WASHINGTON - The Human Rights Campaign has obtained a series of documents marked "confidential" that outlined the National Organization for Marriage's multi-year plan to stop marriage equality in the United States. In one of the documents titled "NOM Deposition Exhibit 25: National Organization for Marriage Board Update 2008-2009" these passages appear:
-- The strategic goal…is to drive a wedge between gays and blackstwo key Democratic constituencies. 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…
-- The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? 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.
"Nothing beats hearing from the horse's mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is," said HRC President Joe Solmonese. "Such brutal honesty is a game changer, and this time NOM can't spin and twist its way out of creating an imagined rift between LGBT people and African Americans or Hispanics."
The documents detail NOM's goals, including "2010 Priority: Roll Back Gay Marriage in New Hampshire, Iowa, and D.C." and "keeping gay marriage controversial in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut." Marriage equality has in fact not been rolled back in either of these states or D.C.
In NOM Deposition Exhibit 12, the group notes that it plans to spend $100,000 on a "study of what schools are teaching in gay marriage/civil union regimes."
"These documents confirm my worst beliefs about NOM's cynical politicking," said Jeremy Hooper, editor and publisher of Good As You and NOM Exposed partner. "It's hard to find joy in such divisive political games, but I'm certainly glad we know NOM's hurtful plans now before more folks are hurt."
News release: NAACP Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond among first to respond to NOM's ugly racial politics
WASHINGTON — Last night, the Human Rights Campaign exclusively obtained and released racially-charged documents written by the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage. Unsealed yesterday by a federal court as part of a continuing investigation by the state of Maine, the documents demonstrate that one of NOM's key goals is to "drive a wedge between gays and blacks" and to manipulate Hispanic communities by "making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity" and "to make opposition to gay marriage an identity marker, a badge of youth rebellion to conformist assimilation to the bad side of 'Anglo' culture."
After learning of the content of the documents, Dr. Julian Bond, Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP, released this statement a short time ago through HRC.
"NOM's underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination," said Dr. Bond. "Pitting bigotry's victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together."
Dr. Bond is the first among a forthcoming list of leaders, jointly compiled by HRC and the Center for American Progress, who are speaking out against NOM's plans to fight marriage equality and create racial divisions in order to do so.
The Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.
News release: AAMLC: Anti-equality documents expose NOM's cynical wedge strategy
Newly exposed documents from the National Organization for Marriage shed light on the organization's plans to "drive a wedge" between the LGBT movement and African American and Latino communities.
Minister Leslie Watson Malachi, Director of People For the American Way Foundation's African American Ministers Leadership Council issued the following statement on behalf of the Council's Equal Justice Task Force:
"If the success of the National Organization of Marriage's movement depends on stirring up resentment between communities, it might want to rethink its strategies.
"African American men and women of faith are not a political football to be tossed around in a cynical game of resentment and division. We, like all Americans, struggle thoughtfully with issues of faith, family and politics. Anti-equality activists such as NOM consistently attempt to use a deeply cynical 'wedge' strategy to divide African Americans and the gay community, playing up what are now old and tired clichés. In the long run, this strategy will falter as African American and LGBT communities continue to work together for equal justice.
"I celebrate as more and more African American clergy engage in AAMLC's Healing Grace dialogues and work to confront and overcome stigma, prejudice and homophobia in the Black Church. We continually seek to help and not harm, love and not hate, reconcile and not separate, unite and not divide -- and it's working.
"NOM's explicit attempt to drive a wedge between the LGBT community and African Americans is deeply offensive, and it exposes the depravity of their politics."