Former NOM chair Maggie Gallagher heading up new ‘Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance’
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The new leadership change at the National Organization for Marriage announced Thursday has provoked curiosity and speculation as to why Maggie Gallagher was swapped out for constitutional lawyer John Eastman to serve as NOM’s board chairman.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that Gallagher, “who often testified at hearings and engaged in public debates on behalf of NOM, became a frequent target of wrath from the gay-rights movement.” In a statement, NOM’s co-founder said she was stepping down to complete her Oxford University Press book “Debating Same-Sex Marriage” but that she would remain on NOM’s board and “continue to work on specific projects for NOM.”
A day after the announcement, NOM introduced a brand-new project, the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance (MarriageADA), for which Gallagher is listed as being among primary staff, along with Damian Goddard.
MarriageADA is described as a ”supportive community for those who have been threatened for standing for marriage, to nip the climate of fear being created in the bud, to expose for fair-minded Americans on both sides of the debate the threats being made, to conduct high-quality qualitative and quantitative research documenting the extent of the harm, to develop legislative and community proposal to protect Americans right to engage in the core civil rights: to organize, to vote, to speak, to donate, and to write for marriage.”
It is a (tax-deductible) nonprofit financed by the NOM’s 501(c)3 arm, the NOM Institute.
The first project Marriage ADA is engaged in is in North Carolina, one of the latest states to introduce a ballot proposal to amend its constitution to restrict marriage to straight couples. MarriageADA is is representing author Frank Turek, who has written three books about religion, public policy and same-sex marriage. The latter — “Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone” – is the subject of a consumer complaint MarriageADA has filed against Bank of America in North Carolina. In a video, Turek claims he lost his leadership-training contract with Cisco and Bank of America because of the book.
“We want to create an America in which people do not fear losing their jobs, or any other threats to their person or property, because they do not agree with gay marriage,” Gallagher said about the new project. “I believe both sides in this debate deserve basic respect for exercising their core civil rights as Americans to engage in an important public debate.”
MarriageADA is an extension of NOM’s never-ending battle to keep its donors secret.
From the MarriageADA website:
The Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance is dedicated to one, simple, and profound idea: No American should be afraid to exercise core civil rights: to speak, to donate, to organize, to sign petitions, or to vote for marriage as the union of husband and wife.
[...]
If you have been threatened, harassed, or made to feel afraid because you believe in the great, foundational truth of Genesis –we are born male and female and called to come together in love to give children mothers and fathers—Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance is here to help you: you are not alone.
In an email newsletter to supporters, sent Thursday night, NOM President Brian Brown explained the strategy behind the new project:
NOM’s Marriage Anti-Defamation League is fighting back! We’ve reached out, in the first instance, to citizens of North Carolina in the Charlotte area, where Bank of America is headquartered, and let me tell you, in the hundreds and the thousands they have responded: Are you outraged that Frank Turek was fired? Yes!
Will you call the company to complain? More than than 1,400 North Carolinians, out of the 9,000 we called, agreed to phone in their dismay. 37 percent of them are customers of Bank of America.
(I have to pause to give a shout out to the American Family Association, which has also taken up Frank Turek’s cause, God bless them!)
NOM’s Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance is not a one-shot. It’s the beginning of something truly big. We need to come together in love to support each other in the threats to our jobs, our families, and our rights that are now clearly laid down by gay-marriage advocates.
In the meantime, Eastman, law professor at Chapman University School of Law, founding director of the conservative Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and contributor for the Claremont Institute, is taking over Gallagher’s post.
In a commprehensive primer on Eastman, Media Matters points out that Gallagher’s anti-gay rhetoric — calling homosexuality “an unfortunate thing” which represents “at a minimum, a sexual dysfunction” and accusing gay men and lesbians of “committing several different kinds of sins” — has been matched by Eastman’s, who has called homosexuality one of ““two new indicia of barbarism” in the 20th Century.
The American Independent’s sister site The Colorado Independent explains Eastman has defended the Boy Scouts’ discrimination against gay and lesbian troop leaders and has been a strong opponent to same-sex parents adopting children.
Last month, Eastman participated in a blog symposium sponsored by the Supreme Court of the United States blog (SCOTUSblog) on the subject of same-sex marriage. In his entry, Eastman defended the ”constitutionality of traditional marriage,” writing: “It is no denigration of one class or the other to acknowledge the biological truth that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to at least one of the purposes of marriage, namely, procreation.”
Initially, NOM had announced Gallagher would be participating in the symposium, but she never did. In an email, SCOTUSblog told TAI that Gallagher decided not to submit an entry due to “time limitations.”
Watch MarriageADA video on Frank Turek:
So the mad cow disease has a new hate group. BTW NOM is on hte hate group list by the splc.
Surely the new group will suffer the same fate.
BTW re the vatican – just go to the following website and any doubts about what it is should be ended.
These people are SICK, justifying bigotry and discrimination by claiming they’re “protecting marriage.” WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! Call it what it is: discrimination. You think the KKK and neo-Nazis give a damn if we call what they believe discrimination or not? Just be honest with yourselves and quit the charades.
More like National Organization to Keep Gays Down. Is it just a strange coincidence that Gallagher is ugly as fuck and probably could never get a man in a million years? Is SHE even married? Who would wanna be with such an ugly, hateful bitch? Ugh… I shudder to think. Maybe she’s JEALOUS, deep down, of gays getting married because that’s an EVEN HIGHER number of people who are tying the knot and/or getting laid, and she gets nothing?
What is this “defending” marriage crap? Since when does MARRIAGE need defending?? NO ONE IS ATTACKING IT! We’re just INCREASING the amount of people who are eligible for it. Straights can marry still and have families. Besides, who made you a-holes the “guardians of society”?? Get a life and stop caring about other people’s personal lives. It’s none of your business! IT DOESN’T AFFECT YOU if gays are getting married. It doesn’t affect your kids.
How ARROGANT is it for a group of moralists to tell others what they can and can’t do consensually in their private lives because “it may harm society” or “it could hurt children and confuse them” or whatever. Who ARE YOU to say what’s “harmful” to society regarding LBGT issues and ending discrimination? How do YOU know? Isn’t this a PLURALIST society with all types of groups that are supposed to leave each other alone and not impose? These bigots just wanna keep their monopoly on marriage (straight) for as long as possible, just like Rockefeller didn’t want to break up Standard Oil.
And I’m so tired of the catchphrase “Traditional marriage” or “traditional values.” It assumes that TRADITION alone, by its very nature of being done for ages and rarely questioned, is inherently “a good thing” or “natural.” WHAT NONSENSE! Slavery was an age-old tradition in America that, after 100s of years, we finally got rid of in the late 1800s after we came to our senses.
WHO GIVES A DAMN ABOUT TRADITION?? I’m concerned with WHAT WORKS and WHAT MAKES SENSE. If it doesn’t fit either of those 2 criteria, it should be thrown out. To hell with “traditional values” if they’re absurd. If they’re irrational, why cling to them? Tradition for tradition’s sake is about as frivolous as not pulling out of Iraq because of “honor.” Tradition is just a fancy word made up to justify age-old things that can’t otherwise be justified on their own merits; the people who came up with terms like “tradition” were obviously AFRAID that those age-old practices could not otherwise stand scrutiny and would be done away with since there was no other convincing rationale than “It’s been done this way for ages. We’re used to it.”
I’m for RATIONALISM and thinking for yourself, not petty “traditional values” that have no place in 2011 America. Do what’s right, not what’s traditional.
eh isso ai, mais uma vez eercevsu o que quis, teve o que nao quis, se evangelicos sao contra o casamento gay, entao que fiquem com isso dentro de suas igrejas e em suas casas, pq pro resto da sociedade a opiniao de voces parece nao ter muita importancia, ou pior, recebem a punicao devida, pela tal chamada liberdade de expressao, achei que a demissao foi pouco, deveria prestar servicos pra alguma ONG GLBT
UZkHEk kjufksvuviiv
NOM’S CHILD RAPE PROBLEM
by Scott Rose
The National Organization for Marriage is jumping on the bandwagon, demanding Google alter search results, such that the link to Rick Santorum’s campaign site should appear above results containing his nickname.
We must not forget, or ever allow NOM to forget, that Dan Savage redefined Santorum in response to Santorum’s 2003 interview with Associated Press reporter Lara Jakes Jordan. The first topic of that interview was the Catholic Church’s crimes of enabling child rapists. Santorum dismissed the subject by duplicitously alleging that all instances of priest-on-child sexual violence had been matters of consensual relations between adult and teenaged homosexuals.
Santorum was parroting a line the Church used at the time and often attempts to use still. That line of propaganda denies that 1) certain priests raped pre-pubescent children including females; 2) certain nuns raped children, including males; 3) it is not appropriate for Rick Santorum to allege that teenage rape victims were having consensual relations with the priests that raped them; 4) statutory rape laws do not apply to heterosexuals exclusively, and; 5) many courts of law have found that the Catholic Church is liable to its child rape victims.
What this all amounts to is that the National Organization for Marriage is actively giving political support to somebody who seeks 1) to shield child rapists from prosecution, and 2) to prevent rape victims from seeing justice done. That Santorum concurrently seeks to demonize gay people is secondary to the issue of his seeking to enable and to empower child rapists. There have, for example also been female rape victims of Catholic priests.
The Church deceptively claimed to have enacted adequate reforms, yet additional Church child rape crimes keep coming to light. A March 4, 2011 New York Times headline read “In Philadelphia, Fears That Abusive Priests Are Still Active.” In an indictment involving the Philadelphia Archdiocese, 37 of the priests named can not be prosecuted because of the statutes of limitations.
Maggie Gallagher’s close associate in political gay-bashing, Archbishop Timothy Dolan when in Wisconsin successfully fought against proposed legislation that would have lifted the statutes of limitations on the prosecution of child rape cases there. After scoring those successes, Dolan was promoted to New York and made President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is notorious for fighting against similar proposed legislation in New York.
Apparently, the National Organization for Marriage sees nothing wrong with shielding child rapists from prosecution. In vain does one look for statements from NOM demanding that Archbishop Dolan politic in favor of the lifting of statutes of limitations on the prosecution of child rape. This is a big money matter to the Catholic Church and it will fight tooth and nail to keep those statutes of limitations in place.
It also is a signal indicator of the National Organization for Marriage’s utter depravity. Though the anti-gay hate group is adamant that each child has a “right” to two opposite sex, heterosexual parents, (and that therefore, gay Americans must be denied the civil right to marry), it apparently believes that the complaints of the Catholic Church’s child rape victims can all be written off with the fraudulent assertion that all of those child rapes were “consensual.” NOM certainly is seeking to protect and to defend Rick Santorum against the negative nickname he was assigned in part because of his obnoxious statements about the Catholic Church’s child rape crimes. If this is how NOM promotes child welfare, then nobody should allow their children near any NOM board member, employee or supporter.
All decent Americans must relentlessly and uncompromisingly demand to know whether the National Organization for Marriage supports or opposes the lifting of the statutes of limitations for the prosecution of child rape. And we must demand that, until we have a yes or no response from NOM. Then, if NOM alleges it favors lifting the statutes, we must demand that it demand of Archbishop Dolan that he support the political effort to get the statutes lifted. If Dolan can send a menacing letter to President Obama over marriage equality, warning of a “national conflict,” then he can get involved politically with lifting the statutes of limitations on child rape or face a national conflict over them. NOM does not hesitate to coordinate politically with the Catholic Church against marriage equality, it must here be noted. On what moral grounds would NOM refuse to coordinate with the Church towards lifting the statutes of limitations for child rape prosecutions? NOM does allege an interest in child welfare and the family. It therefore is justified for us to inquire whether NOM acknowledges the overwhelming and negative impact of Church child rape on the victims’ families.
Alternately, if NOM says it does not support the lifting of those statutes of limitations, then we must let the public know that the National Organization for Marriage abets the Catholic Church and Rick Santorum in shielding suspected child rapists from prosecution and in otherwise enabling child rapists.
These people are too far south of sanity to be taken seriously.
Bring back the lions.
[...] is named as a primary staff member (along with former NOM chairman Maggie Gallagher) of a NOM initiative called MarriageADA. The goal [...]
