If you read my blog with any regularity, you know I’ve written a lot about activism. I sometimes inspire people, I sometimes piss them off, and at times I confuse them, but I’ve always written what I felt was important to say. And today, I may end up pissing off some more activists. You see, every moment wasted on bashing “Gay Inc,” or arguing about which bill we want to see progress in Congress (for example all the bickering about supporting Inclusive ENDA or the AEB) is time we are allowing NOM to succeed. Like it or not, they are succeeding, and if we (meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activists) don’t start to really grasp why they are succeeding, and come up with real strategies for battling them, we may end up losing the Equality struggle.

Now, I don’t think this Newsweek story is totally accurate or especially profound, but it is a signal to the strength of the NOM messaging- a messaging strategy that is working and pushing their success forward.

This past Summer, NOM had a bus tour, and especially here in Pennsylvania, the tour stop in Harrisburg, and what some activists saw as a failure of the larger LGBT organizations to care about it, created some real buzz and ill will within the LGBT community. This is similar to the general trend nationally to bash the big organizations like GLAAD and HRC, what some call Gay Inc. (For the record, I have my own set of criticisms for HRC, but I also believe they play a vital role in the battle for LGBT Equality.) I wrote about protesting the bus tour then, and on some level my base message isn’t changing. This is from the Newsweek post:

A big reason for their frustration is that Brown is succeeding. His National Organization for Marriage played a key role in financing the Nov. 2 ouster of three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled to legalize same-sex marriage there in 2009. NOM was also a major force in voter initiatives that rolled back gay marriage in Maine and California, contributing $1.4 million and $1.8 million, respectively, to those campaigns.

NOM is succeeding by using a magician’s approach to getting where they want to be. They create small diversions that cause knee-jerk reactions within the LGBT community, while their real focus and meaningful work is on raising money secretly and using that money to affect elections. That money funds hateful media campaigns of lies and misinformation, among other things. The only way to combat this success machine is to stop bashing Gay Inc and use Gay Inc in ways that it can be successful, while at the same time, using grass roots efforts where they can be most successful.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that things like the bus tour was only a diversion tactic. It was more than that. It served to make the NOM look grass roots. Even the pitifully small turnout at each stop emphasized that. It made them look like a crazy group with no supporters, when in fact they are a powerful group with lots of cash to spread lies and misinformation. It also allowed them to get “local” press in every state they visited. This press coverage wasn’t really about pushing their agenda, but rather it was about building their brand. A bus tour was a pretty cheap way to get so much free publicity. So the bus tour helped towards their success in multiple ways, and anyone who believes that their tour was a bust because they had small turnouts has their head in the sand, or is only seeing what they want to see. The LGBT Rights movement would be better off without these folks in the lead. We need leaders willing to see the whole picture- not just the part that fits their own narrative.

NOM’s most recent efforts are to discredit or trivialize the possibility of a successful ruling from the 9th circuit appeals. They tried to force Judge Reinhold off of the case, but have not succeeded. That is a win/win for them. If he had recused himself, they would have won, but the fact that he refused, just gives them ammunition with which to raise more money and feed the media more misinformation. When an organization can find win/win scenarios, they are bound to succeed.

The solution to their potential for success, is for those who care about, not only Marriage Equality, but LGBT rights in the broader sense, to step back and really grasp what they are doing, why it is working, and find real strategies to confront it.

via ‘I Do’? I Don’t! Gay Marriage’s Worst Opponent – Newsweek.

Photo by By Fibonacci Blue