NOM Spokesperson: Telling people they’re unworthy of peace, love, rights not as safe as it used to be
Because bigots are the real victims in all this
you’ll have to forgive me if I, upon reading quips like the following that the National Organization For Marriage’s cofounder included in her latest “Culture War Victory Fund” piece, can’t help but choke on the galling assertion that America’s anti-equality crowd is the one facing dangerous “toxic” labeling:
Hearing only one side, people begin to believe there’s something wrong with their views opposing gay marriage, that they are alone.
Every time a Carrie Prejean is vilified for simply opposing gay marriage, ordinary Americans learn: it’s dangerous to speak out. Their common sense views are now ‘toxic.’
—Maggie Gallagher
Dangerous? Carrie Prejean got a book deal within months of her brouhaha. She’s now legally married to a pro football player. I’m thinking if she ever even saw her gladly-solicited “scandal” as a storm, then she certainly feels that she weathered it, and with a higher profile than she ever would’ve under any normal Miss USA runner-up scenario. And if she truly wants to get her heartfelt beliefs out to the public, then Carrie is surely glad for the considerable attention that she received.LGBT people, on the other hand? We, along with our supporters, are told on a daily basis that we are toxic—personally, politically, professionally, and more. And ours is not a “fifteen minutes of fame” situation from which we can withdraw, moving back into the warm confines of our supportive circles. This is life for us. When we are deemed toxic by citizens marching in the streets on our wedding days or voting against us at any one of the polls, we have real world pitfalls attached to that “toxicity” that go far beyond anything a TMZ camera crew might say to us.
And Maggie Gallagher? She has, quite sadly, been at the forefront of all of this ill feeling, stirring it all up for the sake of her own political profile and personal profit!
Maggie adores the victim role—that is not news. But as she jumps from Point A to Point Me in her attempts to overlook the truly maligned population that suffers so fully within this far-right-instigated “culture war” context, I can’t help but believe that people are really starting to see right through the charade. The truth is that there is one “side” that’s living and loving in the way that they should, while there is another set of forces that’s simply unwilling to accept that certain kinds of humans have grown and matured in the way they were meant to have developed. Taking the freedoms associated with LGBT people and positioning them as toxic is the through line that binds all anti-equality advocacy, regardless of whether that positioning is explicit (as with groups like the American Family Association) or more willfully masked behind pragmatic politics (like most of NOM’s state ads whenever an election nears). As our world moves forward in its one decided, inevitable direction, I have to believe that folks are going to question someone who wants to lead the fight that produces so many tears while at the very same time claiming she is the one cowering in a corner.