Fight Back New York Ups the Ante

After same-sex marriage was voted down earlier this year in the New York state legislature, Tim Gill, a software entrepreneur and openly gay philanthropist created Fight Back New York with his own money and has vowed to back pro-marriage equality candidates with hundreds of thousands in an effort to get them elected to the state’s Senate this coming November.

Advocates for LGBT equality have set their sites on bringing the issue back to the Senate floor as early as next year, and will added support, it could pass. Three months ago, the state’s legislature reject a gay marriage bill by a vote of 38 to 24.

Alex Navarro-McKay, a spokesperson for the group stated:

“There is definitely a theme of punishment in our work.”

Fight Back NY will be targeting the eight Democrats who voted against the bill as well as all 30 Republicans who voted no.

Earlier this week Gill’s group claimed victory when a candidate who supports marriage equality won a special election to succeed Hiram Monserrate, one of the state’s Senators who voted against the marriage bill and was expelled from the state’s Senate after he was convicted of assault.

In a statement Fight Back said, “One down, seven to go.”

However, equality’s biggest foe, Maggie Gallagher, the president of NOM, countered by saying gay rights advocates are out numbered and out financed.

Gallagher retaliated:

“They (equality advocates) are no longer are persuading people that gay marriage is a good idea. I don’t think it’s very credible to claim that this victory is some sort of bellwether for the popularity of gay marriage in elections in New York.”

Hopefully the group will be able to prove Maggie wrong and her money will become the wasted funds!

Not All Republicans Are Safe from NOM’s Storm

It looks like Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown and their illegally run National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is back in California.  Yes, of course they’re talking against marriage equality, but moreover, they’re talking trash about…ready for this…a Republican candidate!  Why?  Only one real reason of course…that Republican believes that LGBT tax-paying Americans should have the same rights as all “straight” Americans.

So, since Tom Campbell, a Republican, has stood in support of LGBT equality, he’s managed to place his face on NOM’s target.  Below, the shots they take at Campbell.  Will it be a bulls-eye or a miss?

Wishful Thinking or Thankful Wishing?

Although Maggie Moo Gallagher’s sidekick Brian Brown is not an authority on anything other than concealing campaign funds, lying, distorting facts, and gay bashing, it’s always good to see what comes from the dark side of whatever planet it is the National Organization for Marriage is from.

It looks as though Brown, and perhaps his anti-gay, anti-equality, “Christian” organization are convinced that the Prop 8 trial will end up favoring his bigoted and discriminatory views, and he also appears convinced that a vast majority of Americans consider LGBT Americans as less than human.

Below is a press release from Brown and NOM about the Prop 8 trial that was released today:

The Perry trial is over and the first poll is out: Americans overwhelmingly want the Supreme Court to support marriage. Americans want to uphold the right of Californian voters to amend their own constitution to protect marriage.

By a 2-1 margin, Americans are rooting for Perry and Prop 8! Fifty-eight percent want the Court to uphold marriage, while only 34% want it redefined.

Remember that the next time the media tries to persuade you that you are alone. Remember, your neighbors who favor gay marriage may be noisier and angrier than those who affirm the importance of protecting marriage. But despite Hollywood propaganda, despite Ted Olson and David Boies, despite the mainstream media, despite the alleged “consensus” among intellectuals, the vast majority of Americans are not giving up on truth, common sense–or the American people’s right to vote!

Protecting your right to vote for marriage without fear or favor has become a key part of NOM’s mission.

In D.C. we are up on Capitol Hill asking senators and congressmen to protect the DC residents’ right to vote on marriage.

And we are taking the battle to the courts too. The new Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which is aimed at ending the right of politicians to control political discourse and action–to rig the political game in one side or another–is giving us all a renewed measure of hope for our other legal cases. In Yes on 8 vs. Bowen, we are joining with Protect Marriage to fight for the rights of California citizens to participate peacefully in the political process without facing a renewed wave of hatred and intimidation. The price of participating in American democracy should not be threats to your livelihood, your property, or your person.

We’ve recently filed another disclosure case, National Organization for Marriage v. McKee, for the same purpose in Maine. (The National Law Journal just noticed us, and you can read about the case below.) We may be filing more legal actions to protect your rights in other states soon. Here’s the bottom line: No American should ever be afraid to exercise the right to speak, to vote, to organize or to donate on behalf of the idea that marriage means a husband and wife.

Together, with your help, we will fight these great battles–and win.

Maggie Gallagher did a column this week on a new abstinence study. It’s worth reading (well, Maggie is always worth reading), but for a special reason. The abstinence debate is a case study in how progressives misuse science for their own purposes–often without even recognizing it.

Here’s the cautionary tale.

Abstinence-only sex education programs began in 1996. The federal government still funds mostly contraceptive-based sex education. (In 2008 we spent four times as much money on contraceptive-based education as on abstinence.) Yet progressives targeted abstinence programs for extinction and their prime weapons were Science and Ridicule. First they began a drumbeat about how these programs had not been proven effective. Of course they had an argument on their side. Most government programs have no proof they work–but somehow this was compelling to progressives only in the one relatively tiny government program promoting teen abstinence.

Eventually Progressives progressed (not just pundits, but even credentialed scientific organizations) into suggesting abstinence programs were not only ineffective, they were doing actual harm. (Yes, they actually suggested telling kids not to have sex harms them–unless you hand them a condom at the same time. I’m not making this up.)

And so, sadly, President Obama succeeded in killing abstinence programs for 2010. When two weeks ago the Guttmacher Institute reported that teen pregnancy was once again on the rise, the press headlines blamed abstinence education. Hanna Rosin of The New Republic called for a federal mandate banning abstinence-only programs across the country.

The next day what happened? A new random-assignment clinical trial published in the prestigious Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine demonstrated that just eight hours of abstinence -only education sharply reduced the proportion of poor, African-American teens who were having sex. The science showed the program works.

Science is slow, sometimes, to catch up with common sense… but in the end the truth comes out–unless the scientific debate is prematurely closed.

We went through this same cycle of credentialed opinion with divorce in the 1970s. The credentialed experts all rushed into to say that Science was on the side of liberal divorce culture. A generation later, the data showing the damage caused by Progressive opinion came in and–to their credit–many of them changed their minds.

A lot of shocking truths came out of the Perry trial. Their expert witness testified that only a third of gay couples believe in monogamy (fidelity)–and that of those who do believe in fidelity almost three-quarters are unfaithful. How do children raised in deliberately motherless families, by two gay men, fare? Shockingly, their expert witness testified: We don’t know. We don’t even have a single study that looks at that question. Why are Progressives so uninterested in the science here?

What we do know is this: Every human civilization throughout history has recognized that unions of husband and wife are special, that the common good and the care of children depends in protecting marriage in a special way. We know that mothers and fathers both matter to children, and that relationships designed from the start to deny this great good to children are not marriages.

In the end truth and love will triumph over lies and hate.

God bless you and keep fighting the good fight!

Faithfully,

Brian S. Brown
Executive Director
National Organization for Marriage
20 Nassau Street, Suite 242
Princeton, NJ 08542

NOM’s Request Denied – Still Under the Microscope

The state ethics commission Thursday denied a request from the National Organization for Marriage to delay an investigation into the group’s finances .

Barry Bostrom, an attorney for the group, which contributed $1.9 million to a campaign to repeal the state’s gay-marriage law, told the commission that NOM feels its First Amendment rights are being violated by requests for information about donors.

He said because the state law is being challenged in federal court, it would be better to hold off on the state-level ethics investigation until that is resolved.

“We don’t want our identities revealed to the general public,” he said. “NOM cannot and will not waive its constitutional rights.” 

Bostrom said revealing the names of donors would have a chilling effect on the group’s ability to raise money for future campaigns.

He also submitted a news article on two instances in which Maine same-sex marriage opponents were threatened after the vote.

Bostrom said the group has already provided the ethics commission with all relevant information regarding its fundraising techniques to help support Stand for Marriage Maine, the political action committee formed to raise money to repeal gay marriage.

NOM’s contributions made up 63 percent of the funds raised by Stand for Marriage.

NOM has argued that it should not be required to file campaign finance reports that identify donors because it did not raise more than $5,000 specifically for the Maine campaign. Bostrom and others from the group have said that they donated funds from their general operating budget, not through direct solicitations, for the Maine campaign.

More at: Kennebec Journal

Don’t Like the Food? Get in the Kitchen & Cook

Contributed by Lyndon Evans:

As we finally say goodbye to 2009 and look forward to a more hopeful 2010 (if dare iz uh God) I’d like to finish out the year with a commentary. As we also approach a full year of President Barack Obama and his administration, there’s a matter I need to address.

While 2009 has been a mix of gains, losses and stalemates for the LGBT community, one thing more than anything else has annoyed me to no end during this past year, the individuals, and more in particular LGBT blogs and websites which have found fault with President Obama and his administration when it has come to LGBT issues and causes.

In many cases the blog and website whiners have done nothing more than to find fault with Obama in self-serving promotion for their blogs and websites, thus appeasing their like minded readers, and yet offering no concrete solutions as how to accomplish the goals they feel the Commander-In-Chief has either lost sight of or dropped the ball without scoring a touchdown.

They conveniently blame NOM, the Christian-Right, Fox News and the like.

They blame NOM and it’s entities for it’s aggressive anti-gay and misinformation filled advertising campaigns, but in opposition to those campaigns, at best those who support same-sex marriage come up with “softball” ads “because we want to take the high road”.

I’ve addressed that notion previously here on this blog. If they get in the mud, you get in the mud too. It is after all politics, not just lifestyle versus lifestyle, as many would like to see the battle through lavender colored glasses.

There are very few, in my opinion, who have the right to speak up and find fault. Those who have more than earned a voice are of the likes of Larry Kramer, Peter Tatchell and David Mixner, who for what they have done other the years, have the right to find fault with where the LGBT community finds itself here in the United States, and indeed the world, as we close out 2009.

For individuals, yes you have the right to be upset and voice your disappointment with elected officials, presuming you voted for the politicians, or against them in the first place. But those who use their blog or website platform as a way for the condemnation of the Obama administration, without having, obviously, the slightest idea how politics work, well quite frankly as Archie Bunker would say, “Stifle yourself !”

Then we have those who have found “celebritay” this year such as Pam Spaulding and Lt. Dan Choi, who have received accolades, but also need to learn how to eat some humble pie. Those who have fallen into this category are enjoying their “fifteen minutes of fame”, but as with a candle, their momentary flame of glory will be extinguished, while the flame of the more gallant activists like the aforementioned Kramer, Tatchell and Mixner will continue to light the way long into the night.

Some bloggers this year have said Rachel Maddow should use her national broadcast platform on MSNBC to rally the cause of LGBTs. They say Anderson Cooper, if he is, should come out and be another face for LGBTs.

To wit I say, that’s not their job nor place to do so. They and others in high profiled positions are under no obligation to the LGBT community.

Those who feel that way should get their own national TV or radio program, become a national and internationally recognized member of the real media, not the “make believe” one of being a “citizen journalist” on a blog no matter how well read it is.

When blogs or websites are expounding opinion of what the collective “they” have or have not done, the biggest problem is you are singing to the choir and not to much of anyone else. I doubt very much folks in Middle America who are not LGBT are reading your blogs or websites, those the people who you might win over if they did become a reader, were it not for the continuous caustic rhetoric which after a while turns off even those in the LGBT community. Folks only take so much of being hit over the head with the same old, same old, before they tune out and change the channel.

So to those who have and will continue to find fault with local, state and national governments and politicians for what they have or not done, as the title of this post reads, if you ain’t happy with the food get in the kitchen and cook.

In other words, run for political office, win and then see how much change you can do.

Cross-posted at: Focus On The Rainbow

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