Are Iowa Values NOM's Values?

Iowa's motto has always been, "Our liberties we prize, our rights we will maintain!"  Now, does that seem like something that NOM would endorse?  Yet, on the heals of an unfortunately successful campaign to oust three of our Supreme Court justices based on only religious animus (and a misunderstanding of the Retention process!) directed at their 2009 decision to void the anti-Gay discriminatory marriage law in our state, NOM will be driving through Iowa on another bus-tour called the Iowa Values Voter Bus Tour.  It is scheduled to kick off in Des Moines next Monday, 8 August and will be hitting 22 different towns and cities (mostly very conservative) in the subsequent 4 days -- this tour will culminate in Ames during the Iowa straw poll event.  However, according to the Des Moines Register (linked) the tour is scheduled yo kick off on Tuesday rather than the banner of their e-mail which says "Monday 8 August", rather than "Tuesday 9 August".  Here is their schedule; one can only imagine what fear-mongering Maggie and Brian has in store...  Will they allow local preachers to insist that we are worthy of death as they did during their Bronx anti-Gay hate-rally?  At any rate, NOM doesn't appear too keen on the fact that Iowa has the strongest Equal Protections Claus in the Nation, one that Maggie Gallagher insists can (must?) only protect race and religion, because she has gone on the record as insisting that its impossible to discriminate against us.  Brian Browne, the group's President, has even gone on record declaring that he and his group wants the ability to discriminate against Gays and Lesbians in the public sphere in terms of housing, employment, and goods and services so long as they are "free" to invoke their Christian religion as a legal defense!  One must ask, then, why NOM and Christians want special rights that no other religion has?!

• TUESDAY, AUGUST 9TH
  
  
  • 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM: Des Moines
    Iowa State Capitol, West Capitol Terrace, 400 Finkbine Drive
  • 12:00 PM – 12:30 PM: Oskaloosa
    City Square Park, 150 High Avenue East
  • 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM: Washington
    Central Park, 190 North Marion Avenue
  • 3:45 PM – 4:15 PM: Muscatine
    Riverside Park, Harbor Drive
  • 5:15 PM – 5:45 PM: Davenport
    Lafayette Park, 700 West 4th Street
  • 7:00 PM – 7:30 PM: Iowa City
    Culver’s of Coralville, 2591 Heartland Place, Coralville
• WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10TH
  
  
  • 8:30 – 9:00 AM: Cedar Rapids
    Cedar Rapids Marriott, 1200 Collins Road NE
  • 10:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Dubuque
    Washington Park, 351 W 6th Street
  • 12:45 PM – 1:15 PM: Waterloo
    Lincoln Park, 451 E 4th Street
  • 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Mason City
    Central Park, 75 1st Street NW
  • 5:45 PM – 6:15 PM: Dickinson County
    TBA
• THURSDAY, AUGUST 11TH
  
  
  • 8:30 – 9:00 AM: Sioux City
    Holiday Inn Express Sioux Center, 100 Saint Andrews Way
  • 9:30 AM – 10:00 AM: Le Mars
    Bob’s Drive Inn, Highway 75 South
  • 10:45 AM – 11:15 AM: Sioux City
    Sergeant Floyd Monument, 2701 S Lewis Blvd/Old US Highway 75
  • 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM: Council Bluffs
    Bayliss Park, 159 South 6th Street
  • 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM: Atlantic
    Atlantic City Park, 51 W 6th Street
• FRIDAY, AUGUST 12TH
  
  
  • 10:00 AM – 10:30 AM: Webster City
    Wilson Brewer Park, 280 Ohio Street
  • 11:15 AM – 11:45 AM: Fort Dodge
    City Square Park, 120 N 5th Street
  • 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM: Carroll
    Carroll County Courthouse, 595 Court Street
  • 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM: Boone
    Pizza Ranch, 1703 South Story Street
  • 5:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Marshalltown
    Susie Sower Park, 60 N 2nd Avenue

Ruth and the Handmaid's Tail!

In 1985 Margaret Atwood published a brilliant dyostopian-era novel called The Handmaid's Tale which was later turned into a film (in 1990) and an opera which premiered in 2000.  (Indeed, it would make a brilliant musical for the Broadway stage!)  The plot revolves around a future Theocratic society in which human fertility has declined to the point that any woman still capable of conceiving is compelled by law to do so for the sake of preserving the species in a monastic life; they are the featured public entertainment when they bring a new life into the world, and they can be purchased to conceive an heir by the wealthy and the powerful.  Fornication - that is, consensual intercourse with any man other than he who has purchased a Handmaid - is punishable by hanging!

This novel presents a reality - albeit fictitious....for now! - that may come to pass through means that are all too easy to achieve!  A reality that, sadly, the anti-Gay Ruth Institute seems to want to impose onto society in general; that marriage is a primarily conjugally public act intended for procreation, and any other message is a threat to those value systems, in particular the FAIR Act that was recently passed in California allowing for the inclusion of Gay Americans in history and social studies courses.  At the moment the Ruth Inst. and "Dr." Jennifer "Jenn" Roback Morse (QED) is railing against it by citing the testimony of one Dr. Miriam Grossman (it is also worth noting that this video - which the Ruth Inst. has cross-posted on their official Blog - was put together by, and bears the water-mark of, the active anti-Gay Hate Group, Mass Resistance):

"Dr." Grossman is a media darling for the extremist Far Right, and she has been a featured guest working in tandem with both the Ruth Inst. as well as "Dr." Jennifer "Jenn" Roback Morse's (QED) podcast!  Indeed, she seems to wear numerous hats - in one instance she is a child psychiatrist (according to Ruth and the above video clip), or she bills herself as a physician!  Ultimately, "Dr." Grossman doesn't want children taught Sex Ed. of any form, believing it to be harmful to children, under the misguided belief that marriage should be the only vehicle for sexual intimacy of any kind; however, many adults will now tell you that without appropriate Sex Ed. kids are susceptible to a whole variety of STDs.  Also, we must look at this testimony by "Dr." Grossman - and Ruth's endorsement of it - from another angle: they are attempting to insist (albeit speciously) that any mention of Gay people, our historical contributions to society, as well as how we have been historically oppressed and marginalized by society is supposedly a mere pretext to teaching our kids about Gay sex in a public school environment!  Certainly, it can be said, that many people do not make this sort of distinction, and Ruth may be attempting to play to this xenophobic base!  They are also evidently playing to irrational parental fears - by underscoring sex education and Gay social studies/ history - that Gay people are simply an inappropriate subject for kids, as though we are somehow a threat.  This is an old hat form of discrimination!  However, Ruth, NOM, and various other sorts of so-called "Family" groups yield to these methods in order to maintain their grip on American culture, values, and society!  Although, in reality, it is the values of the Ruth Inst. and the National Organization for Marriage that is a threat to the freedoms and secular values of the American people (as in Atwood's brilliant novel)!

Indeed, what harm would it be for parents - even Theofascists - to take their children to the side either before or after school in an effort to reaffirm their own moral guidelines, whether or not their children will end up believing them?  After all, isn't this the job of a parent, to reinforce their personal values in the home?  This should, in all honesty, be enough to satiate NOM and the Ruth Inst., though it clearly is not.  This guy (albeit he's a clear bigot) has the right idea:

Can't NOM and the Ruth Inst. learn from him?

NOM's White Hooded Terrorists!

(Copyright, Sean Chapin, 2011)

Last Thursday (30 June, 2011), the Minnesota Campaign Finance & Disclosure Board ruled in a 5-to-1 vote that the so-called National Organization for Marriage (NOM) must disclose their secretive handful of donors who contribute more than $1,000 in an effort to provide the citizens of that state with a transparent democracy, rather than allow the manipulation of their citizens by a shadowy group with unknown donors which seeks to defame Gay people in the media and in their own back yards.  Expect NOM to file a law suit challenging the state - as they have elsewhere whenever the group flagrantly disobeys a state's finance and disclosure laws - in order to have the Supreme Court rule Minnesota's campaign and finance laws un-Constitutional, perhaps because NOM qualifies as a "corporation" under the SCOTUS "Citizen's United"-ruling (more on that, later).  After all, Maggie Gallagher-Srivistrav once facetiously admitted, "[defending 'traditional marriage'] requires very expensive lawyers."  At worse, however, should NOM file a suit against the state of Minnesota, the desired result may be one in which a stay of the Disclosure Board's ruling is issued, thereby allowing Maggie Gallagher and Brian Browne to again play in Gay Minnesotan's back yards.  However, the Board's ruling already appears to be having an immediate effect due to the strength of the MN. law..  According to Andy Birkey of The Minnesota Independent, the publication was able to disclose many of the identities - not of NOM's backers - but of local MN. tycoons and local anti-Gay "Family" organizations who have all kicked in large sums of money, privately, to ensure Civil Marriage Discrimination:

The Minnesota Independent took a look at lobbying reports, campaign finance filings and foundation tax records and found a large amount of money coming from a handful of people. Lobbying reports don’t include the amount of money given to a particular lobbyist, only whether the donation was more than $500 per year. And campaign finance reports are limited to funds that went toward advertising, print or other electioneering communication and activity. 

Three groups have been behind the push for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The Minnesota Family Council (which also runs Minnesota for Marriage), the Minnesota Catholic Conference (a part of Minnesota for Marriage) and Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage (which reformed under the banner of Minnesota Majority several years ago).

Read the full article to glean who these wealthy anti-Gay movers and shakers are!  Though, one wonders how, given it's shamelessly transparent political activities and motivations that Catholic Church in various states has not been legally censured by the state or the IRS!