LGBT POV

One of the difficulties trying to keep up with all the news during these not-so-dog-days-of-summer for both Frontiers In LA and LGBT POV is that sometimes stories have to wait to get posted. This is one of those delicious moments in which the Courage Campaign’s Rick Jacobs confronts the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown. Again – standing ovation, please, for Courage’s invaluable Prop8TrialTracker and its off-spring, NOMTourTracker, created specifically to cover  NOM’s apparently lackluster five-state tour. So enjoy this sparring during which Brian pretends he’s standing up to the Big Intimidating Gay Bully.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) produced a fake news-style report about their summer marriage tour. This is a smart tactic that enables lazy or resource-less religious organizations and conservative media outlets and bloggers to play the spot as if it’s the real thing.

Meanwhile, the Courage Campaign is tracking the NOM tour and just reported that NOM’s president Brian Brown threatened the NOM Tour Tracker videographer with arrest. PERHAPS Brown didn’t want anyone to see images such as this one, taken by Courage staffer Anthony Ash, on the ground in Annapolis where Brown appears to be kicking off the rally to a collection of staffers. Follow the drama here: “#NOMturnoutFAIL: One Man, One Woman”

On July 5, LGBT POV contributor Mark Hefflinger posted an in-depth report on how antigay  groups such as Protect Marriage and the National Organization for Marriage are playing the “victim” card – pretending to be harmed or intimidated by gays to gain mainstream sympathy.   Here is a truly absurd video from NOM from their “Marriage Tour” in Albany Saturday in which a mother alleges she was intimidated by eight gay men standing with umbrellas blocking her view of the NOM event.  Think she’s been coached? Andy Towle over at Towleroad also has a story on NOM President Brian Brown tweeting about his tour and protests in Providence, Rhode Island Sunday.

I’m a big fan of stream of consciousness – love Woolfe, Proust, Faulkner. But I really don’t think I have the ability to make the connective leaps Brian Brown’s made in his latest missive about the National Organization for Marriage’s “movement.”

Brown starts off ridiculing famous Republican attorney Ted Olson, who is leading the charge with David Boies, in the federal legal challenge to Prop 8. He refers to a quote from a piece on Olson published Thursday on The BLTL: The Blog of Legal Times – Ted Olson: Prop 8 Challenge Could Have Global Impact.

He winds up talking about pornography. Click inside to see how Brown pivots from Olson to porn in a few short leaps.

The day after Easter and you’d think the Catholic-lead National Organization for Marriage – which won the Prop 8 campaign to repeal same sex marriage in California using scary ads about “protecting” children from the prospective gay menace – would say something about the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandals since the Pope seems so uninterested.

But NO! Instead they put out a fundraising email claiming their little political ad (which LGBT POV reported on earlier) is “shaking up” GOP Senate hopeful Tom Campbell’s campaign.

Here’s the ad – please click inside to read the latest missive from NOM’s Brian Brown:

What’s that adage about spin – say it long enough, hard enough, loud enough and eventually it will take on the cloak of truth? Well, the latest missive from National Organization Executive Director Brian Brown reads more like a fairy tale – showing that this Emperor has no clothes.

Brown’s email to supporters was in response a San Francisco Chronicle column published Sunday ostensibly “outing” Judge Vaughn Walker – who was not in the closet. But Brown’s email is full of so many oft-repeated lies, I decided to respond to his allegations about Judge Walker, point by point – using the transcript from the federal Prop 8 trial over which Walker is presiding. Please click inside to read my smack-down.

The federal challenge to Prop 8 happening now in the US District Court in San Francisco is not just a legal expose of the ongoing discrimination against same sex couples – it is also revealing just how deep is the divide in American thinking and perception.

In his latest fundraising letter issued Friday afternoon, National Organization for Marriage Executive Director Brian Brown summed up the legal strategy of the Olson/Boies team as putting Christianity on trial.

Please click inside to read his spin and my back-spin.

This email was sent out Friday morning to the National Organization for Marriage’s email list. Notice how Brian Brown compares NOM to the Human Rights Campaign. Beyond the gloating, it’s a fundraising letter to start work on stopping marriage in New York and New Jersey: “The National Organization for Marriage has again, because of your support and work, played a key role in changing the course of history on marriage. As the largest contributor to the Yes on 1 effort in Maine, NOM spent almost all that it had (literally!), a total of $1.8 million dollars, because we knew the singular importance of a victory in Maine.” Click inside to read Brian’s pitch.

Californians Against Hate founder Fred Karger testified before the Maine Ethics Commission Thursday morning alleging that the National Organization for Marriage has been laundering money in their campaign to stop a marriage equality law from taking effect in that state. Here is his first-person account of today’s startling event. This is also a corrected update to my early post Maine Ethics Commission to Investigate NOM for Money Laundering. Please note the importance of the freelance journalist who testified. Oh – and Fred says the investigation will start immediately.