LAME SPLC HITS NOM WITH NOODLE

NOM hate group leader Robert George,

who believes, and aggressively promotes the idea

 that sexual minorities are sub-humans undeserving of rights

by Scott Rose

In its summer, 2012 so-called "Intelligence Report" on the National Organization for Marriage, the Southern Poverty Law Center once again -- for whatever reasons -- has not had the cojones to classify NOM as an anti-gay hate group, though any objective evaluator examining the evidence would be able to conclude that NOM fits the SPLC's hate-group criteria.

Here is the SPLC's own succinct expression of what qualifies an organizaton for anti-gay hate group status: “[T]heir propagation of known falsehoods – claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities – and repeated, groundless name-calling.”

It therefore is curious and disturbing that the SPLC ends its so-called "Intelligence Report" on NOM by alleging that "it remains to be seen whether NOM can avoid following other religious-right groups into a world of untrammeled hate."

This reminds us of when Indira Gandhi was facing a popular uprising against her rule in India. Saturday Night Live broadcast a skit, of Indira in her office, with the people outside boisterously clamoring for justice while Indira clasped her hands together, looked upwards and pleaded with God to give her a true sign that the people no longer wanted her as their leader.

A cow then crash-landed through the roof on top of Indira Gandhi.

The Southern Poverty Law Center appears to be waiting for a cow to crash through its roof, before it will certify NOM as an anti-gay hate group.

Here is an example of how the SPLC's summer 2012 "Intelligence Report" failed to consider the proper incriminating evidence against NOM;

The SPLC report largely is taken up with the matter of NOM promulgating the known falsehood that homosexuality equates to pedophilia. The report discusses NOM Blog links to Michael Brown's gay-bashing wherein Brown equates homosexuals to pedophiles. The SPLC lets NOM off the hook there, though, apparently on grounds that Michael Brown is not himself part of NOM.

SPLC then cites Maggie Gallagher's NOM Blog post "A Link is Not an Endorsement" and alleges that in it, she made a "noteworthy comment," which would be this: "I would like to say personally that nothing in any argument I’ve ever made on gay marriage rests on the idea that same-sex couples harm their children at any higher rates than any other family form. (If there is data that shows this, I’ve never seen it.)”

Flabbergastingly, the SPLC did not then go on to point out -- in its so-called "Intelligence Report" -- that Gallagher's claim in her "noteworthy comment" is a lie, as has been very well documented by researchers and reporters more willing than the SPLC to expose NOM. Gallagher in truth had, in the past, repeatedly demonized gay parents. The SPLC actually wrote -- about Gallagher's claim that she had never defamed gay parents -- "Gallagher may be entirely sincere, but sometimes it's hard to tell."

Hard to tell?

NOM's malicious bigot Maggie Gallagher,

who says she is "unwilling" to live in a country

with anti-discrimination protections for LGBTers

Firstly, the SPLC missed the fact that Gallagher's "A Link is not an Endorsement" post was non-specific -- Gallagher did not state that she was referring to NOM's defamatory anti-gay pedophilia allegation links  -- and, the SPLC seems not to have realized that at the time Gallagher made the post, NOM was engaged in a hateful, lies-filled propaganda blitz against gay adults having any interaction with children, period, but especially, that of parenting them. Gallagher at the time was also being criticized for linking repeatedly to many different sorts of anti-gay hate speech posts, not only for links to posts saying that gay equates to pedophile. In other words, the SPLC missed the gay-bashing NOM forest for a few gay-bashing NOM trees. If now, however, the SPLC requires further resources to verify that Gallagher "personally" often has insinuated that gay equates to pedophile, they could look here. It just boggles the mind that the SPLC actually wrote into its so-called "intelligence report" the phrase "Gallagher may be entirely sincere, but sometimes it's hard to tell."  That is not the work of determined, competent investigators. 

Gallagher cultivates strategies for suckering people with her duplicitous lies about her own record of anti-gay hate, and she succeeded in suckering the SPLC. The SPLC purports to be evaluating NOM, but evidently has not yet even realized that NOM's Maggie Gallagher is characterized by her shamelessness about lying through her teeth while talking out both sides of her mouth. They are giving Gallagher the benefit of the doubt, despite all the heaping evidence that Gallagher deserves no such benefit.

Even if the SPLC could not be bothered to research the mendacity of Gallagher's claim regarding her past statements on gay parents, the SPLC might at least have exposed Gallagher's post title as a lie. That title, again, was "A Link is not an Endorsement."  On November 16, 2011, for one among any number of available examples, NOM linked to a gay-bashing post by Elizabeth Marquardt on the Huffington Post; the NOM Blog post text began by saying that Marquardt makes a good point. How much more blatantly could a link be an endorsement than that? Furthermore, looking through a quantity of NOM Blog posts makes evident, from NOM's chosen headlines for the posts alone, when it is endorsing or opposing the main idea presented in the post. Why is Gallagher so easily able to pull the wool over the SPLC's eyes?

A NOM supporter brought this anti-LGBT genocidal sign

to a NOM hate rally

Moving on now, SPLC did not report that NOM itself was busy smearing gay parents raising children, in the same period as it was linking to Michael Brown's propaganda equating gays to pedophiles. The SPLC failed to realize that NOM was on a sustained and vicious, lies-filled anti-gay parenting propaganda blitz, not just saying here and there that gay equates to pedophile. On the NOM/Ruth Institute blog on November 14, 2011 Jennifer Roback Morse attacked gay parents and at the same time, exhibited the NOM strategy of seeking to drive a wedge between African-Americans and gays. The post was made before the NOM documents detailing the gay-bashing-bigot group's infamous race wedge strategy became public. Yet, the SPLC summer 2012 "Intelligence Report" came out well after a judge ordered the NOM strategy documents released. The "Intelligence Report" does not even mention NOM's racial wedge strategy, still less the fact that Morse's NOM/Ruth Institute blog post evidences that hateful strategy, with fireworks going off around it. As part of her gay-parent bashing, race-baiting attack, Morse asked this, apropos of mainly white gay parents adopting African-American children: "look at the children in these posters.  I wonder what the African-American community thinks about recruiting gay men to become foster parents for the children of their community who have been taken from their parents.  Do the African-American pastors have any thoughts and opinions about this? I imagine they do. But I will let them speak for themselves."

So it does not go unremarked, I am emphasizing that the racially-charged lie that NOM's Morse was telling there, was that white gay adults were stealing African-American babies. The malicious NOM bigot was just cunning enough to make her wording of that lie a tad vague, but the meaning she intended her gay-bashing readership to come away with was, beyond a reasonable doubt, undeniable. Morse intended to convey the idea that white gay adults were stealing African-American babies, and that she would leave it up to African-American pastors to denounce the white gay adults for that.

Don't forget that Morse's attack post was published in the same period that NOM was, very obviously, on a propaganda blitz linking homosexuals with pedophilia, and identifying gay parents as dangers to the children they are raising. The SPLC did not connect the gay-bashing hate dots, there. The SPLC reported on the NOM blog's link to Michael Brown's gay bashing, and then to Gallagher's duplicitous "A Link is not an Endorsement," post, but it did not report that the NOM link to Michael Brown was only one small element of an enormous anti-gay propaganda blitz that included anti-gay hate expressed directly by NOM, or that Gallagher lied in her "A Link is not an Endorsement" post. There is a certain impression that the SPLC is afraid of fully exposing NOM.

Because NOM's Morse said that she would let African-American pastors speak for themselves, I subsequently interviewed Pastor Michael Bledsoe for my report "African-American Pastor Rebukes NOM's Anti-Gay Bigotry." Meanwhile on the NOM Blog on November 16, 2011, NOM explicitly endorsed more gay parent gay-bashing when it titled a post "Holly Carmichael on the Tragedy of Depriving Kids of Their Dads." With that title, NOM endorsed the idea that all instances of gay adults raising children are "tragedies." SPLC, moreover, completely ignored that on December 8, 2011, NOM Blog took a sleazebag slap at Zach Wahls, and then left a quantity of anti-gay hate speech online in the comments under that sleazebag slap. NOM has its blog administrators curate the comments, meaning, anti-gay hate speech in those comments is part of the NOM brand.

Speaking of which, as a regular contributor to The National Review, NOM's Maggie Gallagher has more than once advertised that the SPLC has not classified NOM as a hate group. Such advertisements from Gallagher inevitably attract fierce gay-bashing comments from NOM supporters, which Gallagher and her TNR editors -- who curate comments -- then evidently do not mind leaving posted to the internet as part of their brand. Under this particular Gallagher advertisement that NOM is not an SPLC hate group, commenter "motherofthetroops1955" said that "Being termed a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center is a badge of honor," and went on to call equality advocates "people who not only stand for evil, but are evil, and who must be defeated by any means necessary." The central problem here, of course, is that Gallagher and NOM assume and exploit a certain level of public legitimacy from the fact of SPLC not having classified them as an anti-gay hate group, yet Gallagher very actively seeks to de-legitimize everything the SPLC does. She lies about the SPLC just as she lies endlessly about gay people, but in the face of it, the SPLC ignores the mountainous evidence of her lies and gives her an unwarranted benefit of doubt. Gallagher condemns LGBTers and the SPLC, both, very deceitfully, and far more thoroughly than the SPLC ever criticizes her for her attacks against it and against LGBTers. 

In this CNS News post, Gallagher called the SPLC a "homosexual activist group" and said that such groups want "to do more than redefine marriage, they want to redefine civilized discourse in America."

What about that quote from Gallagher does the SPLC not understand? Gallagher has said that the SPLC not only wants to redefine marriage; it wants also to move society away from verbal gay-bashing. In other words, Gallagher actively wants for verbal gay bashing to remain acceptable. It is no secret that Gallagher has written "I oppose extending anti-discrimination laws to gays for many reasons." And as we know, but as the SPLC  ignores, the endless verbal gay bashing from NOM officials and NOM-approved speakers includes saying that homosexuals are "worthy to death." Be sure to note that Gallagher accusatorily says that the SPLC wants to "redefine civilized discourse" -- as though anything in all of her gay-bashing were "civilized" and as though it were "civilized" for she and NOM to have sponsored a hate rally where a NOM-approved speaker told the mob that homosexuals are "worthy to death."

Gallagher in that same article alleges that her fellow anti-gay group the KKK uses language to incite to anti-minority violence which, so she claims, she and other anti-gay groups do not use. She says that the SPLC should not be going after non-KKK anti-gay groups, because -- so Gallagher is alleging -- non-KKK anti-gay groups do not incite to violence. But there she is, sponsoring a public speaker to say that homosexuals are "worthy to death," and never even thinking to denounce him, or to apologize for that having happened at a NOM rally. If one needs additional evidence that NOM bolsters incitements to anti-gay violence, one could look at the fact that NOM made a fund-raising video with Jerry Buell, a Florida public school teacher who told his class that gays should be allowed to serve in the military, at the front lines with hetero troops deserting them from behind. After same-sex marriage was legalized in New York, Gallagher as a guest on David Barton's Wallbuilders radio program got Barton so riled up against Republican State Senators who had voted for equality that he said "No disrespect to our Native American friends, but this is where you hang a bloody scalp over the gallery rail. You hang these four Republican scalps over the Senate rail and every other Republican senator looks up and sees those scalps and says, ‘my gosh, I’ll be hanging up there beside them if I don’t stay with this pro-family stuff.’ And that’s exactly what has to happen.” Gallagher inspired that hateful outburst, but never distanced herself from it. And as a matter of fact, in describing how NOM would work towards its goal of eliminating marriage equality in the Empire State, Gallagher said "It's gonna be a bloody mess in New York." 

Barie Shortell was attacked for being gay,

in a city where a NOM speaker told a mob

of gay-bashers that homosexuals are "worthy to death"

If NOM and other anti-gay hate groups are not associated with violent incitement -- as Gallagher lyingly tells the world -- then why is she threatening a "bloody mess" to stop gay and lesbian couples from marrying in New York State? Gays and lesbians maybe would threaten a "bloody mess" against her -- in any circumstance -- but especially were she to stop attempting to get their marriages annulled against their wills? What bad thing, exactly, are gay New Yorkers doing to Gallagher, that she is threatening them with a "bloody mess" to take away their rights? And remember; Gallagher accuses the SPLC of wanting to "redefine civilized discourse" by having society get past the unmitigated ugliness of verbal gay-bashing -- but then -- Ta dah! -- there she is, the pig, threatening a "bloody mess" to take away gay people's rights. How terribly, terribly civilized of this hideous, lying, professional gay-bashing bigot! Why did the SPLC leave NOM's pattern of violent incitements out of account? A more detailed, later feature article could be devoted to NOM's sometimes successful plotting to scare and intimidate people out of supporting equality, and its strategies for keeping LGBT Americans living in fear.

A further quote from Gallagher in that same article exemplifies why the SPLC should have NOM and Gallagher tops on their lists of anti-gay hate groups and figures. Look at the following Maggie Gallagher quote from that article:

The SPLC says "that if you say that gay men have a lower life expectancy, that that’s hate, even though it might be true," Maggie Gallagher told CNSNews.com. “There’s actually a pretty good study from 2001 that suggests that gay men live 8 to 21 years less. I don’t know for sure that it’s true, but it’s striking. And it is certainly true that gay people have higher rates of depression and anxiety and substance abuse. But apparently, if you say that, you’re a hate group now.”

Let us now examine, for SPLC officials' edification, what Gallagher just did there.

1) In the context of denying that any of SPLC's listed anti-gay hate groups are hate groups, Gallagher cited a falsehood about gay men's life expectancy, and then said that the falsehood "might be true."

2) Gallagher goes on to say -- in 2010 -- that a 2001 study "suggests" that gay men live 8 to 21 years less, but does not name the study, still less talk about what might have changed since 2001, and still less why such a study would justify denying gay men rights;

3) Gallagher -- the constantly lying anti-gay bigot -- then says that she doesn't know "for sure," whether the alleged study results are true, "but it's striking."  Gallagher very obviously, in a practiced, malevolent way, is laboring to get her gay-bashing audience to believe as true the very things that the SPLC has already identified and documented as anti-gay falsehoods. In attacking the SPLC while communicating anti-gay lies to her anti-gay followers, Gallagher is thumbing her nose and blowing a gleefully malicious Bronx cheer at the SPLC, who appear not even to comprehend the gay-bashing involved in Gallagher's manner of going after them.

4) Gallagher then rubs salt in the wound, by saying "And it is certainly true that gay people have higher rates of depression and anxiety and substance abuse. But apparently, if you say that, you're a hate group now." There, she gives the lie to her claim that repeating those defamatory allegations leads to one's organization being classified as an anti-gay hate group, because there she is repeating them as "certainly true," yet she and her group NOM have not been classified as an SPLC hate group, despite her having done this exact kind of anti-gay hate-mongering and disinformation campaigning over and over and over again, with no attempt to hide any of the evidence of it from the SPLC. Moreover, Gallagher intentionally, and clearly, is leaving her gay-bashing audience to believe that where gay people have higher rates of depression, anxiety and substance abuse, they have those higher rates because they are gay, not because they face stigma and discrimination from people like her. Remember: Gallagher has written “I oppose extending anti-discrimination laws to gays for many reasons.” The unmistakable appearance is that whereas Gallagher is fearless and utterly shameless about lying her head off in order to lead the charge against the SPLC, the SPLC is fearful of marshaling together and then publishing all of the evidence of her untrammeled hate.

The SPLC's greater sin of evidence omission, as regards NOM, though, is the dismaying fact that their so-called "Intelligence Report" nowhere mentions that NOM's current mastermind is its founder and chairman emeritus Robert George, shown with his picture on the NOM site as a current member of NOM's personnel. (Could one reason that the SPLC would be afraid of NOM, perhaps be that NOM's Robert George has so much power?)  The record appears to show that the SPLC has been looking at NOM, without apparently ever looking at Robert George, which means that the SPLC has not really been looking at NOM at all.

One could write reams and reams about the SPLC's utter lameness in ignoring that Robert George still is NOM's mastermind, but no matter how thorough and eloquent one were to be on the topic, one would never be able to say anything as apposite as the thought expressed in the single word "DUH!"

Back in December of 2010, the SPLC reacted -- with a post on its website -- to criticism of the SPLC carried out on NPR by a certain Matthew Franck.  Franck claimed that opposition to same-sex marriage alone was earning various groups a place on SPLC's anti-gay hate group list. So the SPLC clarified that the following criteria land groups on the list: “[T]heir propagation of known falsehoods – claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities – and repeated, groundless name-calling.”

The SPLC apparently has yet to put 2 and 2 together as far as Matthew Franck goes. Their post correcting his propaganda against them does mention that he is affiliated with The Witherspoon Institute, but not that NOM's Robert George is a prime driver of The Witherspoon Institute.

"Duh!"

There is much direct evidence that NOM engages in "repeated, groundless name-calling" against LGBTers, yet the SPLC is ignoring that direct evidence. In its so-called "Intelligence Report," the SPLC even ignored the evidence of groundless name-calling in the narrow topic it pursued.  Yes, SPLC; when NOM rolls out an extended anti-gay propaganda bombardment alternating allegations that all gay people ipso facto are unfit to parent, with allegations that gay equates to pedophile, NOM is engaging in "repeated, groundless name-calling."

What would NOM have to do, for the SPLC finally to acknowledge that the gay-bashing hate group is a hate group?  Robert George has said that homosexuality is "beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures." And at an all-day anti-gay symposium at Liberty University, George's NOM/Ruth Institute colleague William Duncan gave a session on this topic: "Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens: Who Deserves Protected Class Status?"

So NOM's leadership is routinely referring to LGBTers as sub-humans unworthy of rights, and routinely also saying that gay equates to pedophile, and that gay parents equate to dangerously bad parents, and that gay adults are stealing African-American children, and on and on and on with the repeated, groundless name-calling, but for its so-called "Intelligence Report," the lame SPLC can't bring itself to determine that NOM is engaging in "repeated, groundless name-calling" against us. Think hard about what it means that at Liberty University, a NOM official held a symposium session titled "Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens; Who Deserves Protected Class Status?"  Think hard about that, while remembering that NOM's Maggie Gallagher attempts to smear the SPLC for wanting to "redefine civilized discourse in America." Heaven forbid that Gallagher and her fellow merchants of hate should no longer be able to sell their "civilized" idea that gays are sub-humans unworthy of rights.

It isn't as though nobody had ever furnished the SPLC with useful NOM-related research leads. I, for example, published "How to Report the National Organization for Marriage as a Hate Group" (to the SPLC) on September 29, 2011, and followed up by directly reporting to them through their website contact forms all of the information I have included above in this post, and then some.