Thursday, June 21, 2012

The NOM-GOP Alliance to Scapegoat and Denigrate Gays

As I've noted before, the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") claims that its agenda is purely to "protect marriage."  That's a lie, of course, and NOM has shown itself only too happy to dredge up bogus data compiled by Paul Cameron and other thoroughly discredited faux experts so loved by Christianist extremists.  The behind the scenes pairing of NOM supporters with the new and bogus study on gay parenting is no coincidence.  Nor is it a coincidence that NOM has teamed up with the Republican Party or that Mitt Romney has signed NOM's anti-gay pledge.  That same pledge that stated initially that black children had been better off under slavery than under the Obama presidency.  Why the teaming up of the two forces?  An article in The New Civil Rights Movement does some analysis and it boils down to scapegoating gays and duping the ignorant into voting for Republicans even though it is against the voters' best interest.  Here are some highlights:

The Republicans’ ProblemImagine you are Mitt Romney, running as a Republican for president.  Your net worth is about $250 million. The people most eager to see you elected are billionaires — for example, the Koch brothers. The voters know you are getting tax deductions for your wife’s dressage horses. And you’re on record, promising to lower your own taxes and those of the Koch brothers, while raising taxes on the middle class.  How in the world will you get middle class voters to support you?

Scapegoating a MinorityScapegoating a minority is one of the oldest dirty tricks in the political books. Ignorance-fueled hatred is a goldmine for ruling-class people looking to gain an additional power advantage.  You distract the lower classes’ attention from the fact that your bad economic policies are unjustly disadvantaging them, by portraying the hated minority as a mortal threat to them and the society.

Why Demonizing Gays is so Effective PoliticallyGiven an ignorant enough block of people, one can have success by telling them that a hated minority is a danger to the nation, and is out to get their children.  Notoriously, for example, the Blood Libel held that Jews stole Christian babies to use their blood to make matzo. It mattered not, that blood is not a matzo ingredient; lies give life to anti-minority demonization campaigns.NOM’s endless demonization of homosexuals is a tissue of lies.

An Astonishing CoincidenceThe so-called National Organization for Marriage repeats and repeats that same-sex marriage will spell doom for civilization.  And, the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted NOM’s enthusiasm for demonizing gays by fraudulently conflating homosexuals with pedophiles.  Something the Catholic Church has done, with an enthusiasm equal to NOM’s.

NOM has a great deal in common with the Catholic Church, which is a determined NOM collaborator. The Church conflates homosexuals with pedophiles, and five former U.S. ambassadors to the Holy See endorsed Romney on the same day. What a coincidence, then, that the Republican party shields the Church from proposed legislation to lift the statutes of limitations for prosecution of child rape.

Notice carefully; where NOM is very aggressively busy, attempting to get religious African-Americans to vote for Romney — mainly on the basis that “same-sex marriage is an insult to us and to God” — its greatest successes will most likely be among rural religious anti-gay African-Americans. That is to say, NOM is most likely to have election year success with the populations least likely to benefit economically from a Romney administration. That is why Romney considers NOM a key ally.

NOM’s and Regnerus’s Deceitfulness Related to the StudyIn his published study, Regnerus states forthrightly that his aim was to compare children of married heterosexual couples with “young adults who grew up with a lesbian mother or gay father.”

Buried in Regnerus’s write-up of his study — which covered present-day young adults who were children up through the 1990s — is an admission that the majority of those among his survey responders who said 1) that one of their parents had had a “romantic relationships” with a same sex partner, had 2) been born to a mixed-sexual-orientation couple, whose gay or lesbian member eventually faced down the sham marriage, and came out as gay.

What is Regnerus’s excuse for not including any planned gay families?   .  .  .  .  Regnerus alleges that it would be “too difficult” to find actual children raised by gay parents; the truth is, had he worked with a company that operates differently from Knowledge Networks, he would have been able to find an adequate number of children of gay parents. In particular, had Regnerus wished to be honest and accurate about a gay parent survey — instead of rushing his study to completion for Republican political purposes in an election year — he would have opted for the slower route of finding actual children raised mainly by gay parents.

It’s a fact; NOM’s Robert George, who commissioned the study, needed to have it completed, with negative implications against gays, in time for use in the 2012 elections.

Although Regnerus studied people from different class levels — that is to say, people with dramatically different levels of access to money — his observations written and spoken about the differences in child outcomes are focused on the parents’ sexual orientation, the topic assigned him by NOM’s Robert George; not a word is said about how the parents’ financial situation impacted child outcomes.  


Having taken $785,000 of Republican political money from George, Regnerus was not going to produce an analysis that George and the Republicans could not use to their advantage in the 2012 elections. When Regnerus denies that he produced political propaganda made to order on a cash commission, one must assume he is lying.

No matter what nuance exists in other parts of Regnerus’s description of his study, his bottom line result for public consumption is that 1) whereas previous studies of gay parents showed that gay parents were not more harmful to children than heterosexual parents, they were all flawed. I have come to the rescue by 2) scientifically demonstrating that homosexual parents are a danger to children.  Exactly what Dr. Robert George ordered!

Put the Blame Where the Blame Really BelongsThere should be no discussion about the “results” of the NOM-Regnerus study that does not insist on acknowledging that the study above all is Republican party propaganda being used in an election year to pin the blame for Republican-led devastation of the middle classes fraudulently onto homosexual parents.

Emphasis must be placed on the fact that NOM funded this study for Republican advantage in an election year, and that NOM and Regnerus are demonizing gay parents with no regard for how the additional stigmatization inflicts harm on innocent gay people and the children they are raising.
It's amazing how the part that claims to be the champion of religion and morality is in fact the one most devoid of morality and decency.  Its "godly Christian" supporters are likewise morally bankrupt despite their self-righteousness and self-congratulatory claims.

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