National Organization for Marriage Becomes Self-Caricature

It’s dangerous to turn our opponents into caricatures. It’s something that I struggle with as Rick Warren keeps lying about something he said in an easily accessible videotaped interview. It’s just absurd when Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council suggests without a trace of irony that the US should side with George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil when it comes to LGBT people.

When a Focus on the Family affiliated group uses imagery to suggest that gays are snipers with their sights set on a white all-American heartland couple blowing bubbles with their young children, we have trouble understanding how the general public doesn’t see through the absurdity. When politicians and celebrities suggest that not enough skulls have been smashed and not enough people have marched to warrant civil rights, our mouths gape at the open disregard for the core beliefs set forth by the Constitution.

But this week, they finally broke me. I finally can’t keep from laughing at them. It started at this shockingly horrible ad that the Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage produced and will be spending $1.5 million dollars to get onto television across the country.

THIS IS TOTALLY REAL.

Debunking here, if you really need it.

But it doesn’t end with the ad. The National Organization for Marriage, or NOM (Seriously, Mags, it’s a whole thing) failed AGAIN to research the acronym for their new campaign Two Million For Marriage, which they’re shortening to 2M4M.

The problem? As with NOM, 2M4M already stands for something. Something directly related to all things gay. Something that’s…way different than NOM’s stated goals. M4M is ancient chat room slang for “men seeking men”. 2M4M is a couple looking for a threeway. (And with that one line, I changed my blog’s search terms forever. ::sigh::)

C’mon, Mags. Google is your friend.

The ultimate kicker is that NOM (tee hee) didn’t think to buy the .org name before announcing it. NOM.org turns out to be the Nation of Men and 2m4m.org was just bought yesterday after the NOM announcement and listed as Two Men For Marriage. It’s not ready yet, but whoever’s behind it says it’ll be a site to directly combat Mags and the 2M4M crew.

I mean, honestly. She can’t be serious about this, right? Maybe she’s trying to throw us off our game or something.

But lest we forget the real and present danger of groups like NOM, here’s an interview Thom Hartmann did last month with Brian Brown, NOM’s Executive Director.

People hear this and still take them seriously. People hear this and use the same clearly flawed arguments to justify discrimination.

And as long as that’s the case, we can’t get distracted, no matter how remarkably hilarious they are.