As I see it, the real problem is that millions of people will be tuned in on Sunday not knowing that Tim Tebow is lending his credibility (such as it is) to Focus on the Family (FoF), a dangerous, homophobic organization built on a doctrine of prejudice and fear.

Here is a short, incomplete list of positions that Tim Tebow supports through his association with FoF and by extension FoF’s sister organization Family Research Council (FRC). (FoF and FRC were split in 1992 solely for tax reasons.)

• In February 2009, FoF official affiliate Family Policy Council of West Virginia ran a commercial that said that same sex marriage was “attacking” marriage while showing a heterosexual family in crosshairs.
• In March 2009, FRC President Tony Perkins said that the United States should sign an anti-gay rights statement offered in the United Nations, thereby joining with GWB’s “Axis of Evil”.
• In May 2009, FoF founder James Dobson claimed that the Matthew Shepard Act (now Law) protects pedophiles because the law doesn’t define “sexual orientation”. Of course, current law already defines the term, so there was no need for a new definition. This was explained in committee before an amendment ordering definition was rejected as unnecessary.
• In July 2009, FoF celebrated the “findings” in a “study” by NARTH that said that Ex-Gay treatments are “beneficial”, a statement that every credible source rejects outright.
• In September 2009, FoF organized a rally in support of Maine’s anti-gay civil rights campaign. They were so frightened of having their words on the record, they barred the press from the event.
• Not only that, they refused tickets to people who didn’t fall in lock-step with their agenda.
• In February 2010, five days before the Tebow commercial was set to air, FRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Government Affairs Peter Sprigg told Chris Matthews’ audience that gays should be thrown in jail. Two years earlier, Sprigg told a reporter that he wanted gays “exported”.
• In February 2010, three days before the Tebow commercial was set to air, FRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Government Affairs Peter Sprigg unambiguously advocated kidnapping if a non-custodial parent doesn’t like the judge’s order.

These positions and more (I’ve barely scratched the surface) are supported by Heisman Trophy-winning Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow through his association with FoF. And don’t give me any guff on the harshness; we’d say the same thing if he did a commercial for any other supremacist group.

Hopefully next time Tebow’s on the field he’ll put Matthew 23:23-28 under his eyes. He (and they) could use the reminder.

P.S. Another reason I’m in favor of CBS running the commercial: That’s $2.8 million they won’t have to spread more vitriol against the LGBT community.

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And so to the question: What can we gain from this experience? I think we can use this failure (theirs, not ours) as an opportunity to reconsider our strategy.

We need to remember that we never chose this war. Remember, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) came about 14 years ago because the Hawaii Supreme Court ordered that the state must show compelling reasons to exclude lesbians and gays from marriage. Anti-gay forces recognized the repercussions if that battle didn’t go their way, so they got DOMA passed to preempt a potential loss.

Then they got busy on individual states. In every single case (someone correct me if I’m wrong), the Religious Right pushed us into a marriage battle, most notably in 2004 under the direction of twice-divorced Karl Rove. Now Maggie Gallagher uses lies to continue their assault on civil rights.

Understand, even if civil rights were to win at the ballot box, you can bet they would be ready to drop another load of lies that we would waste another couple million dollars defending against, and then we’d lose. Again, that’s not because we’re doing something wrong, but because bigotry and fear are easy sells, especially when the opponent has no relationship with the truth.

My point is that we’ve been on the defense from the start. That’s a losing plan. After 31 popular votes and I-don’t-know-how-many state legislature votes, it’s time to start playing offense.

And that’s not the only reason.

The biggest problem is that when the votes from the legislature or the people are counted up we’ve still encouraged either the legislature or the people to vote on someone’s rights, regardless of who wins. That’s not just unethical, it’s downright Unamerican.

You know what I’d really like to see? The next time the question goes to the public, we make one ad, not telling people to vote for us, but telling them not to vote on the issue at all. We should acknowledge up front that we anticipate a loss but have made that sacrifice in favor of the greater constitutional principle. Then we take the millions we would have spent on a losing campaign and give it to the homeless or some other worthy cause.

In other words, stop playing the game. Opt out.

I think we win something if we opt out of their battle and lose. We’re 0-31 in the popular vote, and the last one in Maine was lost by a nearly perfectly run campaign. We will continue to lose that battle regardless of what we do, so why not turn that energy toward a different battle, one of our choosing?

We should pour some money and effort into finding the best attorneys to fight the best court cases, like the upcoming challenge to Prop 8 (more on that later) and the case being brought by Lambda Legal and Garden State Equality against yesterday’s decision in the New Jersey Senate.

In the end, that’s where we’ll win.

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With that in mind, I offer this comparison.

Straight wedding:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gay wedding:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Which of these couples takes marriage more seriously?

(Thanks to Dorian for letting me use his wedding video. And yes, that is Matt Alber singing at their wedding. It was a surprise gift from one groom to the other.)

 

(D’awwwwww.)

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Of course, when I saw it I did a quick face palm. I’ve had a similar post roaming around in my head for the last few weeks. So at the risk of looking like a big copycat, take a look at what I found a few weeks ago on the National Woman’s Party. As in Jeremy’s research, the parallels are startling.

The National Woman’s Party (NWP), was a women’s organization founded in 1916 that fought for women’s rights during the early 20th century in the United States, particularly for the right to vote on the same terms as men. In contrast to other organizations, such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which focused on lobbying individual states and from which the NWP split, the NWP put its priority on the passage of a constitutional amendment ensuring women’s suffrage. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns founded the organization originally under the name the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1913; by 1917, the name had been changed to the National Woman’s Party.

1917 NWP protest for the right to vote
Click for full and high resolution photograph

Women associated with the party staged a suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, the day before Wilson’s inauguration; they also became the first women to picket for women’s rights in front of the White House. The picketers were tolerated until 1917, but when they continued to picket after the United States declared war in World War One, they were arrested by police for “obstructing traffic”.

Many of the NWP’s members, upon arrest, went on hunger strikes; some, including Paul, were force-fed by jail personnel as a consequence. The resulting scandal and its negative impact on the country’s international reputation at a time when Wilson was trying to build a reputation for himself and the nation as an international leader in human rights may have contributed to Wilson’s decision to publicly call for the United States Congress to pass the Suffrage Amendment.

Burning President Wilson's speeches in January 1919
Click for full and high resolution photograph

So buck up, fellow LGBTs. We can learn from our nation’s history. We can be successful as they were by fighting as they did. It’ll take work, but we’re on our way.

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• WIN! The trans-inclusive anti-discrimination ordinance in Kalamazoo, Michigan passed by a landslide 24 point margin. An exceptional cap to the campaign that saw our opposition predictably return to public bathroom fear-mongering. Kudos to Kalamazoo for seeing past the nonsense! (photo from mlive.com)
• WIN! According to Chuck Wolfe, 50 of the 79 openly gay political candidates endorsed by the Victory Fund in 2009 have been elected. That’s 50 City Councilmembers, School Board members, Commissioners, and Mayors elected across America, in most cases with their gender preference used as a weapon.
• WIN! (Well, probably.) Washington’s Referendum 71, which approves the Everything-But-Marriage Law passed in May. There are still a few hundred thousand absentee ballots to be counted, a process that may not be completed for several days. The current (Wednesday 3:00 pm PST) count is 51%-49% for passage. We have reason to be hopeful, as election officials have revealed that the majority of uncounted votes are from counties that generally supported the referendum. So tentatively, congratulations to Washington for letting lesbians and gay men get everything except get married.
• LOSS! A major losses for the feminist and LGBT communities in the Virginia gubernatorial election. Liberty University graduate Bob McDonnell handily defeated his opponent, even after his amazingly anti-woman and anti-gay master’s thesis was uncovered. In 1989 he wrote that, “…when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter.” As others (even FOX, for goodness’ sake) have pointed out, McDonnell’s thesis is a blueprint for his record so far as an elected official. LGBT people (and women) in Virginia, be on your guard!
• LOSS! In the greatest loss of the night, Maine voters stripped their lesbian and gay neighbors of their marriage rights. With 98% of votes counted, Maine’s Question One passed by 53% – 47%. Once again the majority has decided that the minority group doesn’t deserve the same rights they enjoy. The Yes on One campaign, funded and directed largely by the Catholic Church (probably with help from the Mormons), ran a campaign centered almost completely around lies, fear-mongering, and more lies. Their television ads focused almost exclusively on statements that state officials and legal experts directly disputed. More details (and photo at right) from Rex Wockner.

We had some good results, but when you ask people if lesbian and gay relationships should be treated like theirs, the answer is still a resounding NO. Even when the Washington legislature passed a law that complied with bigoted requirements, we can barely eek out a majority vote.

And you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of getting excited when a state legislature takes an unconstitutional vote that works out in our favor, and I’m tired of being disappointed when the populace takes an unconstitutional vote that reinforces systemic bigotry. I’m tired of acting like this incremental approach is reasonable anymore.

So I quit. No longer will I work for piece-meal measures and popular votes. It’s wrong, it’s unnecessary, and it allows our enemy to choose the battlefield.

I don’t completely deride incrementalism, by the way. It was a good and necessary part of the national strategy from 1996 through 2006 when we had a hostile president (first Clinton, then GWB) and a hostile congress. Our community kept hope alive for a decade with work on more local levels until we could get theoretically sympathetic majorities.

But now we have those majorities in congress, and we have a theoretically fierce advocate in the White House. The time for the confusing patchwork of laws that change every time we cross the county line is over.

It’s quite possible that a marriage law will be passed by year’s end in Washington, DC, and there’s talk of that possibility in of that happening through special sessions in New York and New Jersey, but you won’t find news of them here. If the fag hag and her closet case from NOM want to go at it on a national level, then fine. Otherwise, I’m not interested.

Either we’re fully equal or we’re not. Either the 14th amendment protects us or it doesn’t. I say we are, and I say it does.

What say you?

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I hate that we have to ignore the fact (yes, fact) that NOM is funding the anti-equality campaign in Maine through less-than-ethical, less-than-legal means.

I hate that in Washington, we have to ignore the fact (yes, fact) that the anti-equality measure got on the ballot by falsifying signatures. (Special thanks to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy for putting a lock on this one till after the election.)

I hate the fact that we participate in putting civil rights laws up for a popular vote in the first place.

And today, I hate that we all have to act like stupid arguments from blustering fools are worth our time.

On October 14th, a marriage equality debate was held in Maine where the “expert” from the anti-gay side was retired community college instructor and failed 2008 candidate for Congress John Frary. He’s the one in the dopey hat who thinks he’s Garrison Keillor.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chino Blanco had the video on Friday, but I didn’t get a chance to watch it until today. This is part three of seven, so please go over to Chino’s to see the rest. God bless MCLU Executive Director Sheena Bellows and host Paul Mills for attempting to have a reasoned debate around Frary’s community theater grade theatrics.

What bothers me most is that this incident is far from isolated. There’s also new video of a debate at Hofstra University in New York with NOM President Maggie Gallagher changing the subject and making false statements lying about the horrible effect of civil rights while MENY Board President Cathy Marino-Thomas does her best to inject reason into the discourse.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why does our society continue to lend respectability to these idiots? Their arguments are gibberish. I don’t mean that I think their arguments are silly, I mean that they’re silly on their face.

Is it because they give comfort to people afraid to face the world as it is? I suppose it’s easier to be a bigot when you have other bigots around teaching you what to say.

I suspect the reason is that people just don’t care. They’d rather we disappear from the face of the earth and stop interrupting their dinners, so why should we expect them to complain about people who agree with their ultimate solution?

I just… I just hate it so much.

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As usual, following the money has produced some insight into the campaign. Here’s a list of what you need to know for the vote in Maine and the in next battleground state.

• Jeremy Hooper of Good-As-You ran a 13-part examination series on NOM.
  Volume 1: Unhinged billboard campaign
  Volume 2: Oversimplified reduction of pro-gay comments
  Volume 3: Ridiculous Vaclav Havel/Soviet empire comparisons
  Volume 4: NOM board member wants to overthrow pro-gay governments
  Volume 5: NOM’s general counsel = quite extremist
  Volume 6: Heated attack from NOM”s founder, Robert George
  Volume 7: Mid-90s version of Maggie found DOMA too timid
  Volume 8: Brian Brown’s words: Why doesn’t the “yes” campaign say truth-bearing stuff like this?
  Volume 9: Maggie’s highly Catholic take on your “sinful” lives
  Volume 10: Marriage equality = Vietnam?
  Volume 11: Maggie’s unfair reduction of Iowa ruling vs. the actual Iowa ruling
  Volume 12: Maggie unfair take on Maine (detecting a theme here?)
  Volume 13: Gay unions = “grassfire,” per NOM guest star Rick Santorum
• Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight further analyzes donation data, finding that an alarming 83% of SFMM’s funding is from organized and out-of-state funding.
• Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin discovers a(nother) false claim from SFMM’s website that “vast network of wealthy homosexuals” from out-of-state are spending millions in Maine.
• This after BTB’s report NOM, based in New Jersey and Washington, DC, is SFMM’s biggest donor with 58% of total funding.
• In the same post, we find that NOM is refusing to release their financial records, instead challenging Maine campaign finance laws, just as they have in other states.
• Did I mention that NOM is being investigated by the Maine Ethics Commission? Louise at Pam’s House Blend has the story.
• Louise also examines the closing of Catholic churches in Maine, a direct repercussion from the Catholic Church’s $529,666 (so far) investment in SFMM this year.
• Over at The New Republic, Seyward Darby tells us that SFMM has employed the chief strategist of last year’s Prop 8 Campaign in California. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, as they’ve followed the California playbook to the letter.
• Finally, Sara Whitman of Bilerico talks about SFMM’s favorite tactic, Protect the Children fearmongering.

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I dare you not to cry.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We have two weeks left to fight before the people of Maine and Washington vote. Donate to Maine’s No on One campaign here and Washington’s Approve Referendum 71 here.

(transcript for posterity and search engines. I’ve made a few minor adjustments where Mr. Spooner misread; I’m fairly certain they’re correct.)

PHILIP SPOONER, SR: Good morning, committee. My name is Phillip Spooner and I live at [redacted] in Biddeford. I am 86 years old, a lifetime Republican, and an active VFW chaplain. I still serve three hospitals and two nursing homes, and I also served meals on wheels for twenty years. My wife of 54 years, Jenny, died in 1997. Together we had four children, including one gay son. All four of our boys were in the service.

I was born on a potato farm north of Caribou and Perham, where I was raised to believe that all men are created equal, and I’ve never forgotten that. I served in the US Army 1940-1945 in the First Army as a medic and an ambulance driver. I worked with every outfit over there including Patton’s Third Army. I saw action in all five major battles in Europe including the Battle of the Bulge. My unit was awarded Presidential Citations for transporting more patients with fewer accidents than any other ambulance unit in Europe, and I was in the liberation of Paris. After the war, I carried POWs back from Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, and also hauled hundreds of injured Germans back to Germany.

I’m here today because of a conversation I had last year when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, “Do you believe in equality for gay and lesbian people?” I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that; it made no sense to me.

Finally I asked her, “What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?” I have seen so much blood and guts, so much suffering, so much sacrifice. For what? For freedom and equality. These are the values that make America a great nation, one worth dying for.

I give talks to eighth grade teachers about World War II, and I don’t tell them about the horror. Maybe I have to invite them to the ovens at Buchenwald and Dachau. I’ve seen with my own eyes the consequences of caste systems, and it makes some people less than others, or second class.

Never again. We must have equal rights for everyone; it’s what this country was started for. It takes all kinds of people to make a world. It doesn’t make sense that some people who love each other can marry and others can’t, just because of who they are. This is what we fought for in World War II, that idea that we can be different and still be equal.

My wife and I did not raise four sons with the idea that three of them would have a certain set of rights, but our gay child would be left out. We raised them all to be hard-working, proud, and loyal Americans, and they all did good.

I think if two adults who love each other want to get married, they should be able to. Everybody’s supposed to be equal in this country. Let gay people have the right to marry.

Thank you.

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Pat, recognizing the right of all people to marry (as discussed in Loving v. Virginia) will not cause any harm to any straight person’s marriage, and the values of hatred and bigotry are not authentic products of a Jewish or Christian culture.

You’re absolutely right that we don’t want any “hindrance” to our particular lifestyle (assuming by that you mean s-e-x) or our “particular way of having sex”. That was exactly the point when Lawrence v. Texas made gay sex legal just six years ago, and it’s exactly the point of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

By the way, plenty of people in the straight community share our particular way of having sex. Seriously. Check it out. (As if you haven’t already…)

Generally speaking, Pat, civil rights are not decided by majority vote. If they were, interracial marriage would have been illegal until 1991, according to Gallup.

Kristi, I would simply point out that your taking offense doesn’t make bigotry–and that’s what it is, bigotry–legal or right. Honestly, I’m not sure where you get off passing judgment, what with you being a fresh divorcée and all.

[Transcript for posterity and search engines]

PAT ROBERTSON: I don’t really believe homosexuals want to get married; what they want to do is destroy marriage and some of the other things that we have in our society. There’s been an outright campaign against the traditional moral values that have grown up in a Judeo-Christian culture! And they don’t want any–any–hindrance to their particular lifestyle or their particular way of having sex.

That’s what it amounts to, but whether or not this is going to be something that will, you know, change the country, the country has voted overwhelmingly in favor of traditional marriage. They don’t want homosexual marriage. But you find a few states–Maine, Massachusetts, Iowa–who have voted them in through the legislature. Yet when the people have their say, the people say “no way!” Kristie?

KRISTI WATTS: I tell you what, Pat. And it’s important for us to pray, yes, but we also have to work. We have to raise up our voices too. I’m really getting tired of all these different stories, and everyone’s offended at this and offended at that. I tell you what, Christians need to stand up and say, “Listen, I’m offended too!” Don’t get me started!

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This year we’ve celebrated an unprecedented advance of The Homosexual Agenda ^© (that is, equal rights under the Constitution). Five states now recognize our right to civil marriage, four more than just last year. But two of those states are still under attack by ever-funded, never-say-die anti-gay forces that want to end new laws that recognize our rights and equality.

In Maine, the vote on a “People’s Veto” is on November’s ballot. A vote to repeal the law, signed by Governor Balduacci in May, will be held on November 3rd. Here is the most recent campaign ad from Protect Maine Equality.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meanwhile, Washington’s new “Everything But Marriage” law is under attack. Even though this law specifically excludes the word “marriage”, the anti-gay forces that demanded that exclusion still aren’t satisfied. Their vote will be taken, also November 3rd, to strike this new law from the books. Washington Families Standing Together (WFST) recently released this ad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you could probably have guessed, anti-gay forces have used ridiculously unethical tactics to get out the anti-gay vote. They’ve hidden donor names, laundered funds, lied to the general public about the effect of the laws. Maine’s Catholic churches have passed the plate multiple times for a “special offering” during Mass, intimidating parishioners into giving to the anti-gay campaigns. The state of Maine has even agreed to pursue ethics violation claims made against Stand For Marriage Maine/National Organization for Marriage.

So Maine and Washington LGBTs need our help.

I’m asking you to help keep Protect Maine Equality and WFST ads on the air. Donate to Maine’s No on One campaign here and Washington’s Approve Referendum 71 here. Ten bucks each. That’s all I ask.

We have three weeks left in these battles. Let’s make them count.

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