Bryan Fischer, voice of the AFA.

Bryan Fischer is the American Family Association’s no-holds-barred spokesperson, who finds new ways to attack the LGBT community (and plenty of other groups) on a weekly — if not daily — basis. In his latest column, Fischer purports that an effort to ban the portrayal of “barebacking” or any unsafe sex in pornography is actually the gay community trying to criminalize its own sexual practices, which Fischer endorses:

Do not miss the significance of this. A homosexual activist group is leading the charge to re-criminalize gay sex. Gay sex should be contrary to public policy, and it looks like the first steps in that direction are being taken by gay activists themselves. Who could have seen that coming? Perhaps the best thing the pro-family community can do is just get out their way. [...]

We have been saying for years that homosexual behavior ought to be contrary to public policy because it is a menace to public health. We ought to care too much for our citizens to promote behavior that we know is linked to a disease which can destroy human health and shorten life spans. It is callous and indifferent to endorse behavior that we know can be lethal to people we are supposed to love and care for. [...]

So the next logical step is obvious: for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to propose an ordinance that proposes a fine for any act of unprotected gay sex, whether money changes hands or not, and proposes criminal penalties for repeat offenders. If they care about the health of all homosexuals, not just the ones who do it for money, they can do no less.

The petition in question will expand a Los Angeles law requiring porn actors to wear condoms to 85 other cities in L.A. county (excluding Pasadena, Long Beach, and Vernon, which have their own public health departments). It has important consequences for both the safety of the actors, as well as the cultural impact of the films.

Fischer easily ignores the impact on heterosexual porn, leaping at the opportunity to condemn gay sex as the direct cause — not form of transmission, but cause — of HIV. His motives are clear: criminalize homosexuality itself. Conservatives like Fischer refuse to promote safe sex because they believe in abstinence until opposite-sex marriage, and anything outside of that paradigm is morally wrong. But as offensive as his extreme (and self-plagiarizing) conclusions are, what is perhaps even more offensive is his insensitivity to the history and ongoing threat of HIV infection.

As Mark S. King noted today, the term “barebacking” first appeared as a rebranding for unsafe sex in the mid-1990′s when new medications became available that prevented AIDS from causing near-instant death. According to King, “gay male culture responded with a vengeance,” seeking to erase the ugliness and fear associated with the spread of HIV in favor of a condom-free sexual revolution. New porn companies celebrated and profited off the carnal, using “collegiate jock” types whose “health and vitality” could erase “all evidence of HIV.” But the end result has been to reinforce the invisibility of the HIV/AIDS menace, and the continued high rates of infection among men who have sex with men — not to mention society’s widespread ignorance about the virus — are the disastrous consequences.

What Fischer unsurprisingly doesn’t appreciate is that promoting safe sex among gay men is good for the health of the gay community. He instead offers a false dichotomy of two anti-gay solutions: let gay people suffer AIDS as God’s punishment for having sex or punish gay sex as “domestic terrorism“ under the law. Fortunately, reality offers solutions that actually affirm the lives of gay people and their well-being.

The fallout has begun from the National Organization for Marriage’s failed attempt to circumvent Maine’s campaign finance disclosure laws. The Human Rights Campaign has published four of NOM’s confidential strategic memos from 2009, which explicitly confirm many of the insidious tactics LGBT bloggers have been documenting for years. Most alarming from the memos is NOM’s admission that it has tried “to drive a wedge between gays and blacks” and also specifically targeted Latino groups with its messaging.

Here are some of the highlights of NOM’s tactics found in the new documents:

1. “Drive a wedge between gays and blacks” by convincing them to fight over the language of “civil rights.”
2. Bait Latino voters to oppose marriage equality as “a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”
3. Interrupt the “attempt to equate…sexual orientation with race” so that marriage inequality is not perceived as discrimination.
4. Draw attention to the “bigotry and intolerance” displayed by equality advocates and “document the victims” through a rapid response media team.
5. Emphasize the importance of “religious liberties” to limit the impact of marriage equality’s legislative advancements.
6. “Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders” like pornography, “protection of children” and religious liberty at the federal level.
7. Expose Obama administration programs that “have the effect of sexualizing young children” or threatening “childhood innocence.”
8. “Find, train, and equip young leaders” to become a “next generation of elites” capable of opposing marriage equality.
9. Foster closer relationships with Catholic bishops to “equip, energize, and moralize Catholic priests on the marriage issue.”
10. Focus on “the consequences of gay marriage for parental rights.”

In addition, one of the memos confides, “most of the world may never know the crucial role that NOM played in the Prop 8 campaign.” In fact, throughout the memos, NOM emphasizes its intent to infuse large sums of money into various state-level campaigns in ways that circumvent donor disclosure.

None of these revelations is particularly surprising, as they have all been quite evident, but to see them in writing is nevertheless distressing. That NOM explicitly thought about the way it could divide and conquer racial groups and scare conservatives into protecting their religious liberty demonstrates just how motivated the organization is by animus against the advancement of the LGBT community.

Check back for more in-depth analysis of these documents and NOM’s treacherous tactics to oppose the freedom to marry.