Brian Brown: Totally Down

This is Brian Brown.

Brian is the president of the National Organization For Marriage, a group with the sole purpose of preventing a hypothetical couple named Adam and Steve from filing their taxes jointly. As you can see, he's a very smiley guy—he's like a homophobic version of Drew Carey.

At least he was, before Drew lost all that weight and turned into Huey Lewis.

Drewy/Huey

I'm still looking for a picture of Louis C.K. wearing glasses to complete the tryptich.

Anyway, Brian Brown says letting gays get married is bad because it's "redefining marriage," though I'm not sure why that's so objectionable--his own organization's media strategy consists almost entirely of redefining things.

The NOM website used to have a whole list of "Marriage Talking Points" like that one, but the page has been removed in the last year or two (though you can still see a few of the Talking Points in my earlier post, linked to above, and also again earlier in this sentence). I can't say for sure why NOM removed them, but maybe they realized they should keep their manipulative agenda under tighter wraps after their race-based political schemes were made public.

Not that you need to read secret documents to get the full flavor of Brian's screwy logic. Here he is on television, asking the age-old rhetorical question, "How can my virulently anti-gay agenda be bigoted if it has a black friend?"

There's a little grandmother--African American woman--in North Carolina, who actually was denied sitting at the lunch counter, and she's looking up and saying, "How can folks say that it's bigotry for me to go out and vote that I believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman?"

I wonder which of that woman's attributes confers the most legitimacy on her moral judgments--her age, race or physical stature?

Brian loves to bolster his anti-gay position by invoking solidarity with black people, as I've previously mentioned in that earlier post of mine (which I've linked to above a couple times already, and again at the end of this sentence just for shits and giggles... right here). I guess Brian believes that since black people are bigger victims of oppression than anyone, they cannot be biased themselves. So if you heard that Brian Brown is bigoted, don't believe the hype--Brian is "down," and his tireless efforts to deny gay people the same civil protections as straight people are totally "legit."

With Liberty and Equality for Dan

In a move that is sure to please at least a few Norwegian bachelor farmers in the Lake Wobegon area, Minnesota has become the 12th State in the Union to legalize unions of the gay variety.

Ahh, young love--the above L.A. Times photo shows Rep. Karen Clark, right, and Sen. Scott Dibble celebrating the passage of a bill legalizing gay marriage in Minnesota. Not only are they both gay Minnesota lawmakers, but it appears they are a man and a woman who are gay for each other. That may be a first for any state!

While things look all happy and, uh, gay in the wake of the legislation, adoption of the bill was not smooth sailing. While not a single governor of the state opposed it (he was unanimous!), there were a number of folks in the House and Senate of the good state of MN who did not care for this piece of legislation. Chief among the naysayers was Republican State Senator Dan Hall. When the Mini-soda State Senate was giving the bill the once over earlier in the week, Mr. Hall gave a 12 minute speech to precisely express his feelings of "nay" for the gay.



(You can also read a transcript by visiting this linky-dink.)

Mr. Hall explained that legalizing gay nuptials will do all kinds of harm in all kinds of ways. For example, because people of faith will have to put up with things in which they do not believe, "it'll threaten religious liberty." Mind you, gay marriage won't cause any actual harm to religion, but many people of deep religious conviction will certainly feel threatened. Rule number one: in this country, you're not allowed to do anything that might make Christians feel uncomfortable.

I think the real issue here is this: separation of church and state sounds real nice, but this country was founded on religion. The Puritans came here so they could have the freedom to believe what they believed without persecution--not to have to tolerate what a bunch of queers, Islams or Injuns  might believe (just to name a few). In keeping with that grand tradition, Mr. Hall purports that not only should religious Christian liberty not be threatened, inconvenienced or generally unsettled, it also should not have to give a crap about the rights of anyone else—here's Danny Hall on why legislation is simply the wrong avenue for pursuing this kind of change in society:



"Forcing others to give you your rights will never end well. It won’t give you the recognition you desire. That which is right can easily be seen by all. Let me say that again: That which is right can easily be seen by all."

Right on, brother. You can't force people to recognize other people's rights.

What a mistake that stupid thing was, am I right? Up high, Dan!

I don't know who these gays (and founding fathers) think they are, trying to legislate morality like that. And who's bright idea was it to force Emancipation down slave-owners' throats? It would've been much more meaningful if we'd waited for them to come around on their own. (Though we'd probably still be waiting--progress has an uphill battle in many parts of this land. I mean, the Civil Rights Act was passed back in 1964, and in 2013 Georgia is still telling Segregation, "I wish I knew how to quit you!" The reality is, like many of the loosely affiliated states that make up our Union, Georgia is so hung up on the 2nd Amendment that it just ain't have the time to keep up with all the new-fangled civil rights laws that we keep putting on the books.)

Anyway, so Dan Hall made clear in his speech his opposition to legislation "forcing others to give you your rights." I wonder if Dan appreciates the irony of giving that speech in a building located on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

My guess is, no, he does not appreciate that irony.

Mr. Hall borrows a lot of Brian Brown's anti-gay marriage talking points. Like Brian Brown, he warns that gay marriage will ruin straight marriage, but he never actually says exactly how. Mainly he just assumes his audience will read into his warnings based on a set of shared traditional values towards homosexuality. And by "values," of course, I mean "fear."

Still, Hall had the good sense to realize that some would disagree with his position and even go so far as to call him a "hater" or a "bigot," so to fend off his detractors he had prepared some words to establish his street cred:

Many have said to me, ‘Sen. Hall, you don’t understand. You’re married, live in a nice suburb, you’ve got kids, live in a nice house, two-car garage, you’re well educated.’

Most of you don’t know I grew up in the southeast projects, 71 Saint Marys [Avenue] by the U of M. Many of my relatives were addicts, criminals, two sent to prison, more than one child molester. Those that my mother tried to keep us away from were relatives. My mother raised four children in the projects but had an alcoholic husband that she divorced when I was six years old.

Two years later, she married another,  my stepfather who also was a drunk. When he was home, we tried not to be. When I was 12 my mother told him, “You either get on your knees and accept Jesus and have him take over your life and stop drinking or there’s the door, don’t ever come back.’ He did that that day, our life changed, that was a turning point in my history. My father this day, 48 years ago today. He’s now in a nursing home, my mother still lives on Lake Nokomis.

I'm not sure what having a shitty childhood has to do with being an expert on gay legal issues, but he really does paint a wonderful picture of traditional marriage.

Parsing Gay Marriage: All Our Base Are Love This Wording

If you live in the New York City area, there's a good chance that, like me, you watch too much New York 1 News. For anyone not familiar, NY1 is the cable channel that brings you info on weather, traffic and bodega stabbings in a ten-minute news cycle that repeats ad nauseum all day long. (It may be hard to judge exactly what's "too much" of NY1, but roughly it's any multiple of ten minutes greater than one.)

And speaking of ads and nausea, lately on NY1 there's been an advertisement, a bit of absurd propaganda, really, that warns of the dangers of legalizing gay marriage in New York State.



Propaganda is a strong word, I know, but I think it's warranted when shameless fear-mongering is involved—folksy Waylon Jennings-ish Dukes of Hazzard-style voiceovers notwithstanding. Even the car commercials that annoy me so much attach their pompous opinions to some relevant and discernible facts; but for all this ad's Richard Linklater-esque verbosity, it's logic is still as confounding as, well, a Richard Linklater movie. (Maybe it only makes sense if you watch it stoned.)

In terms of concrete facts, all I learned from the "Consequences" ad—a product of a group called National Organization for Marriage, or NOM—is that there's a risk of teachers instructing children that "boys can marry other boys." As if once informed of the existence of gay marriage your impressionable 8-year-old son and his buddy from gym class are going to elope at recess.

I thought NOM's website might shed some light on the actual dangers of gay marriage, or at least provide some entertainment, so I went out a-clicking. Under the site's "Get Informed" heading I found a page about The Threat to Marriage, but instead of any specific explanation of the dangers of allowing the infamous "Adam and Steve" to "make it official" all I found was some very dry stuff about gay and anti-gay lobbying efforts. Nothing about how The Possibility of Gay Marriage amounts to a Threat To Marriage In General. And certainly not entertaining.

The Marriage Talking Points page, however, is much juicier, and much, uh, entertainier. (Fact-based? Informative? We'll get to that.) In particular the part about how to parry frequently asked questions may be the enterainiest. Here are a few stand-out items:


1. Are you a bigot? “Why do you want to take away people’s rights?” “Isn’t it wrong to write discrimination into the constitution?”

A: “Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists? I think that’s pretty offensive, don’t you? Particularly to the 60 percent of African-Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. Marriage as the union of husband and wife isn’t new; it’s not taking away anyone’s rights. It’s common sense.”


Here NOM is reframing the question with a bunch of rhetorical "doody," in an apparent attempt at Frank Luntz-style emotional manipulation: deflecting the question with an unrelated question, injecting obfuscating counter-accusations—even playing the race card to shame dissenters—and wrapping the whole bundle of "bull-cookies" in a picnic blanket of 1950s wholesome goodness. Rhetorically speaking.

Anyway, to answer your clever counter-question—“Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists?"—if promoting homophobia makes you a bigot, then yes, I believe that about you.

Ahh, but there I go calling you names, NOM. How shameful of me! Even though you're in the business of peddling intolerance, maybe you're right—we probably should consider whether we're offending anyone before we go wantonly passing any civil rights legislation.

Come to think of it, that was pretty offensive how that one black lady in the '50s kept refusing to go to the back of the bus, which totally offended all those white people who opposed desegregation. I mean, some of the victimized white people back then were so offended they started turning their fire hoses and police dogs on the callous, insensitive black folks. (Most white people keep police dogs around in case of periods of emotional duress.)


Offended White People


By the way, if NOM's reasoning is sound, this time around any offended black people can join in as we point the hose at uppity homosexuals!


3. Why do we need a constitutional amendment? “Isn’t DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] enough?”

A: “Lawsuits like the one that imposed gay marriage in Massachusetts now threaten marriage in at least 12 other states so far. We need a marriage amendment to settle the issue once and for all, so we don’t have this debate in our face every day. The people get to decide what marriage means. No-end run around the rules by activist judges or grandstanding San-Francisco-style politicians.”


I must agree, the chief purpose of legislation should be to ensure we don't have to put up with debate in our faces. Also I have no idea what a grandstanding San-Francisco-style politician is, but it sounds awesome and makes any argument more convincing.

As a quick side-note, here's a gratuitous stock photo of an offended black person, who I'm pretty sure would have something entertaining to say about this subject (one way or another):


Debate for your face!

Getting back on track, here's the keystone of NOM's archway of spurious logic:


THE MOST EFFECTIVE SINGLE SENTENCE:

Extensive and repeated polling agrees that the single most effective message is:

"Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose,
they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us."


What makes this sentence so powerful? Well, "extensive and repeated polling" shows something that warlords, politicians and death squads around the world have known for millenia, which is that portraying yourself as the victim allows you to much more effectively persecute others. Menacing "Cockroaches" in Rwanda, filthy thieving Jews in the ghettos—that sort of thing. In this instance they've learned to pretend to treat gays humanely, but they still paint them as villains who are trying to rob the God-fearin' Americans of their freedoms. And yet for all the Chicken Little panic about The Threat to Marriage I was unable to find the part about how if gay marriage passes in New York State I'll have to replace my wife with a man.

Here's more about how The Sentence works:


This allows people to express support for tolerance while opposing gay marriage. Some modify it to “People have a right to live as they choose, they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.”


More accurately the crafty wording of the magic sentence allows people to feign support for tolerance while opposing tolerance. Also it's worth noting that laws, including those that "redefine marriage for all of us," are not passed by an exclusive cabal of gays and lesbians. There's actually a whole, um, like, legal process thing-a-ma-jig that goes on? And it also includes loads of heterosexuals too, and they all, like, discuss it and bang gavels and like vote and junk? I think they call it a congress or a government or something?

Getting back to that alleged "60% of African Americans who oppose same-sex marriage": I'm no mutant arachnoid, but my spider sense tells me that NOM determined that figure through the very same "extensive and repeated polling" that was designed to find the best wording to coax people into opposing gay marriage. (Um, like, objectivity and junk?)


Language to avoid at all costs: "Ban same-sex marriage." Our base loves this wording. So do supporters of SSM. They know it causes us to lose about ten percentage points in polls. Don’t use it. Say we’re against “redefining marriage” or in favor or “marriage as the union of husband and wife” NEVER “banning same-sex marriage.”


So there you have it: NOM is technically not against banning same-sex marriage.

Anyway, the only danger to John and Jane Doe if their neighbors Adam and Steven get hitched is that, should John & Jane happen to be old fashioned, bigoted homophobes, they will have to suffer their worldview becoming increasingly irrelevant. Which is fine by me—just as long as there are no, like, grandstanding San-Francisco-style politicians putting debate in our faces, and junk?