Chief Writing Wolf

There’s nothing like hatred for homosexuals to bring people together – or split them apart.  The National Organization for Marriage, a conservative group determined to protect the institution of marriage by keeping queers from getting married, hoped to use Blacks and Hispanics accomplish their goal.  Documents from 2009 reveal that NOM wanted to turn Blacks and Hispanics against one another over the gay marriage issue in an effort to split the Democratic Party. 

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” says one of the memos.  It also suggests “interrupting” the process of cultural assimilation for Hispanics in hopes of curtailing support for same-sex marriage.  Court officials in Maine – where NOM successfully defeated a gay marriage referendum in 2009 – unsealed the documents last month. 

The Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization, distributed the documents immediately, and its president, Joe Solmonese, condemned NOM’s strategies.  “With the veil lifted, Americans everywhere can now see the ugly politics that the National Organization for Marriage traffics in every day,” Solmonese said.  “While loving gay and lesbian couples seek to make lifelong commitments, NOM plays racial politics, tries to hide donors and makes up lies about people of faith.” 

Veteran civil rights leader Julian Bond also criticized the attempt to drive a wedge between Blacks and Hispanics.  “NOM’s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination,” said the statement from Bond, a former chairman of the NAACP.  “Pitting bigotry’s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together.”

NOM’s president, Brian Brown, remained unapologetic, issuing a statement hailing his organization’s collaboration with other black and Hispanic leaders, including Bishop Harry Jackson, a Maryland church pastor, and New York state Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr.

“Gay marriage advocates have attempted to portray same-sex marriage as a civil right, but the voices of these and many other leaders have provided powerful witness that this claim is patently false,” Brown said.

The NOM documents depicted Democratic Party leaders as “increasingly inclined to privilege the concerns of gay rights groups over the values of African-Americans.”

“Find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots,” one memo said.

The memos also emphasized the political role of Latinos as a swing constituency.

“Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values?” one NOM memo asked.  “We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity … a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”

I think it’s obvious NOM wanted to use the concerns of some African-Americans that gays and lesbians often compare their own civil rights struggles to that of Blacks, as well as the strong religious convictions of both Blacks and Hispanics to further their own agenda.  Blacks and Hispanics have endured enough prejudice and bigotry in decades past, however, without groups like NOM trying to roll back years of social progress over this one solitary issue.  The institution of marriage has been under attack from within for years.  Some 50% of marriages now end in divorce, and I’ve even heard of some people entering into “starter marriages” to see if they’re suited for wedded bliss.  At most gays and lesbians represent 15% of the U.S. population, so how do laws allowing just a handful to get married pose a threat to anyone?  Unemployment, poverty, domestic violence and other quandaries have more negative impacts on marriage than a small percentage of queers.  But, NOM, like most hate groups, just doesn’t see the whole picture.