Memos released on Monday reveal that
the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) planned to “fan” a
race war to impede the progress of gay marriage.
Gay advocate the Human
Rights Campaign (HRC) posted four of NOM's internal strategic
memos from 2009, which were unsealed in the course of NOM's ongoing
legal challenge to Maine's campaign reporting laws.
In one memo, officials suggest
developing “side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political
leaders” such as pornography, “protection of children” and
religious liberty at the federal level.
“The strategic goal of this project
is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key democratic
constituencies. 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. No politician wants to take up and
push an issue that splits the base of the party.”
“Fanning the hostility raised in the
wake of Prop 8 is key …,” the document states, a reference to
exit polling in California that showed an overwhelming majority of
African-Americans voted in favor of the state's gay marriage ban.
The strategy included finding
“attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage
advocates electorally,” and “interrupting” the process of
assimilation of Latinos into “the dominant Anglo culture” by
“making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity – a
symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”
Evan Wolfson, founder and CEO of
Freedom to Marry, called the strategy “despicable.”
“In its anti-gay crusade to block the
freedom to marry, NOM has spent years working to drive wedges within
communities across the nation, all the while claiming it does not
'hate' anyone, gay or non-gay,” Wolfson said in an email to
supporters. “Now exposure of NOM's own strategy memos confirms
that NOM will stop at nothing to push its agenda, pitting American
against American, minority against minority, family members against
family members.”
“These smoking-gun documents show how
NOM has sought, in the most cynical ways imaginable, to bait the gay
community in hopes of provoking a hurt response that would further
divide, all in furtherance of the ugly and cruel anti-gay agenda.”