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Above the Hate: Above the Propaganda

By Fannie

The National Organization for Marriage, which seemingly exists only to exalt heterosexual marriage above all other forms of relationships, has initiated a petition, ad campaign, and website called Above the Hate "to say 'Enough!' to the campaign of hate and intimidation being waged against the LDS Church and other supporters of California's Proposition 8." The cited alleged "attacks" against the LDS Church in the wake of Prop 8's passage include:

* Large organized protests designed to disrupt places of worship;
* Public calls to investigate and ?dig up dirt? on Americans of a particular faith who donated to a political cause;
* An outrageous television ad campaign crudely and deliberately designed to incite fear and hatred of a minority religious community.

Now, if in fact there were an actual large, coordinated campaign of "hate and intimidation" being "waged" against any group, even a bigoted religious one, I would oppose it. There are civil ways of dealing with disagreements, after all. Yet, I think the folks in charge of this so-called "Above the Hate" campaign are missing something very important and simple about all this. LGBT rights advocates are not criticizing the LDS Church because its members are Mormon or religious. LGBT rights advocates are criticizing this particular church because it was instrumental in Prop 8's passage, a discriminatory proposition that has hurt many of us deeply. It just so happens that this LDS organizations also happens to be a church and also happens to be of the Mormon variety. It really is that simple.

Unfortunately, this latest "marriage defense" campaign is whipping itself up into a histrionic frenzy and spreading a new over-the-top incarnation of the Orwellian message that it is not gay people who are hated, it is gay people who are the haters. In fact, if you do a quick "Above the Hate" Google Blog search, you'll quickly discover that Christians throughout the blogosphere have latched onto this myth and have nicely incorporated it into their more overall Christian Persecution Complex perspective on life.

Now, because virtually every "marriage defender" has shouted it from the rooftops at every chance they've gotten, we all know that some LGBT rights advocates have committed some less-than-honorable actions in the wake of Proposition 8's passing. I, like most people, condemn illegal and/or violent activities. But, I refuse to condemn lawful, peaceful activities and protesting and I refuse to call it bigotry.

But, when we dissect the National Organization for Marriage's claims a bit further, we quickly see that its claims are extremely problematic. Now, let me be very clear. If you disregard everything else in this article, know this: While there is truth to some of the organization's claims, its claims indict the entire LGBT community. Nowhere does the National Organization for Marriage make it clear that these behaviors are discrete actions of individuals and are not representative of most LGBT persons and gay rights advocates. This omission is silent but deadly. For, in this silence, those who have no interaction with the many upstanding members of the LGBT community deduce that LGBT people and are allied are nothing but hateful religious bigots. That, without a doubt, is the most glaring mistake with respect to this latest "marriage defense" campaign. It distorts rather than it informs.

1. "Large organized protests designed to disrupt places of worship"

The link citing these protests allegedly "designed to disrupt places of worship" is broken, but I quickly found the cited article "supporting" this claim anyway. Not surprisingly, it does not actually support the claim that there were multiple, large, organized protests "designed to disrupt places of worship." Perhaps the flock takes these people's word on things, but many of us are more discriminating. See, the cited article actually describes a protest of about 2,000 people that occurred outside of a Mormon temple in Los Angeles. It was lawful and the protesters were for the most part peaceful. In fact, there were only 2 reports of violence from this protest. One, someone in a nearby apartment building threw eggs at the protesters. Secondly, two people were arrested after a "confrontation" between "the crowd and the occupant of a pickup truck that had a banner supporting Proposition 8."

In denouncing and characterizing constitutionally-protected protesting as anti-religious hatred, National Organization for Marriage is blurring the lines between lawful, moral activities and immoral ones. While this petition letter references (without citing) alleged "vile and indecent" attacks on the LDS Church, it cited only the lawful, peaceful activities of LGBT rights activists outside of the Mormon temple in Los Angeles. Why the trumped-up over-the-top language here? Must life always be so dramatic and sinister?

See, if these people actually sought to understand us, they would know that the point of these protests was to criticize the LDS Church's prominent role in the passage of Prop 8. Criticism is not anti-religious bigotry or "hatred." Seriously. For those who bristle at being called bigots themselves, they sure are quick to the draw when shooting other people with that label.

Also, perhaps due to psychic ability, note how the National Organization for Marriage claims that the protests were "designed to disrupt places of worship" (emphasis added). Nope. Sorry Maggie. It doesn't work like that. It's just not fair, honest, or constructive to intuit other people's motives in such a heated ongoing public debate. Secondly, the LDS Church played a large and vocal role in taking away the rights of LGBT citizens in California. And as such, you better believe that some people will publicly criticize that. Just because the LDS Church is a church, it cannot now back up with its hands in the air and declare criticism to be off-limits "religious bigotry and hatred." People are going to protest. Indeed, we have a right to protest. I mean, here I'm just sort of reminded of a small child who throws stones from the safety of his bedroom window. When other people throw stones back, he implores his mother to get these "bullies" to stop being mean to him. If the LDS Church wants to take a prominent role in the public sphere, it is time for it and its allies to grow up and stop hiding behind mother's skirt. When they're taking away our rights, we're taking off the kid gloves that everyone is supposed to wear when dealing with religious folk.

With respect to the large protest outside of the temple, perhaps some members of the LDS Church were discouraged or "disrupted" from going to temple for a few days. If so, then that was a choice the congregants made. From what I've read, there is no indication that the protesters were violent toward any church attendees. If congregants who donated to Yes on 8 felt "disrupted" perhaps they should use at as an exercise in compassion. For, did the National Organization for Marriage stop to consider that maybe the point was to get people to think about how their church leadership and possibly they themselves have so often "disrupted" the lives of LGBT people inside and outside the Mormon community?

Anyway, it's a pretty good clue that educated, civil, and adult dialogue has taken a nosedive when organized protests and criticism directed at politically-involved churches is immediately labeled "hate, "disruption," and "intimidation." Seriously.

2. "Public calls to investigate and 'dig up dirt' on Americans of a particular faith who donated to a political cause"

In a nutshell, this claim refers to how one blogger at DailyKOs directed people to a list of Yes on 8 donors and urged people to:

"Use any LEGAL tool at your disposal. Use OpenSecrets to see if these donors have contributed to...shall we say...less than honorable causes, or if any one of these big donors has done something otherwise egregious. If so, we have a legitimate case to make the Yes on 8 campaign return their contributions, or face a bunch of negative publicity." [emphasis in original]

First off, much has been made over the fact that some people opposed to Prop 8 are now displaying the names of some of those who supported Prop 8. What these people rarely fail to acknowledge is that this information is public knowledge anyway! Public donor rolls are public. Get a grip, people.

Secondly, I doubt the National Organization for Marriage thought it was wrong when the Yes on 8 campaign threatened to create and publish a list of No on 8 supporters if these supporters did not also decide to contribute to Yes on 8. Puh-lease. Had Prop 8 not passed, I have absolutely zero doubt that the Yes on 8 campaign would be displaying dishonor rolls of their own. Anyway, trying to morally equate these lists with "blacklists" from the McCarthy era, as some "marriage defenders" are now doing, is embarrassingly exaggerated. But, of course, hyperbole is just one of the things this "persecuted" side does best.

Third, with respect to the "digging up dirt" piece, it's very important here to be very clear about something that this petition obfuscates. These people are not being targeted because they practice a "particular faith," they are being targeted because they donated at least $1,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. Yet, the National Organization for Marriage is acting as though this activity is occurring in a vacuum, as though LGBT advocates just woke up one day and randomly decided to start "digging up dirt" on Mormons.

Surely their collective memories are not so short that they've already forgotten that whole Proposition 8 thing.

Apparently so, for notice how the petition letter also refers to LGBT rights advocates as "powerful, well-funded political forces." Now that's an interesting pot-meet-kettle claim, isn't it, folks? Let's take a moment to reflect upon the enormous amounts of money that the Yes on 8 side raised ($35.8 million compared to the No side's $37.6 million) during this most expensive ballot initiative of the 2008 elections. In fact, it's precisely because the LDS Church proved itself to be a "powerful, well-funded political force" during the Yes on 8 campaign that it is being protested against.

3. "Outrageous television ad campaigns crudely and deliberately designed to incite fear and hatred of a minority religious community"

I emphasized that last bit.

See, it was wise of these people to qualify their statement in that way. It is clear to anyone who paid attention to the various ads surrounding Prop 8 that the Yes on 8 side does, actually, support "outrageous television ad campaigns crudely and deliberately designed to incite fear and hatred" of some people. Namely, the gay ones.

To refresh those (selective) memories of the Yes on 8 crowd, let's take a G-A-Y stroll through some video archives of some of the ad campaigns that compared defeating gays to defeating Hitler, claimed that children would be homosexually indoctrinated in the schools if Prop 8 passed, implying that it would be horrible if kids learned about the mere existence of gay couples or homosexuality in school.

Reading through the letter again, I can't help but to think of how myopic this petition is. These people are viewing life through a lens of imagined religious persecution. No one is denying Mormons the right to practice their religion or to believe in whatever they want. What many of us are criticizing is the policy position this church has chosen to publicly take with respect to marriage equality. And so while the National Organization for Marriage waves this banner of tolerance of other people's religious choices, what they miss is that they are profoundly intolerant of some people's inherent identities and of families that do not conform to what they believe families should look like.

What would really be encouraging is if this organization were to create a campaign that was "Above the Hate" and intolerance of gay people that far too many in the "marriage defense" movement display. Seriously, if I saw public denouncements of the Peter LaBarberas, the Phelps clan, the Camerons, the Barbers, and all of those "brave" anonymous commenters who call gay people faggots online, then I would take this latest "no on hate" sentiment a bit more seriously. If I wanted to be taken seriously as a "marriage defender" by the opposition I'd sure as heck be distancing myself from the anti-gay teeth-gnashings of some of those folks. As it stands, this latest campaign looks like more of the same old political propaganda at play. And worse, it's unlikely to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with them and it's likely to further anger those who do not.

These misguided "marriage defenders" are wrongly seeing "religious hatred and bigotry" in every nook and cranny of the LGBT rights movement post-Prop 8 when it, for the most part, just doesn't exist. Criticism is not hatred. And disagreeing with certain religious teachings is not bigotry.

We will continue protesting as long as people seek to deny us our rights. Our criticism will be directed at individuals, churches, or any other organization that some mistakenly believe to be "off-limits" to any sort of critique. For, to not criticize certain teachings would be to allow ourselves to be abused and let the words and actions of those who abuse go unchallenged. Let us not forget that many of these Christian folk abuse us with the approval of their own consciences. And that, we know, is the most dangerous form of oppression of all.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on November 25, 2008 (boomark / email).