had entirely religious motivations, not societal. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that NOM is feeling the desperation, as exemplified by two of its surrogates, whose rhetoric this week has sunk to extreme claims that same-sex marriage is going to destroy not just “the family,” but all of society.

William Owens is NOM’s paid “Religious Liaison” and director of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, a small group of black anti-gay religious leaders who claim to speak on behalf of all black Christians, but who are hardly representative. More than anything, Owens’ group is a prop for NOM’s efforts to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks.” And this week, Owen’s hasn’t backed down at all, claiming that marriage discrimination is “God’s law,” and if society allows same-sex marriage and adoption, then “the whole gamut of the family is going to be destroyed and all areas of the social life will be destroyed from what has been for thousands of years.” Listen to it:

Jennifer Roback Morse, director of NOM’s Ruth Institute, also took to the airwaves this week. She has been very concerned lately about same-sex behavior, endorsing ex-gay therapy and lifetime-celibacy for gay people. Like Owens, she is worried about the fate of society, because “there really isn’t any future in sodomy.” Morse remains astonished that opponents of equality could be accused of standing on the wrong side of history because it’s like “standing reality on its head.” Listen to it (via Jeremy Hooper/Equality Matters):

It does not get more desperate than claiming society will be destroyed if people don’t take a certain position.

Maggie Gallagher has long denied that the National Organization for Marriage has ever endorsed ex-gay therapy, claiming that the anti-gay organization only focuses on the definition of marriage. But plenty of evidence contradicts her, including the presence of ex-gay therapists at a recent NOM conference. Last week, Jennifer Roback Morse of NOM’s Ruth Institute said she believes gay people can find “relief from some of the symptoms” of same-sex attractions, and in a new speech, she blatantly endorsed forcing gay people into a lifetime of celibacy:

MORSE: One group of people that I particularly want to call your attention to is the group of people who experience same-sex attraction as a permanent part of their personalities. Some of those people choose to describe themselves as “gay” and identify with that attraction, but what I want to say is that that is a decision, to identify with the attraction. In effect, it’s a very momentous decision, but I am sure in a room this size there are people who know people who are struggling with same-sex attraction.[...]

What the Catholic Church teaches is very simple, that they can be saved, but they have to live a life of chastity — and that God does want them to be saved. In fact, their same-sex attraction can be their personal path to holiness. That can be the thing that gets them to Heaven: dealing with that, dealing with it in a good, and decent, and wholesome way.

Morse goes onto explain that the Catholic plan of celibacy is a good alternative for Mormons and evangelical Christians who are trying to “cure” gays. Watch Morse’s entire speech on the “Problems with Same Sex Marriage.” The above comments begin at the 17-minute mark:

Any distinction between celibacy and embracing an ex-gay identity is negligible. It’s not surprising that Morse went out of her way to describe gay identities as a “decision” as a set-up for her chastity plan. Just like ex-gay therapy, Morse’s approach is a plan to deny and reject a person’s identity, to deprive them of ever experiencing romantic love or sexual pleasure for their entire lives. It’s harmful, and it’s stigmatizing.

Morse makes over $100,000 from NOM to spread these kinds of messages ($116,667 in 2010). This is NOM’s true intention: not a campaign to “defend marriage,” but one that directly targets the lives and well-being of gays and lesbians.

Jennifer Roback Morse, president of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute, is the latest conservatives to object to California’s new law banning ex-gay therapy for minors. Yesterday on Lutheran Public Radio’s Issues, Etc., Morse claimed to have met people who have changed their orientation and argued that therapy can, in her words, lessen the “cravings” and provide “relief from some of the symptoms” of homosexuality:

MORSE: And there are, in fact, documented cases of people who seek therapy, who seek help for changing their sexual orientation who have received some benefit from that therapy as they define it – who have received a lessening of the cravings, who have received a release from some of the more compulsive aspects of their behavior and so on. So I think we know that it is possible to have some relief from some of the symptoms, even if we don’t fully understand how it works and even if it doesn’t work for everyone, so on and so forth.

Listen to it, via Equality Matters:

Morse’s comments confirm that NOM still has a pre-1973 conception of sexual orientation, treating homosexuality as a chosen set of disordered behaviors instead of a healthy, innate identity. As always, the campaign against marriage equality is driven by misinformation and stigmatization against gays and lesbians, not any justifiable concern for “traditional marriage” or children.

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.

NOM's Jennifer Roback Morse

Jennifer Roback Morse heads up the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute, which more often than not is just another outlet for proliferating anti-gay propaganda. Morse has complained before that sites like ThinkProgress have debunked her fabrications about the “consequences” of marriage equality, and in March, she objected strongly to GLAAD’s inclusion of her in its Commentator Accountability Project, which advises the media about offensive comments would-be guests have made in non-mainstream venues. In her rant, she attempted to make the case that “opposing the gay lobby” didn’t make her anti-gay. Of course, she never actually addressed the crude, offensive remarks she has made, like comparing the LGBT movement to Nazi Germany and her fears that it amounts to a “hostile takeover of the whole civil society” that is “anti-human” and “at war with Mother Nature.” She has also described homosexuality as an “intrinsically disordered behavior” that people “suffer” and “struggle” with.

Four months after ThinkProgress wrote about Morse’s objections to GLAAD, she is again complaining that we distorted her position, claiming that the “lifestyle left doesn’t actually make arguments. They just make noise”:

Do you see what they have done? They have slipped in an unstated assumption that the “gay lobby” = “gay rights.” Anyone who disagrees with the gay lobby automatically, always and everywhere, opposes gay rights. Put it another way: they have turned an important and debatable question into an unquestioned assumption.

But no assumption is required;  Morse does oppose gay rights — it’s her entire livelihood. No doubt there are plenty of people within the LGBT community who disagree about the best way to lobby for LGBT equality, but that’s definitely not a conversation Morse participates in. She reminds of this just a few paragraphs later:

The subject of my original article in The Blaze was my claim that removing the gender requirement from marriage would result in the state insisting that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. I believe that this will impact men and women differently, and that the net result will be the further marginalization of fathers from the family.

I still believe that to be true. I still believe it will be a very bad thing for society. I am not ashamed of this belief, in spite of GLAAD’s rather ham-handed attempt to shame me about it.

The most telling point though is that Think Progress did not even bring up the question of whether redefining marriage will marginalize fathers from the family. They just changed the subject.

Morse is free to believe whatever she wishes, but that doesn’t make her beliefs correct. As a fellow blogger, surely Morse appreciates that not every post can address every topic, and surely she recalls that just two months prior, ThinkProgress debunked this very argument when she made it. In fact, our blog has repeatedly challenged the notion that same-sex parenting harms children or families, pointing out the duplicitous way that conservatives like Morse use studies about the experience of single mothers to attack lesbians mothers with claims that their children are victims of “fatherlessness.” The one study NOM found (and likely conspired to have published) that drew negative conclusions specifically about gay parenting was so faulty in its methods that the publisher’s internal auditor called it “bullshit.”

Morse thinks GLAAD, Good As You, ThinkProgress, and others are making “noise” by calling out her anti-gay statements for what they are. Rather than confront the honest reality of the harm her lies cause, it is she who is making “noise” with an empty debate about rhetorical strategy.

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute is the latest conservative to object to GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project for raising media awareness that her views are anti-gay. Jeremy Hooper has already documented everything she gets wrong about the actual campaign, but at the core of her argument is the claim that opposing gay rights and being “anti-gay” are not the same thing:

Evidently GLAAD believes that raising legitimate questions about the group’s preferred policies automatically makes a person “anti-gay.” But surely one can disagree with policies advocated by the National Education Association without hating every teacher in America, just as one can surely oppose policies advocated by the NAACP without being a racist.

Redefining marriage raises questions that deserve to be fully aired. Trying to discredit skeptics changes the subject. Equating all disagreement with evidence of bias lowers the intellectual level of the discussion. These rhetorical tactics do not do the gay lobby any credit. In fact, responsible people of all parties should shun these strategies and make room for honest debate on this momentous question of changing the fundamental structure of our most important social institution.

Morse’s attempt to establish a nuanced distinction fails. The LGBT movement works toward a day when sexual and gender minorities are free from fear, distrust, discrimination, and moral condemnation. By spreading falsehoods about the nature of same-sex families and suggesting they are a threat to society, Morse very much stands in the way of that end-goal. Discrediting her bias and constant distortion of research is not simply a “rhetorical tactic,” but an imperative for protecting LGBT people from her “skepticism” — a codeword for her intent to stigmatize.

Morse also scoffed that GLAAD only provided four examples of her animus. Despite the project’s interest in concision, her page now features twelve examples.

The head of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute was apparently quite unnerved by a ThinkProgress LGBT post last week calling out Focus on the Family for using a study about single parenthood to attack same-sex parents. One of FOTF’s experts, Glenn T. Stanton, concluded from the study that children were better off with “a mother and a father,” a common talking point NOM has used to oppose marriage equality. Jennifer Roback Morse wrote that “Zach Ford” was “outraged,” “breathless,” and had a “seizure,” but she then essentially admitted all the same points made in the very post she objected to. Here are some of her concessions:

MORSE: Now Mr. Ford is correct that the University of Chicago study didn’t talk about same sex parents.

Correct. It concluded that children benefited from having intact families.

MORSE: Fatherlessness would be a serious issue, even if the definition of marriage were completely off the table.

Fatherlessness is certainly a concern for the child of a single mother, but not for the child of a committed lesbian couple, which is the conflation FOTF and NOM regularly make. As long as Ms. Morse is not attempting the same rhetorical distortion, there is no disagreement over her conclusion.

MORSE: I wrote two books, one in 2001, and another in 2005, which deal extensively with impact of family structure on the lives of children, arguing for the importance of the two parent married couple household for the development and happiness of children. Neither book has a single word about homosexuality or same sex unions.

Morse has conceded here that children are better off with “two parents” who are married. Rick Santorum similarly let slip a similar admission this week after making a “fatherless” claim of his own. One would think she would thus support same-sex families having access to marriage for the sake of their children, but Morse likely avoids thinking about loving same-sex couples raising families. After all, she thinks that couples should not have access to sperm banks, that “anal sex is icky” and a “completely shameless activity,” that sexual orientation is an “accidental characteristic” that gays and lesbians “suffer from” and “struggle with,” and that LGBT activists are comparable to Nazis and she could get “shot at any moment.”

MORSE: [Books by Stanton, Maggie Gallagher, and David Blankenhorn on family structure] are not about same sex unions.

This may very well be true, and if so, these books should never be used in arguments against same-sex marriage, nor should they qualify their authors as experts on that topic. For example, Blankenhorn, known for his book Fatherless America, was the star witness for those defending California’s Proposition 8 in court. Despite expectations that his testimony would support continued discrimination against same-sex couples, he admitted, among other things, that marriage is a “public good” and that the children of gays and lesbians would benefit if their parents could marry.

MORSE/STANTON: “Intact families are best for children of either gender.”

Nobody at ThinkProgress disputes this conclusion. Perhaps Ms. Morse should reserve her ad hominem attacks for bloggers she actually disagrees with.