The leading national organization opposing same-sex marriage has sought to split the Democratic Party base by pitting African-Americans and Hispanics against gay-rights groups, according to confidential strategy memos made public by court officials in Maine.
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies,” says one of the memos. It also suggests “interrupting” the process of cultural assimilation for Hispanics in hopes of curtailing support for same-sex marriage.
The documents, dating from 2009, were written by the National Organization for Marriage and had been kept from the public until Monday, when they were unsealed by court officials in Maine.
They were part of a two-pronged legal challenge of Maine’s financial disclosure laws. Still unresolved is whether the NOM will have to release the names of donors to its successful 2009 campaign to ban same-sex marriage in Maine.
The Human Rights Campaign, a major gay-rights organization, first circulated the documents Monday night, and its president, Joe Solmonese, assailed the strategies that they detailed.
“With the veil lifted, Americans everywhere can now see the ugly politics that the National Organization for Marriage traffics in every day,” Solmonese said. “While loving gay and lesbian couples seek to make lifelong commitments, NOM plays racial politics, tries to hide donors and makes up lies about people of faith.”
Through the Human Rights Campaign, veteran civil rights leader Julian Bond also condemned the NOM strategy.
“NOM’s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination,” said the statement from Bond, a former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Pitting bigotry’s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together.”
NOM’s president, Brian Brown, was unapologetic, issuing a brief statement hailing his organization’s collaboration with other black and Hispanic leaders, including Bishop Harry Jackson, a Maryland church pastor, and New York state Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr.
“Gay marriage advocates have attempted to portray same-sex marriage as a civil right, but the voices of these and many other leaders have provided powerful witness that this claim is patently false,” Brown said.
“Gay marriage is not a civil right, and we will continue to point this out in written materials such as those released in Maine,” Brown added. “We proudly bring together people of different races, creeds and colors to fight for our most fundamental institution: marriage.”
