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.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued North Carolina today, contending that the state’s ban on second-parent adoptions discriminates against same-sex couples and is unconstitutional. Second-parent adoptions, in which one partner adopts the child of another, can occur in gay and straight relationships, but have been banned in North Carolina since 2010.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of six same-sex couples, including Marcie and Chantelle Fisher-Borne, who each carried one of their two children. The couple was treated rudely by hospital staff during the birth of one of their children:

MARCIE FISHER-BORNE:We were treated as if our family was less than other families during what should have been one of the happiest occasions of our lives. We don’t ever want there to be any question as to who should care for our children. If something were to happen to either one of us, it could tear our family apart.

According to the lawsuit, the ban on second parent adoptions violates the constitutional rights of children, and denies them the permanency and security of a loving home. Protections that children lack without access to second parent adoptions include:

[E]nsuring that all children in the family are covered if one partner lacks health insurance, ensuring that families will stay together and children will not be torn from the only home they’ve known if something should happen to the biological parent, ensuring that either parent will be allowed to make medical decisions or be able to be by their child’s bedside if one their children is hospitalized.

–Alex Brown

Thousands of protesters gathered this weekend outside of the North Carolina church where Pastor Charles Worley preaches. Worley came under fire last week after saying the U.S. should build an electrified fence to create a concentration camp for all gay people and “in a few years they’ll die out.”

In the past, Worley has also spoken fondly of the days when gay people would be “hung, bless God, from a white oak tree.”

Protesters and counter-protesters from around the country showed up outside of Worley’s church, Providence Road Baptist Church, to either fight or support Worley’s message.

Check out the crowd:

Fox Charlotte has more coverage from the ground in North Carolina.

Churches are not permitted to advocate for political outcomes, and since Worley’s hateful comments were directly aimed at President Obama and Congress, a formal request has been made to the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of his church.

Some activists are taking a less legal route: There were reports of an attempted arson at the church this weekend.

North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley shared with his congregation this weekend how he thinks the country should deal with the scourge of gay men and lesbians: Lock them into a pen with an electrified fence, drop food down to them, and because they can’t reproduce, they will die out.

The Pastor’s leper colony-esque proposal came in response to the president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, which he said “anybody with any sense” would be against. Worley explained that the idea of two men kissing makes him “pukin’ sick,” so he developed a proposal to “get rid of all the lesbians and queers”:

WORLEY: I figured a way out — a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But I couldn’t get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce.

Watch it:

These comments are in line with other anti-gay religious leaders in the state, like Sean Harris, who said parents should “crack” their children’s “limp wrist.” Harris walked back his statements, but Worley emphasized in his speech that he did, in fact, “mean to say that.”

A slew of polls have surveyed voters’ beliefs about marriage equality since President Obama’s endorsement last week, but the data collection is quickly becoming lazy and the interpretation sloppy. Monday’s CBS/New York Times poll has been roundly criticized for its incredibly small sample size (615) and the odd framing of its questions. Fox News unsurprisingly conducted a poll of its own in the same fashion and eagerly spun the results to accommodate its anti-equality agenda:

A majority of voters don’t support allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, yet at the same time a majority also opposes a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

According to a Fox News poll released Wednesday, 37 percent of voters believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to get married legally. While that’s unchanged from 2010, when the question was most recently asked, it’s nearly double the 20 percent who felt that way in March 2004, the first time it was asked.

There is actually nothing in the data that supports this conclusion. What the Fox News article doesn’t mention until its fourth paragraph is that it asked its question the same way the CBS/NYT poll did: forcing a choice between same-sex marriage, legal unions not called marriage, or no legal recognition. The true result of this poll is that 70 percent believe there should be legal recognition for same-sex couples, which was actually 8 points higher than what Monday’s CBS/NYT poll found.

But the problem with both polls is that they never force respondents to choose between same-sex marriage and nothing, creating an incomplete picture of where voters stand. Consider the recent polling from Colorado, which found that 62 percent support civil unions, but that 53 support full marriage equality as well. Forcing respondents to make an either/or choice about marriage and civil unions instead of allowing consideration for both separately creates a distorted view of where voters actually stand.

The Times’ Ross Douthat attempts to spin the interpretation the other way, suggesting that because so many “prefer” civil unions, their support for  marriage equality when not provided with an alternative is “reluctant.” And it’s because of that reluctance, he believes, that the results of ballot measures don’t match the polling. This, of course, is a conclusion that can only be drawn from the strange construction of the question in these polls, and it also ignores the reality that many complex factors impact these plebiscites. In North Carolina, the most current example, polling showed that voters were largely uninformed (or misinformed) about the actual impact of Amendment One, and thus did not realize they were voting to ban civil unions and domestic partnerships in addition to marriage — against their wishes. Plus, as Nathaniel Frank points out, polls on social issues are simply “notoriously bad at predicting [voter] behavior.”

Fox News wants to be able to claim it has data opposing the conclusion that a majority of Americans support the freedom to marry, despite consistent national polling over the past two years that shows otherwise. Any poll can be structured and framed to deliver a certain bias to the results, but the true momentum for marriage equality cannot be disregarded so easily.