Equality Matters: Going Undercover At NOM’s Anti-Gay Student Conference Gives A Fascinating Glimpse Behind NOM’s Moderate Facade

When Carlos Maza, a gay activist who monitors the National Organization for Marriage, the “moderate” anti-gay marriage group (let’s face it, the ANTI-GAY HATE GROUP) went undercover to attend one of their weekend training sessions, he found himself connecting with another attendee in a surprising way.

Read the whole thing, it’s like a spy novel except with Leviticus-spouting Religious Right leaders trying to “turn” a roomful of impressionable college students, instead of Communist moles posing as tweed jacketed leather-patched college professors.

Yeah, it’s that complicated.

Also, take note of some interesting details:

  • Many of the college attendees were from either BYU or Arizona State
  • Most of the leaders were from the evangelical/fundamentalist/Biblical literalist end of the Protestant spectrum
  • These groups are normally suspicious of each other but they worked together to pass CA’s anti-gay (marriage)Prop 8
  • It’s not necessarily a good thing that the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco helped to ram Prop 8 down gays’ throats.
  • Retiring Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was involved in some kind of dialogue, curious about the reaction to him.
  • Someone who works for the Institute of Religion and Democracy was also there. They hate Bp. Gene.

Carlos attended the “It Takes A Family (To Raise A Village)” conference at the end of July, well before the Archbishop-Elect of San Francisco was arrested for drunk driving in San Diego, the same city where the conference was held. His election as Archbishop was announced with great joy and a little loathsomeness by one of the organizers while Carlos and other attendees were being bused to an event. Ugh.

In the empty lobby of a small hotel in San Diego, a conservative Mormon from Utah and a progressive gay activist from DC saw eye-to-eye on the overwhelming majority of “pro-family” and “pro-marriage” issues.

It was the kind of unholy alliance I never expected to form at an anti-gay conference.

Flying home the next morning, I thought about how small our differences had been all along. I’d spent the weekend thinking of myself as some kind of spy working behind “enemy lines,” assuming the worst about every person I met. I was terrified that I’d be discovered by the other attendees and felt certain that they’d turn on me the second they discovered who I was.

In reality, though, the “enemy lines” were a bit blurrier than I had imagined them to be. Most of the students who attended NOM’s ITAF conference weren’t anti-gay zealots; they’d decided to show up after hearing about the event from their professors, their churches, or their parents. Many of them, like the BYU student, were genuinely interested in preventing divorce and ensuring that married couples maintain healthy and lasting relationships. Few of them had ever even heard of the Ruth Institute before attending.

It seemed silly that I had spent all weekend feeling so embattled.

Then I remembered the Regnerus study – how NOM’s speakers had spent the weekend trying to depict gay parents as predatory towards their own children.

I remembered Gagnon’s speeches and NOM’s use of Christianity as a weapon to condemn LGBT people as unrepentant sinners.

And I remembered Leviticus.

The ideological divide between me and the BYU student may have been small, but NOM had spent the entire weekend trying to widen it by teaching her that gays and lesbians – including me – are unstable, dangerous, and unworthy of raising their own families. Despite the promise to focus on “marriage, not gayness,” ITAF had been a veritable crash course in demonizing LGBT people.

via EXCLUSIVE: Undercover At NOM’s Anti-Gay Student Conference | Equality Matters

Reactions are a little… mixed. I found this glowing account from St Paul’s Cathedral Blog (Episcopal Diocese of San Diego):

A fair amount of humor peppered the otherwise tense conversation. It was interesting to sit in the huge, warehouse-like sanctuary with my partner, Kathy, and to know that we were sitting right next to people who were opposed to gay marriage. Not a comfortable experience, but a good one, because it means that we can all be in one room together and discuss this hot topic without coming to blows.

Kudos to Skyline. Huge love and thanks to Bishop Robinson. My favorite picture is to the right! — Fearless Love:; Report From Skyline Church

But alas, tolerance is lacking in this official wrap-up (with slideshow) from the Ruth Institute blog:

Generally, the biblical voice is silenced or the event becomes so infused with allegations of “hate” that the arguments are no longer really heard. Sunday night was so different. Everything was heard and you could hear a pin drop. All the intelligence was on the biblical side; all the sentimentalism was on the gay side. Neither Rob nor Jennifer ever backed down… they made their points with great civility and lucidity. — A Conversation on the Definition of Marriage

Ah, ergh. I can only hope that the young people who had attended that weekend’s conferene were insufficiently indoctrinated to see it that way. The detail about praying over the facility to protect it from forces of conflict (which was somehow meant to keep the evil gay cooties at bay?) was kind of… weird and too much like “praying the gay away” to my mind.

I can’t really post this on the church blog; it’s too distracting and upsetting and political. And creepy! But I wanted to react to it, so here it is. UGH. To the National Organization for Marriage, and their education arm the Ruth Institute, that’s my reaction: UGH.

Your positions are not Christ-like, and you twist His words and say things He never said to support your position.

Here is everything Jesus Christ, the Son of God, said about homosexuality as it was understood in His time:

crickets

In my admittedly lacking Biblical knowledge, I do believe that Jesus said that the whole of the Law came down to just two things: love of God, and love of one’s neighbor. Well, one thing really: LOVE.

So that probably means that all that stuff in Leviticus about shellfish, mixing linen and wool, and killing gay people for LOVING EACH OTHER no longer applies. Because: LOVE.

And one last thing: This post is dedicated to the memory of John Thurman, who passed away after suffering a fall this week. His spouse Dave Fleer now must go on alone.

John never really recovered from a head injury received several years ago. He was badly beaten and left for dead in front of his home, in what was likely a hate crime. The assault was never solved, or even investigated to any degree by local police in Munster, Indiana.

That is the consequence of the HATE preached with sweet-sounding words behind closed doors by anti-gay groups like the “National Organization of Marriage.” Behind those doors, they admit that opposing marriage for gays polls a little better than opposing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for gays. They pass out handouts to young people emphasizing that gays should be killed, and “their blood shall be upon them.” As in, “you get a free pass for killing the gay neighbor, because it’s not really murder, God says it’s OK”

Like I said, UGH. Thanks to Carlos Maza’s courageous (and initially mischievous) undercover work, the cover is pulled back on NOM to reveal them as something unwholesome, and definitely not following the two greatest commandments.

Set Dressing: Coal Miners Lose Pay, Dirtiest Ones Used As Props At Mandatory Romney Rally

Take a look at these two pictures. One is from the Plain Dealer article on this story, one is a screencap from Raw Story’s followup.

As the miners and their families arrived, they looked like this (some may have been office workers and executives):

Coal miners, other workers and families arrive for Romney rally

Very few miners in working clothes – most are in clean street clothes

A phalanx of coal miners with sooty faces and dirty work clothes stands with Mitt.

Only hard-working, dirty, sooty-faced miners shown standing with Mitt

Amercian coal miners stands with Mitt! Look at how hard they work, in their dirty work clothes and sooty faces! They are obviously real working Amercians!

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.

The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.

A group of employees who feared they’d be fired if they didn’t attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.

via Coal miners lost pay when Mitt Romney visited their mine to promote coal jobs

Colorado RNC Delegates: 8 To Abstain But Stick Around For The Breakfast Special

New category: quick news updates on my lunch breaks.

This caught my eye earlier, and I think you should know I’m very disappointed. Disapointed! That there might not be a nice, juicy floor fight.

Although former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has the GOP nomination for president sewn up, a number of Colorado delegates to the RNC in Tampa plan to abstain rather than cast a vote for him in the official roll call Tuesday. Six delegates who back Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — along with two who had pledged support to former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania before he dropped out of the race and released his delegates — formally announced their intentions at a delegation breakfast Monday to withhold their votes from Romney.

In another development at the breakfast, a Colorado delegate asked fellow Republicans to get behind a brewing protest over proposed changes to party rules. The dispute could gum up Tuesday morning’s convention proceedings, although party officials suggested it would likely be resolved before blossoming into a floor fight.

via Storms, Disputes Threaten To Rain On RNC | KUNC

One thing I’ve always wondered – why is it that conservatives always get so worked up by “red meat” statements that appeal to the lizard hindbrain? Oh, wait, I just answered my own question. Never mind.

Romney Social Media Staffer Bill Murphy Linked In To Fraudulent Profitable Tea Party Non-Profit

This is juicy, if a little opaque to the non-Tweety, non-Bloggy, non-Facebooky clueless unlikely voter. The telling point is that he deleted his Linked In profile rather than answer tricky questions about whether his work for the organization would be part of his professional resume.

Hat tip: OsborneInk

Team Romney’s Social Media Director, Bill Murphy, is the former Director of the National Bloggers Club, a group under IRS investigation for soliciting donations while falsely claiming to be a non-profit organization. Although NBC filed incorporation papers in January, the organization is still absent from both the IRS and GuideStar charity databases.

The group’s President, Ali Akbar, is a long-time associate of Murphy’s. In fact this isn’t even their first for-profit non-profit. I first wrote about Akbar in 2009, when he was working at American Liberty Alliance – an organization that fraudulently solicited funds while purporting to be non-profitable. Murphy was ALA’s Director of Strategic Initiatives. Though Akbar would eventually rise to the dizzying heights of Chairman of the ALA Board, at the time he was a mere technology consultant. Incidentally, prior to that he once found himself arrested for grand theft and … wait for it … fraud.

Two weeks ago Ron Brynaert broke the news on his blog (Hackers n Fake Newz) that prior to working for the campaign, Murphy had not only worked at both NBC and ALA, but in fact had left both positions off of his resume, or at least his LinkedIn profile. You can see the before-and-after screenshots on Brynaert’s blog. Following Brynaert’s lead, bloggers like The Liberal Grouch and Breitbart Unmasked launched a bit of a campaign against Akbar. The idea seemed to be to try and get to the Romney campaign through Murphy by tying him to Akbar like a snitch to a cinder block.

However, as it turns out @LiberalGrouch, @BreitbartUnmask and @ronbryn can skip that step. Rather than just being vaguely associated with NBC, Murphy used to run it

via Romney Staffer Bill Murphy Worked For Fraudulent Non-Non-Profits

The View From My Office

20120824-085119.jpg

It’s a nice day today. David’s off today so he left to do a long bike ride with our friend Steve.

It’s pretty steady today — calls coming in, stuff to do. Working from home is pretty awesome, and a lot less stressful. My morning commute involves cat activity and blackberry jam now… this morning I got up late, wandered into my office in my “Bear Loves Moose” nightshirt, and booted up. Ready to take a call…

Hah, no. I’m in the habit of dressing, brushing teeth, brushing hair, and putting on my orthotic sneakers, because I’ve found that running around barefoot all day makes my feet and knees hurt.

Maybe I’ll play around with the home fitness amenities box David got for his Tour de Cure ride, it’s got all kinds of stuff in it.

Break almost over, more later.

10 great places to try stand-up paddle boarding – USATODAY.com

We saw people paddleboarding on our way through Montana to Glacier National Park, and rental shops too. Link: 10 great places to try stand-up paddle boarding – USATODAY.com

Stand-up paddle boarding is making waves. The sport, which is has its roots in surfing, uses a board and paddle to scoot along the water, building strength and coordination. “It has caught on anywhere there’s a body of water,” says Matt Minich, editorial director of Bootprints.com, a weekly sports and adventure newsletter . He says the sport’s easier than surfing and can be mastered by most anyone. Some paddle boarders even do yoga on the water. He shares with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY some top places to try out the sport.

Report: Middle class lost significant financial ground over last decade | McClatchy

In other words, from the beginning of the Bush administration, during which the erosion of middle-class income and the growth of super-rich income accelerated to a gap difficult to bridge. Obama has been hamstrung since day one, although he really should have abandoned bipartisanship when he had the chance in his first two years.

Will the middle class remember who’s really to blame?

America’s middle-class earners lost significant ground during the last decade as their incomes dropped for the first extended period since World War II, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

The decade also saw a significant widening of the household income gap between the wealthy and the middle class, the old and the young, and people who are married vs. unmarried.

The report found that, while the economy is recovering, it likely will be years before the middle class can entirely reverse the deep losses suffered over the 10-year span.

Link: Report: Middle class lost significant financial ground over last decade | McClatchy

Elderly Mom Still Advocating For Downs Syndrome Son, And Other Disabled

There’s no better advocate for disabled kids and adults than fully engaged, lovingly encouraging parents. And when they’re no longer there for them, it’s up to the state — and some states are better advocates than others.

From the moment Marjorie Sullivan Lee learned her newborn son, Kevin, had Down syndrome she became his advocate.

Dismissing her pediatrician’s suggestion that Kevin be placed in an institution, Lee and her husband, John, decided Kevin would grow up at home with his five older siblings and be part of the community. That wasn’t necessarily the norm in 1960.

Lee battled school officials for years to let Kevin attend a regular school until he became the first person with Down syndrome to graduate from Glenbard East High School in Lombard.

After his graduation, she rejected the idea his only source of employment could be a sheltered workshop. She worked with other parents to start the Parents Alliance Employment Project that, 30 years later, still is finding job opportunities for people with cognitive disabilities.

At age 90, Lee isn’t through. She’s still Kevin’s caregiver and recently published a book, “Bloom Where You Are Planted,” the story of their family and their love for Kevin.

“I have a message to let people realize you can have a good life in spite of being diagnosed with Down syndrome,” Lee said.

She said she believes that message is needed in a society where parents have the option to abort if they learn their child will be born with a disability. She also wants parents who have children with disabilities to realize that, despite the progress, all the problems with providing inclusion aren’t yet solved.

Finally, she emphasizes that people with cognitive disabilities want to be part of the larger community, despite arguments from some quarters they would rather be with their “own kind.”

via Mom still advocating for her son and others with Down syndrome – DailyHerald.com

Romney Came To Elk Grove Village To Accuse Obama (And Say Nice Things About Sikhs And Non-Radical Muslims Walsh Later Defamed)

My church, St Nicholas Episcopal, is located in Elk Grove Village. We run a food pantry 3 Wednesdays a month. I think a lot of our guests would be very surprised to find themselves part of a “culture of dependency.”

I think Romney’s appearance in the village, aside from its convenience to O’Hare, is less to do with doing a gun-and-run fundraising appearance and more to do with supporting Reprehensible Joe Walsh (R-Anthrax)’s campaign to retain his seat against the very formidable Tammy Duckworth (D-Gave Her Legs For Her Country).

They had a face-off for the Trib editorial board— apparently it was sort of like the Wonk versus the Wingnut:

http://touch.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/video/p2p-71851203/

Fun side note: Chicago Trib columnist Eric Zorn endorses Walsh for national talk-show host!

http://touch.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/video/p2p-71862430/

But also: While in Elk Grove Village, R-Money made sure to offer condolences to the local Sikh community over the temple shooting that happened back on Aug 6. He should come back and apologize to any Sikhs and “nice” Muslims who might have been offended by Walsh’s fear-mongering “radical Muslims in Elk Grove Village” statement made the very next day.

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — Mitt Romney, campaigning here Tuesday, accused President Obama of trying to weaken work requirements for welfare recipients, undermining a hard-fought bipartisan agreement and feeding a “culture of dependency.””I hope you understand President Obama in just the last few days has tried to reverse that accomplishment by taking the work requirement out of welfare,” Romney told supporters gathered in a precision-machining factory in this Chicago suburb. “That is wrong. If Im president, Ill put work back in welfare.”Romney was referring to a July directive issued by the Department of Health and Human Services that would grant waivers to states in how they administer welfare. Five states led by governors of both parties have requested such waivers to reduce red tape.

via Romney accuses Obama of encouraging culture of dependency – chicagotribune.com