NOM Plays the Race Card

By Salvador Cordero
Staff Writer



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Image source: HRC

Last week, HRC reported to have possession of some documents that contained a strategy created by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). This strategy was designed to fight same-sex marriage by encouraging the African-American community to speak out against LGBT groups. The 33-page document was said to be found while investigating the finances of the organization. HRC reports that the document was found in a sealed file and was very difficult to gain access to. Among the many points of the NOM strategy plan, we find the following statement: “We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.” This is basically a strategy to use the African-American community as a tool for the war against same-sex marriage. The document also explores the different campaigns the organization has against marriage equality. It lists their estimated budgets and points out the amount of money the organization needs in order to proceed.

In reality, while everyone is talking about the racial exploitation that one page of the document suggests, no one has noticed that the rest of the document seems to ask for funds, major funds, tens of millions of dollars. Pretty soon after the release, before anyone could take time to analyze these memos, everyone was talking about them. African-American figures were discussing the subject on TV, and newspapers all over the world were reporting the incident. I couldn't help notice that the African-American community was indeed responding to this media attention. The very reason behind the document is to unite and empower the segment of the African-American community that opposes same-sex marriage. And by making the document public, African-American individuals were pushed to respond to it by stating their stand on the matter.

Gay rights activists believe that they are aware of NOM's agenda. Since 2009, equality organizations have been researching into the mysterious 5 donors that are said to have donated over one million dollars each. HRC has requested access to certain financial NOM documents for a number of years, and just when they gain access to those documents, it turns out that they find an internal memo describing all the projects to defeat same-sex marriage all over the US. They find this document, make it public, and 700 bloggers later, the marriage equality issue has been raised within the African-American community.

Let's get the facts together for the sake of reason:

NOM is broke. By the end of last year they had to encourage their supporters to donate what they could in order to keep the fight going.

• Race is a sensitive subject. If you wish to capture the media's attention, all you have to do is make a controversial statement related to race.

• The LGBT community is known to be loud. More and more organizations that protect the rights of gay people are created by the day. We have very popular groups that let the gay voices be heard on a large scale.

• Obama has not yet taken an official stand on same-sex marriage. Most of us want to believe that since he has done so much for the LGBT community, he will also openly support marriage equality if elected for a second term. The reality of the situation is that the opposition will not doubt to use his silence against him. The president is being pushed into taking a formal stand in regards to marriage.

All is fair in love and war. While NOM is the largest anti-gay organization in America, they are not known for being the smartest. It would appear as if they took battles that they could not win and wasted millions of dollars getting nothing in return. And because of this, we might have overlooked the series of events that led to the exposure of the racial division memo. It is obvious that the organization has some sort of political agenda aside from their religious approach. It is also known that they have strong support from people who are wealthy and possibly very smart. So, what would keep NOM from having placed the memo in a place where HRC could find it? We already know that these people don't play by the rules. We also know that the HRC had been investigating their finances. NOM knew that, too. Why would they leave internal documents accessible to their very enemy? I believe we might have underestimated NOM. And here we are, giving their documents free publicity. The very same documents in which they ask for donations, and claim the identity of the donors, will be kept a secret.




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