It's not like we didn't think this was happening, but, wow, it's really ugly to see it in writing. As John notes on the main AMERICAblog home page, the religious right wanted to fan a race war, and they admitted it in writing. Ben Smith at Buzzfeed calls the documents "explosive".
Earlier tonight, Alvin McEwen tipped me off about some court documents that revealed NOM's strategy. It's ugly. From Alvin:
The National Organization for Marriage's unsuccessful fight to skirt Maine's financial disclosure laws just backfired majorly on the group by revealing a distasteful part of its game plan to stop marriage equality.Here's the key passage about gays and blacks (and there's also a strategy for Latinos):
According to a court document that was uploaded online, NOM specifically worked to drive a wedge between the black and gay community on the subject of marriage equality
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...They mean hostility between African-Americans and white gays.
The full document is below. (John links to a second confidential NOM document that is similar to this one, but also includes the "fanning the hostility" phrase. There seem to be at least three different documents.)
Jeremy Hooper and HRC's NOM Exposed are on top of this, too.
And, as for NOM and Latinos, read the post from Dr. Gary Segura, who runs Latino Decisions polling firm -- and was an expert witness in the Prop. 8 case and several DOMA cases. He noted:
For starters, Latinos are far more liberal on marriage equality than stereotypes might suggest.This has the potential to be a very big story. Ben Smith at BuzzFeed has already picked up the story.
Nom Depo Exhibit 28
