HRC: "Summer for Marriage" Tour is a Set-Up

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has been conducting a big tour to promote their belief that only heterosexual couples should be allowed to marry. Their plan was to visit twenty-three cities through the summer, traveling in a big, brightly painted bus. They go to a city and set up on a central plaza and give speeches and hold signs, then go to the next city and do it again.

Several web sites have been following the tour - I have been keeping up through coverage at Box Turtle Bulletin but there are others, too. At each city, observers attend the rallies and count the numbers of NOM supporters, and the number of counterdemonstrators. Typical attendance at Summer for Marriage rallies has been two to three dozen NOM supporters and one or two hundred protesters. Their turnout is pathetic, and after each stop they publish press releases exaggerating the numbers, but still, with all the publicity this tour has had, with all the money invested in it, you wonder how they keep going from one humiliating stop to the next.

The Human Rights Campaign has issued a press release, I think they've figured it out.

Washington – The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today challenged the National Organization for Marriage's so-called "Summer for Marriage" bus tour, saying it's nothing more than legal and rhetorical posturing in its campaign to keep its donor base secret.

“The bus tour is a total sham, plain and simple,” said Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president of communications. “NOM’s highly-touted bus tour is less about so-called ‘traditional marriage’ and more about creating an elaborate and cynical stunt. NOM rolled out a summer of nationwide events in order to draw lawful protesters, all so that NOM and its allies can pepper ongoing lawsuits challenging public disclosure laws with made-up stories of harassment. This unprecedented victimization crusade is the lowest denominator of political activism, and it won’t fly.”

In events in seven states, NOM has routinely played to crowds reportedly as small as two dozen people including NOM staff members. The organization’s public statements on the bus tour have barely mentioned the content of the programs or the substance of its anti-LGBT message, instead focusing attention on much larger counter-protests that NOM has attacked as intimidation and harassment. NOM issued a press release last Friday saying that LGBT supporters have “approached and threatened children,” engaged in “bullying tactics” and committed acts of harassment. However, NOM’s uncorroborated claims belie legitimate local media reports demonstrating that pro-equality supporters, which have vastly outnumbered NOM’s faithful, have been civil. NOM has yet to document any illegal activity or actual harassment, despite the presence of law enforcement at all the events.

NOM’s efforts to trump up false claims of harassment are part of a radical nationwide plan to evade long-established public disclosure laws and to hide their political activities from legitimate scrutiny and accountability. In doing so, NOM has falsely alleged that their donors have been harassed and intimidated across the country to justify why it shouldn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else. These tactics have prompted a state ethics investigation in Maine and recent court defeats across the country.

In Washington state, NOM’s lawyers fought the state’s public records law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – and lost last month. While rejecting their request to shield petition signatures to an anti-LGBT equality measure on the state ballot, the Supreme Court did allow for re-evaluation in cases of clear intimidation or harassment. A federal district court will soon decide if NOM’s unproven allegations of harassment justify hiding the petition signatures that qualified Referendum 71, the unsuccessful effort to overturn Washington’s domestic partnerships law. A federal court in California similarly rejected NOM’s efforts to hide its donors and debunked its claims of harassment and intimidation in the wake of Proposition 8.

Sainz concludes: “The bread crumbs of their deceit are clear. Let’s add it all up: NOM and its allies are making a last-ditch legal stand in Washington and Maine that they should be specially entitled to hide their political activities, and they’re saying that harassment and intimidation should provide them this cover. At the same time, Brian Brown schedules a series of virtually unattended weekday afternoon events hoping for counter-protests that they can then use as evidence of harassment and intimidation. Why else would NOM execute such half-hearted non-events and then completely subjugate its so-called ‘pro-marriage’ message in favor of devoting its energies almost exclusively to condemning lawful protesters?” HRC to National Organization for Marriage: Your Summer Bus Tour is a Sham

We have seen several anti-gay campaigns recently where people seem to believe they should be able to keep their signatures on a petition calling for a referendum, or their donations to a political campaign, secret. So far the courts are not ruling in their favor. In America, generally we have the right to express an opinion and to participate in public political processes, but we have no right to wear hoods over our faces when we do it. People who want to add their name to a hateful campaign or contribute money to it are free to do so, and the public is entitled to know who is behind a campaign that will be voted on.

Their argument has been that they are afraid The Gays will attack them if they find out they have participated in a hate campaign against them. Because you know how scary gay people are. HRC is suggesting that the whole point of this tour is to provoke counterdemonstrators into shoving somebody or yelling at somebody, so they can get it on videotape and exaggerate it in press releases -- which they are already doing on their web site.

These people spend their days trying to figure out ways to make sure that gay couples who love one another are not allowed to marry, to promise themselves to a lifetime together and a home and a family. Their tour is a failure on the face of it, no one in any city they visit supports them, and yet they keep plugging along, videotaping every angry face of someone who is fighting for their right to marry the one they love.

It goes without saying, if you attend one of these travesties, stay cool. Chant, wave signs, don't be afraid to express yourself but remember how it is going to be used. Don't pump fists or yell in someone's face or use foul language. It is important to show support for marriage equality, and important not to let these losers score any cheap points.