National Organization for Marriage Cheers Russia's Anti-Gay Laws

I've often said that the dishonesty of the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") knows no limits.  While claiming to be solely concerned with "protecting the sanctity of marriage," NOM in fact promotes reparative therapy - which is condemned by EVERY legitimate medical and mental health association in America - and promotes anti-gay lies.  Now, totally revealing its true agenda, NOM is praising Russia's anti-gay laws and providing a glimpse of what the Christofascist would do in America if they were allowed to do so.   Here are  highlights from Gay Star News:

Rev. William Owens, a religious liaison for the US group National Organization for Marriage, is proudly defending Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws.

According to the site Right Wing Watch, Owen emailed members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors; CAAP, like NOM, is against same sex marriage.

Owens also went after LGBT organizations who are calling for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics..

'I believe that this is just another one of their ploys to cover their real intent, which is to force the acceptance of a lifestyle that is a clear violation of American values and moral law.'

Owens ends his email with an assertion that the US is in steep moral decline and in need of pray.

'I must declare to you that our nation is in trouble. We must pray without ceasing for our nation and we ask for your support to help us stay in the fight.'

As reported by Right Wing Watch, after the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage of Act, Owen promised anti-gay marriage advocates 'are going to fight to the end, we are not going to give up, we are going to fight like we fought to get civil rights...'

Owens is in my view - like so many Virginia black pastors who act as water carriers and flunkies for the white supremacists at The Family Foundation - shows his ignorance and stupidity by supporting organizations that are as much anti-black as they are anti-gay.  He might just as well stencil "I'm a cretin" or "I'm a moron" on his forehead.  But meanwhile, it remains imperative to expose NOM's lies, hypocrisy and true anti-gay agenda.

Rev. William Owens, a religious liaison for the US group National Organization for Marriage, is proudly defending Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws.
According to the site Right Wing Watch, Owen emailed members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors; CAAP, like NOM, is against same sex marriage.
- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/national-organization-marriages-religious-liaison-hails-russias-anti-gay-laws130813#sthash.SNwMwCaS.dpuf

Rev. William Owens, a religious liaison for the US group National Organization for Marriage, is proudly defending Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws.
According to the site Right Wing Watch, Owen emailed members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors; CAAP, like NOM, is against same sex marriage.
- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/national-organization-marriages-religious-liaison-hails-russias-anti-gay-laws130813#sthash.SNwMwCaS.dpuf

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Iowa ethics board will investigate National Organization for Marriage

The anti-gay bigots and self-enriching hate merchants at the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") like to congratulate themselves on their piety and godliness even as they lie through their teeth, seek to breed discord between blacks and gays, and violate campaign finance laws wherever they operate.  The latest state to launch an investigation of NOM is Iowa where NOM bundled money and participated in a campaign to oust Iowa Supreme Court justices who had joined in the Iowa Supreme Court opinion striking down Iowa's ban on gay marriage.  Here are highlights from the Des Moines Register:

A national organization that opposes same-sex marriage may have violated state law by not disclosing its donors in its fight to oust Iowa Supreme Court justices, ethics officials said today.

The Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board voted unanimously to investigate the National Organization for Marriage, saying that if the allegations against it are proven true, the marriage group’s actions would violate state law.

The decision to investigate is a triumph for Republican former presidential candidate Fred Karger, who filed the complaint against the National Organization for Marriage on June 13.

Karger said the D.C.-based group spent $635,000 in 2010 and about $100,000 in 2012 to try to oust four of the justices who were part of a unanimous 2009 decision that allowed same-sex marriage in Iowa.

Megan Tooker, the ethics board’s lawyer and executive director, noted that the National Organization for Marriage was “absolutely wrong” in several of its interpretations of state law.

Tooker said if the marriage organization solicited and received donations for the purpose of defeating the Iowa justices, by state law, the names of those donors should have been disclosed.

One piece of evidence in the complaint is an email the National Organization for Marriage sent out on Sept. 21, 2012 that asks for cash donations specifically for the fight against the Iowa justices, Tooker said.

In its written response, the marriage organization argued that the release of donors isn’t required if funds are raised through phone calls and emails.  “That’s absolutely false,” Tooker said.

The folks at NOM make tawdry whores look virtuous in comparison.  I continue to believe that NOM's goal is to hide the fact that a handful of big donors - e.g., the Roman Catholic Church and/or other religious denominations - are its principal contributors.

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Pennsylvania County Begins Offering Same-Sex Marriage Licenses

The hate merchants and Christofascists at the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") have their panties in a major wad over the issuance of marriage licenses to same sex couples by the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, county registry.  Huffing and puffing NOM is calling the actions "lawlessness" even though NOM has no problem violating campaign finance laws all across the country with open abandon.  As always, NOM's hypocrisy is stunning.  The county register rightly determined that Pennsylvania's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional in light of the ruling in United States v. Windsor, and therefore began issuing licenses.  Think Progress has details:

Alicia Terrizzi and Loreen Bloodgood obtained a marriage license and were wed a short time thereafter Wednesday in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, despite a state law banning same-sex marriage. The County’s Registry of Wills, Bruce Hanes, had been contacted by another couple earlier in the week about the possibility, and after consulting with his solicitor, Michael Clarke, decided that issuing same-sex licenses was the proper way to honor his oath to uphold the Pennsylvania constitution:

Based upon the advice of Mr. Clarke, my own analysis of the law and mindful of the Attorney General’s belief that Pennsylvania’s marriage laws are unconstitutional, I decided to come down on the right side of history and the law…

When I took the oath of office 19 months ago, I swore to uphold the U.S. and the Pennsylvania Constitutions. Article 1 Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, aptly entitled “Inherent rights of mankind,” says “all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which is “pursuing their own happiness.”

Article 1, Section 26 of the Constitution says, “Neither the Commonwealth nor any political subdivision thereof shall deny to any person the enjoyment of any civil right, nor discriminate against any person in the exercise of any civil right.”

Furthermore, Article 1 Section 28 says, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania because of the sex of the individual.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced earlier this month that she would not defend a federal challenge to the state’s law banning same-sex marriage because she believes it to be unconstitutional. Unlike many states, Pennsylvania does not have a constitutional amendment enforcing discrimination against gay couples, only a state law. A group of 23 plaintiffs, including ten couples, two of their children, and a widow, are challenging that law in federal court.

The fate of these marriages is unclear, but for now, Hanes has the support of the Chair and Vice Chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, who called it a historic day. Presumably, he will continue to offer such licenses unless some form of legal action prevents him from doing so.

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Federal Court Orders Ohio Officials To Recognize Gay Couple’s Marriage

In a surprisingly fast reaction to the lawsuit filed by a couple in Ohio challenging that state's gay marriage ban, a federal judge in Ohio ordered Ohio state officials on Monday to recognize the marriage of two men that was performed in Maryland on the death certificate of an Ohio resident in hospice care who the judge says “is certain to die soon.”  While the merits of the case have yet to be decided, the ruling my indicate how the Court plans to ultimately rule in the wake of the Windsor decision last month.  One can only wonder how the folks at NOM will try to describe this development as a "victory.  The New Civil Rights Movement has details.  Here are story highlights:

 

A federal judge has just ordered the state of Ohio to recognize a same-sex couple’s marriage, noting that not doing so would likely be considered discrimination and therefore unconstitutional. While the judge’s ruling does not invalidate Ohio’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the wording of the judge’s ruling certainly calls it into question.

On July 11, after spending 20 years together, John Arthur and James Obergefell were married in Maryland, where same-sex marriage became legal this year. John Arthur is terminally ill with ALS, and the couple flew to Maryland to marry before Arthur’s death.

The couple had “hoped to be buried next to each other, to spend eternity together, but the state of Ohio and his spouse’s relatives won’t let him – because he married another man, John Arthur,”

Federal U.S. District Magistrate Judge Timothy Black has just ordered the state of Ohio to recognize the couple’s marriage.

“Black found that the Ohio Constitution on the issue ‘violates rights secured by the … United States Constitution in that same-sex couples married in jurisdictions where same sex marriages are valid who seek to have their out-of-state marriage accepted as legal in Ohio are treated differently than opposite sex couples who have been married in states where their circumstances allow marriage in that state but not in Ohio,’” Cincinnati.com also reported.

“According to the order, Obergefell and Arthur live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and ‘have been living together in a committed and intimate relationship for more than twenty years,’” Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed adds:

The order also notes “they were very recently legally married in the state of Maryland pursuant to the laws of Maryland recognizing same sex marriage.”

“The end result here and now is that the local Ohio Registrar of death certificates is hereby ORDERED not to accept for recording a death certificate for John Arthur that does not record Mr. Arthur’s status at death as ‘married’ and James Obergefell as his ‘surviving spouse,’” Judge Timothy Black wrote in an order Monday.

Theoretically, this ruling could be the first step in tossing out as unconstitutional Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage, but it’s important to note the ruling is a temporary restraining order and can only be applied, at least for now, to John Arthur and James Obergefell.

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Is Pope Francis Waving a White Flag on Gay Marriage?

The Roman Catholic Church does not have a good track record on accepting new scientific knowledge or dealing well with objective reality.  Over the course of history, the Church has been wrong more often than it has been right.   The Vatican anti-gay jihad is but the latest of many Church efforts to hang on to ignorance and bigotry even as the world at large moves onward.  In a column in Huffington Post Michelangelo Signorile speculates that Pope Francis may be moving towards accepting reality on gay marriage: it is a battle the Church is going to lose and that cutting losses may be the better course of action.  That's not to say Francis will not face major blow back from hysterical bigots like William Donohue of the so-called Catholic League or the self-enriching hate merchants at the National Organization for marriage.  Here are column excerpts:

This week we saw reports about Pope Francis cryptically acknowledging the existence of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, about which he supposedly believes something has to be done. But if I were on a crusade against gay marriage, like Maggie Gallagher or Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (both devout Catholics), I don't think I'd be very happy with this pope so far. In fact, I'd say he stinks.

Let's put all of this in some perspective. In the time since Francis became pope, France became the largest predominantly Catholic country to pass marriage equality, right in the Vatican's backyard. In the U.S., three states, including Rhode Island, which has the highest percentage of Catholics in the country, passed marriage equality. Predominantly Catholic Mexico continues to move forward on the issue in the courts, and Brazil's National Council of Justice green-lighted gay marriage in that country, which would become the largest country in South America and the largest predominantly Catholic country in the world to allow gay marriage. Another Latin American country near the Argentine pope's old stomping grounds, Uruguay, passed marriage equality in recent months, as did New Zealand.

And Pope Francis had nothing publicly to say about any of it. Zero. Zilch. Nada. He was busy washing the feet of the poor and tweeting about how selflessness is a virtue. Go figure.

Back when Spain passed marriage equality in 2005, Pope Benedict whirled himself into a frenzy, railing against it regularly. He told Catholic officials there that any support of the law would cost them their jobs and told secular public servants who are Catholic to flout the law and refuse to marry gays.


Francis just doesn't seem as if he wants to be out front on this issue. That was even clearer when Francis met this morning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who'd railed against gay marriage in the United Kingdom, which is about to pass marriage equality. According to the Associated Press:

In his remarks to Welby, Francis said he hoped they could collaborate in promoting the sacredness of life "and the stability of families founded on marriage." ...

Significantly, though, Francis didn't specify that marriage should be based on a union between a man and woman, which is how Benedict XVI and John Paul II routinely defined it in a way that made clear their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Vatican officials said Francis' phrasing was a diplomatic attempt to make his point without making a provocative pronouncement....

I'm not saying Francis is anywhere near there (though he did reportedly support civil unions, as I noted in a post a couple of months back). But having harshly railed against gay marriage back when he was in Argentina, only to lose that battle, he may be seeing that the handwriting is on the wall and that he's got better things to do with his time. And that can only be seen as a loss for Maggie Gallagher and other anti-equality advocates who hoped the pope would loudly lead their crusade. 

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