In many of the states that have waged marriage equality fights recently, opponents have often coalesced around a coalition consisting of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the state’s Catholic conference, and the state’s “family policy council” affiliate of the Family Research Council. In Illinois, however, these typical players have not united in the same way, seemingly in part because the state social conservative group is the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a hate group in its own right associated with the American Family Association.

IFI’s rhetoric is quite a bit more brazen than what anti-gay groups have used in other states, which may have scared away its would-be allies. As a telling example, NOM posted pictures from an IFI rally last week, but didn’t mention the organization by name nor link to its own post about the rally. Otherwise, NOM’s rhetoric has mostly been limited to threats of retribution against Republicans who might support marriage equality. The Illinois Catholic Conference has issued its own materials opposing marriage equality, and Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki has made his share of negative comments, but there seems to be no coordination with IFI.

Today marks three months since the Illinois Senate passed the marriage equality bill, and with only three weeks left for the House to pass it, here’s a look at some of IFI’s rhetoric that is dominating the opposition:

• Today, IFI posted numerous photos from its rally this weekend, including a sign that reads, “The crime against nature will never be equal.”
• Speakers at the rally included ex-gay advocate Linda Jernigan and another hate group leader, Peter LaBarbera, who told the crowd that homosexuality is “unnatural and wrong,” citing HIV rates among men who have sex with men as evidence of “the dangers of homosexuality.”
• In February, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote that gay people shouldn’t even be allowed to teach because they’ll put pictures of their partners on their desk that students will see.
• In fact, IFI believes that parents should pull their children from any classroom that attempts to create a safe environment for LGBT students.
• IFI has claimed gays and lesbians already have equality because they can marry the opposite sex like everyone else; same-sex marriage is thus a demand “to be treated specially.”
• IFI recommends language that demonizes the gay community, encouraging opponents of equality to frame their resistance as compassion.

This extreme rhetoric extends beyond the talking points conservatives have traditionally used in these fights, which tend to focus on supposed protections for children, gender norms, and the institution of marriage. By openly condemning homosexuality as unnatural and curable through therapy — as well as enabling the bullying of LGBT youth — IFI sets itself apart. It remains unclear how many votes short the Illinois House is from passage or what is motivating those opponents, but with IFI’s strong presence in the fight, opponents’ will struggle to deliver a cohesive or approachable argument as the vote approaches.

Opponents of marriage equality are licking their wounds after Monday’s passage of marriage equality in the Minnesota Senate, assuring The Land of 10,000 Lakes would become the 12th state recognizing same-sex marriages. Despite polling showing a majority of Minnesotans support the bill, conservatives have suggested otherwise, with Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council calling its passage “a hostile takeover.”

A statement from the Minnesota for Marriage coalition suggested it was a “sad day” for the state that will have “unintended consequences”:

Today is an historic and sad day for the state of Minnesota. As a result of years of campaigning by gay “marriage” activists awaiting a time when DFL leadership in the Minnesota legislature and governorship would be ready to champion their cause (contrary to the will of Minnesotans), the Minnesota Senate joined the Minnesota House of Representatives in passing the same-sex “marriage” bill. This bill not only upends our most foundational institution of marriage, redefining it as genderless and declaring mothers and fathers as “neutral” in Minnesota—it also fails to protect the most basic religious liberty rights of those who believe based on their faith that marriage can only be the union of one man and one woman. [...]

Now we are being told that redefining marriage poses no threat to religious liberty—that “everything will be ok”—and again, we argue that this is false.  Over one million Minnesotans will be forced to either affirm what they believe to be false or subject themselves to prosecution and insult as “bigots” and “criminals” under our law with the passage of this bill.

Minnesota will be discovering the unintended consequences and sentencing more and more people of faith to prosecution under our laws for years to come as a result of this decision made by a few today.

The statement covers many familiar talking points: Somehow marriage is weaker if it is “genderless.” People of faith should be free to discriminate against same-sex couples. The LGBT movement is “powerful.” None of them ring any truer in hindsight.

The National Organization for Marriage also chimed in, suggesting the lawmakers “cast a terrible vote that damages society, tells children they don’t deserve a mother and a father, and brands supporters of traditional marriage as bigots.” As always, the group promised retaliation against Republicans who supported the bill, even though past retribution campaigns have led to more Democrats being elected — making the effort counterproductive.

Minnesota marks six state victories for marriage equality in about as many months. Opponents seem desperate to prove that they are made victims by these changes in the law, but their only examples continue to be individuals intent on blatantly discriminating against same-sex couples. For all their “pro-family,” “what’s best for children,” and “protect the institution of marriage” arguments over the years, their opposition all boils down to a will to discriminate in the end. They may object to being called bigots, but every time they do, it becomes more clear to the public that that is exactly what they are.

Last week, Funny or Die released a video featuring George Takei, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Brad Goreski that makes fun of opponents of marriage equality. Called “Gays Beware,” the video parodies a 1950′s black-and-white PSA and suggests that the character Dale is “sick” because he opposes allowing same-sex couples to marry. The National Organization for Marriage did not take kindly to this satire, and is now trying to fundraise off it:

In other words, Dale is a sick, bigoted, ignorant, drunken, hypocritical, fill-in-the-blank.

But you see, the producers of this video want your friends, family and the rest of society to believe that you are Dale.

This video is unbridled hatred and bigotry towards people like you and me who believe in marriage. Some gay marriage activists clearly believe their own propaganda that gay marriage is inevitable, and now they are no longer attempting to hide their loathing and hatred of good people like you and me who simply believe marriage is the unique and special union of husband and wife.

NOM clearly misses the point of this video. It doesn’t just mock any 1950′s PSA — it specifically mocks Boys Beware, a 1961 propaganda film about predatory “homosexuals.” Boys Beware specifically described gay men as “sick” and “mentally ill,” painting them as child molesters and pedophiles intent on luring young boys into their grasp. One boy in the film is even killed, “having traded his life for a newspaper headline.”

The portrayal of Dale also serves as commentary for the tactics of groups like NOM. For example, just because they use flowery language like “pro-family” doesn’t mean they aren’t anti-gay. Also, Dale has been divorced twice (not unlike Newt Gingrich), a reminder that there are many aspects of marriage that groups like NOM completely ignore, focusing entirely on opposing the rights of same-sex couples. The suggestion that Dale is secretly gay is also a fair jab, as multiple studies have actually found that homophobia can result, at least partly, from a desire to suppress one’s own same-sex orientation.

NOM is so busy trying to portray itself and its supporters as victims that it cannot see the loaded — and valid — critiques of opponents of LGBT equality in the video. Watch it:

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are preparing to consider hundreds of proposed amendments to the immigration reform bill, one of which will extend protections to bi-national same-sex couples, because the Defense of Marriage Act current prevents them from sponsoring foreign-born partners. Friday night, President Obama explained that he believes adding that provision is “the right thing to do” because “the LGBT community should be treated like everybody else”:

OBAMA: The LGBT community should be treated like everybody else. That’s the essential core principle behind our founding documents. The idea that we’re all created equal and we’re equal before the law. [...]

I can tell you I think that the provision is the right thing to do. I’ll also tell you that I’m not going to get everything I want in this bill. Republicans are not going to get everything they want in this bill.

Watch it (HT: Blabbeando):

The absence of this specific protection for same-sex couples is causing division over the fate of the bill. Some Republicans, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have warned that adding this provision will completely derail the bill, but its sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is adamant about including it. LGBT groups, including the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLAAD, and The Task Force support adding it to the bill, but conservative groups like the National Organization for Marriage have accused them of attempting to “brazenly jeopardize immigration reform.”

The National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown sat down with USA Today to talk about their loss in Rhode Island, but despite the advance of equality, Brown continued to reiterate his false belief that a majority oppose same-sex marriage — they don’t. During the interview, Susan Page asked him about the Republican Party’s attempt to be more inclusive of people who support marriage equality, even if the party’s platform doesn’t change, but he was resolute that straying from this one position will be the demise of the entire party:

PAGE: Reince Priebus, the Republican National Chairman, said the party needed to be inclusive on this issue — needed to keep the party platform but welcome people who support same-sex marriage as good Republicans. Should the party be inclusive?

BROWN: Does “inclusive” mean that you get rid of your founding principles? Are party platforms supposed to mean anything? If the party does that, the party’s done. The party is done if the Republican Party abandons traditional marriage. It would mean that it has turned its back again on not only its base, but on the overwhelming majority of folks who identify as Republicans.

Watch the full interview at USA Today.

Despite the fact NOM is non-partisan, Brown has a significant investment in the Republican party. In addition to leading NOM, Brown heads up ActRight, an online fundraising tool for conservative candidates, including “all federal Republican candidates.” He has used ActRight’s tool to fundraise in the state same-sex marriage fights to prove its worth to Republican operatives. Thus, he likely wants the party staying committed to opposing same-sex marriage so they stay interested in using ActRight.

Incidentally, NOM’s own vindictive campaigns against Republicans who support marriage equality have backfired against the party. Of the four Republican seats NOM challenged in the New York Senate, they only replaced one with an opponent of marriage equality, but lost two of them to Democrats. If all Republicans obeyed Brian Brown’s wishes, it would help his personal cause greatly, but it would continue to hurt the party in a country increasingly embracing equal marriage rights for all couples.

Robert Gagnon with NOM's Jennifer Roback Morse and Pastor Jim Garlow

Opponents of LGBT equality often speak in prepared statements, but in private, their rhetoric is much more candid. This week, blogger Jeremy Hooper had the chance to see just how vile they can be. There is an email list of over seventy social conservatives that allows them to coordinate with each other, and in their own company, the anti-gay rhetoric apparently flows quite freely. This became a concern for Alan Chambers of the ex-gay group Exodus International, an organization that has moved away from its harsher past of claiming to “cure” homosexuality — so much so that Chambers added Hooper to the list so he could see just what was being said.

Hooper’s presence on the email thread only provoked harsher responses from its other participants. After Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute denounced Hooper’s writing as “deceitful, nasty, and juvenile,” here is how another individual came to her defense about Hooper’s inclusion on the list:

Jeremy, Your utter rebellion against your creator, and your efforts to encourage others to join in your rebellion are sins and crimes of the highest order.

If you call yourself a Christian, you are twice the son of Hell. [...]

Repent Jeremy, you have perverted God’s straight ways! Repent or you shall receive the penalty due. Repent or face the judgment for the little ones you lead into your sin!

A response from Robert Gagnon was even more scathing. Gagnon is helping to organize the Restored Hope Network, the ex-gay group that splintered off to insist that “Jesus Christ provides hope for transformation to broken sexual sinners.” Despite his extreme promotion of ex-gay therapy, Gagnon is featured every year at the National Organization for Marriage’s “It Takes A Family” conference. He responded to the email thread with a long screed attacking homosexuality as a “perverse behavior” comparable to, albeit not as bad as, bestiality. Here are some excerpts:

Bestiality is an even more unnatural form of sexual practice since it is cross-species. Adult-consensual incest is also a particularly perverse form of sexual practice since it involves sex with someone who is too much of a familial same. But Scripture treats homosexual practice as even more severely unnatural because the male-female requirement for sexual relations is foundational for all that follows (so Genesis and Jesus) and because sex or gender is a more constituent feature of sexual behavior than kinship. [...]

So, technically, those who willfully engage in unrepentant homosexual practice could be labelled “perverts.”

He also added this tidbit:

I also believe (ant this is just basic common sense) that having homosexual males as boy scout leaders is as stupid as having heterosexual males as girl scout leaders. It is a recipe for sexual abuse.

These candid remarks reveal a deeper and intentional animus against the gay community than is sometimes apparent in the remarks that these individuals — or the organizations they are affiliated with — make in public. Theirs is not a campaign for so-called “religious freedom,” but a blatant effort to demonize people who are gay.

When ESPN’s Chris Broussard condemned NBA player Jason Collins for being gay, his comments spoke only to his beliefs about homosexuality, not about marriage. That didn’t stop the National Organization for Marriage from claiming him as their own. Jennifer Roback Morse, who heads up NOM’s Ruth Institute, told Lutheran Public Radio’s Issues, Etc. that Broussard “required more courage” to share his Christian beliefs than Collins did for being the first professional athlete in one of the country’s major sports to come out as gay:

MORSE: I think he required more courage than the basketball player did. I mean, it requires no courage at all today to say “I’m gay.” It’s my understanding [Collins] got a phone call from the president congratulating him on his courage. Well how much courage can it take if the president’s going to pick up the phone and give you a personal phone call, you know? But in the meantime, this fellow who says, you know, ‘I’m a Christian, and I believe that sex belongs in marriage and it belongs in man-woman marriage,’ to say that, now that will bring the whole wrath of society down upon your head. So that’s the guy that really required the courage and I give him a lot of credit for it.

Listen to it (via Equality Matters):

Morse’s insensitivity to the coming out process is not surprising. She believes that gay people can simply “stop acting in a gay way,” and that same-sex couples merely have “friendships.” In the interview, she added that Broussard might as well be a Ruth Institute spokesman “because he’s there saying all of these sins are sexual sins,” confirming that her mission is a religious one, not one with society’s best interests in mind.

Obama's LGBT Money, as depicted by NOM.

The National Organization for Marriage is concerned that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is working to promote LGBT equality across the globe. Asking, “Is Obama spending your taxpayer dollars to promote gay marriage in the developing world?”, NOM tries to draw a distinction between human rights abuses, which it opposes, and discrimination, which of course it supports:

While many of the initiative’s goals are unquestionably laudable – stopping real human rights violations and abuses – one must wonder, based on the Obama administration’s domestic policies, whether marriage redefinition will be an essential part of “unleash[ing] the potential” of LGBT folks worldwide.

It seems very likely that such will be the case, but only time will tell.

In other words, NOM’s support for the human rights of LGBT people has strict limits. It’s apparently okay to advocate against criminalization and torture of LGBT people, but pushing for an end to discrimination in marriage and public accommodations is going too far.  The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved in 1948, does not qualify human rights in this way. For example, Article 7 asserts that “all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.” Article 16 offers that all “have the right to marry and to found a family.”

“Only time will tell” if NOM will ever recognize the LGBT community as whole people entitled to all their human rights. For now, they seem to think that’s just a waste of taxpayer money.

The National Organization for Marriage has sunken to a new low: quibbling with fourth graders. An anonymous fourth grader’s two-paragraph essay defending marriage equality went viral on Reddit last week, prompting Salon contributor Katie McDonough to deem it the “world’s most perfect argument” for the cause. Here’s what the elementary school student wrote (spelling errors and all):

Why gay people should be able to get married is you can’t stop two adult’s from getting married because there grown and it doesn’t matter if it creeps you out just get over it. And you should be happy for them because it’s a big momment in their life. When I went to my grandparents wedding it was the happies momment.

As you can see gay people should have the right to get married and you shouldn’t judge other peoples lives because if you was gay you wouldn’t want people talking about you.

NOM claimed, “we’re not interested in arguing with a fourth-grader,” but nevertheless took exception to McDonough’s characterization:

Proof again that the activists pushing same-sex marriage aren’t interested in reasoned debate and argument: just silencing the other side. A tactic fitting maybe for a schoolyard, but not the public square.

This “Nuh-uh!” response utilizes the exact same tactic it attempts to rebuke — simply disregarding opponents’ points — and ignores the actual merits of the student’s argument. It’s quite true that no ban on same-sex marriage has ever stopped same-sex couples from forming and raising their own families. Certainly, the gay community is not going to suddenly start marrying people of the opposite sex, as the “responsible procreation” argument suggests. Banning same-sex marriage definitely does not have any impact on whether straight men over the age of 55 cheat on their wives, as some conservatives have claimed.

In fact, one of the biggest gaps in NOM’s arguments against equality is the fact that the protections of marriage would greatly benefit these same-sex families. Children raised by same-sex couples fare just as well as other children, and allowing their parents to marry will only add to their protection.

It could very well be that the fourth-grader who wrote this essay actually has same-sex parents. Regardless, there are plenty of nine-year-old’s who do. It’s unclear whether NOM would ever concede that this reality “creeps them out,” but considering that they felt the need to take umbrage to this essay, they certainly don’t seem ready to “get over it.”

At the end of every week, the National Organization for Marriage’s president, Brian Brown, sends out a weekly newsletter summing up the week’s events. Though many thought last week was a rough week because of the Boston Marathon bombings and West, Texas explosion, it was this week that Brown described as “a tough week” because of the many victories for marriage equality. This week’s letter remarkably crams most of NOM’s talking points all into one post, so here is a reminder of NOM’s various claims about the consequences of same-sex couples marrying:

Marriage Equality Discriminates Against Christians (Because They Want To Discriminate)

NOM is still upset that Rhode Island passed marriage equality this week. Rather than repeat his own claim that same-sex marriage is worse than divorce or death, Brown emphasized that marriage equality “redefines marriage for all people” by imposing upon Christian businesses who don’t wish to serve same-sex couples. Earlier this week, NOM admitted its desire to blatantly “refuse service” to gays and lesbians.

Marriage Equality Harms Children

As always, NOM ignores that many same-sex couples are already raising children, so Brown instead claims that “the rights of adults to marry any person they love trump a child’s right to a loving mom and dad.” He once again obsessed over a New York middle school that taught students about the diversity within the LGBT community, as if learning about the world was somehow harmful.

NOM Effectively Targets Republicans Who Support Marriage Equality

Referencing how the Republicans in the Rhode Island Senate unanimously supported marriage equality, Brown committed to challenging their re-election, boasting NOM’s success doing that in New York. The only problem is that NOM was only successful at flipping one of the four seats they challenged in New York; two of them were lost to Democrats because of NOM’s too-conservative primary challengers.

Being Gay Is A “Preference”

With the exception of Jennifer Roback Morse, NOM generally tries to avoid openly endorsing ex-gay therapy, but it finds subtle ways to condone the harmful practice. Brown used the email to champion Rhode Island Sen. Harold Metts (D), who offered a 12-minute religious condemnation of homosexuality during Wednesday’s floor debate. Among his claims, as quoted in NOM’s newsletter: “I can change my sexual preference tonight if I want to, but I can’t change my color.”

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