This guy is a slick as a snake oil salesman. His group has moved to DC
to make their cause, banning same-sex marriage, a national rallying cry.
They are hell bent to stop gay rights and same-sex marriage in the
halls of Congress, the National Mall, any where they can.
NOM Head Moves His Cause to D.C.
Brian
Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage,
with wife Sue. Of gays marrying, Sue says she initially thought, "What's
the big deal if they do?" (By Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)
Yahoo! Buzz
By
Monica HesseWashington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 28, 2009
The nightmares of gay marriage supporters are the Pat Robertsons of the world. The James Dobsons, the John Hagees -- the people who specialize in whipping crowds into frothy frenzies, who say things like Katrina was caused by the gays.
The gay marriage supporters have not met Brian Brown. They should. He might be more worth knowing about.
Brown
is the executive director of the National Organization for Marriage,
the preeminent organization dedicated to preventing the legalization of
same-sex marriage. For two years, Brown has been traveling across the
country. He moved his wife and six kids to California, where NOM
was instrumental in passing Proposition 8, the state constitutional
amendment defining marriage as an institution only between a man and a
woman. Before that, Connecticut, where his cause was hurt when the state
Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
It was
NOM that Miss USA runner-up
Carrie Prejean went to shortly after her infamous "opposite marriage" pageant answer. "Gathering Storm," the much-
YouTubed announcement in which actors discussed how gay marriage would negatively affect their freedom of religion? That was
NOM.
Now NOM is moving its national headquarters to Washington.
The thing about the John Hagees and the Pat Robertsons
is that some people consider them "fringe." And when they speechify,
the people they're most persuasive with are the ones who already believe
them.
But this country is not made up of
people in the far wings, right or left. This country is made up of a
movable middle, reasonable people looking for reasonable arguments to
assure them that their feelings have a rational basis.
Brian
Brown speaks to these people. He has a master's degree from Oxford, and
completed course work for a doctorate in history from UCLA. He
shoulders the accusations of bigotry; it's horrible when people say that
your life's mission is actually just prejudice. He tries to help people
see that opposing gay marriage does not make them bigots, that the
argument should have nothing to do with hate or fear, and everything to
do with history and tradition.
The reason Brian Brown is so effective is that he is pleasantly, ruthlessly sane.
"The Human Rights Campaign is massive," Brown says, referring to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy group.
Brown sits at the nearly empty desk in a nearly empty room -- the H Street NW office space NOM
has sublet until the organization finds its own building and moves its
staff down from Philadelphia. He is 35, red hair, solidly built, wearing
a crisp blue shirt with a white collar. Instantly likable. He's a
thoughtful talker, especially when discussing his "opposition," such as
the HRC. "They were ahead of the curve but . . . I didn't see any reason why we couldn't do the same thing."
The
same thing -- large, well-publicized, well-organized campaigns -- for
different purposes. In the world of activism, what works for one side
can work for the other. In the two years since its formation, NOM has become a leader in the fight against gay marriage, which Brown calls "the issue of the decade."
"Brian
has been the foremost grass-roots leader who has been involved in the
marriage debate," says Chuck Donovan, a senior vice president at the
conservative Family Research Council. "He's one of the more effective
leaders out there."
NOM's
campaigns have had missteps. "Gathering Storm," with its melodramatic
dialogue and fake lightning, prompted parodies as much as panic; one New
York Times columnist called it " 'Village of the Damned' meets 'A
Chorus Line' " for its instant camp value. Two Million for Marriage, the
organization's push to rally online activists around the country, was
similarly unfortunate: Apparently no one at NOM
had realized that 2M4M, the hip-sounding tag they'd chosen for the
initiative, is also the abbreviation favored by gay couples looking for a
threesome.
Brown has been undaunted. Along with NOM
President Maggie Gallagher, who lives in New York, he keeps putting out
or starting up fires. He raises money. He organizes phone drives. He
sits in the empty Washington digs and cheerfully takes conference calls
about whom NOM
should hire for an Iowa position ("I haven't had good luck with the
Heritage job bank, but that doesn't mean anything"). He sends out
regular e-mail updates to NOM's
mailing list, conveying his excitement on the issues with exclamation
points. Some pro-gay marriage activists then get hold of these e-mails
and mock them.
But his more informed opponents know that scoffing is a response born of fear.
"You
have to take them seriously," says Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow
for the liberal People for the American Way. "They've raised a
tremendous amount of money that they're funneling into various states.
They're mostly responsible for putting the Maine veto on the bill."
Brown
is confident that if people hear his message, they will believe it.
"People already believe it," he says, "but the issue is so deep-seated
that they've never had to create an argument for it. Now we have to give
people the language to do that." Create talking points. Help them see.
On NOM's Web site, printable PDFs
show visitors how to explain their position. "Why Marriage Matters"
comes in versions for different religions: Protestant (Spanish and
English), Catholic (Spanish and English) and Jewish.
Avoid
the phrase "ban gay marriage," the talking points suggest, adding that
opponents "know it causes us to lose about ten percentage points in
polls. Don't use it. Say we're against 'redefining marriage' or in favor
of 'marriage as the union of husband and wife' NEVER 'banning same-sex
marriage.' "
Bishop Harry Jackson, the
Beltsville
pastor who has been one of the most vocal gay marriage opponents in the
area, sees a happy partnership between his followers and Brown's group.
Jackson says Brown and
NOM
"have a sense of dignity about human beings. They simply believe that
marriage between a man and a woman is the best for society. But they're
not gay
bashers."
"I believe," Brown says, "that there's a clear purpose to what I'm doing."
Is it possible, in 2009, to avoid the title of "gay basher"
while dedicating your life to preventing a portion of the population
from participating in a legal process allowed to other people? Does
bashing require blows and slurs? Will those who oppose same-sex marriage
eventually be put by their opponents into the same pile as people who
think interracial marriage should be banned?
Brown worries about that, about being squeezed out of the debate.
"The
racial bigot comparison is the most troubling part of the argument,"
Brown says. It's horrible, offensive, deliberately incendiary. He thinks
it is "irrational," a word he uses often.
It is irrational when the
opposition points to polls suggesting that most young people support gay
marriage. "People mature," he says. Their views change.
It
is irrational when people believe that the legalization of same-sex
marriage is an inevitability: "We have the people. We have not had such
an organized force" before, Brown says.
Brown is Catholic. He
converted at Oxford, where he studied after a BA at Whittier College (he
grew up surfing in California). He liked Catholicism's traditions of
social justice and work for the poor. Along the way, he met Sue, also a
devout Catholic. After UCLA he accepted a position with the Family
Institute of Connecticut, and worked to prevent the distribution of
condoms in schools. "People would ask, 'What does your husband do?' "
Sue says. "It was embarrassing to say he worked on condoms. But it was
nothing compared to this."
His faith is important to him,
but in his arguments he is ever the PhD candidate, addressing questions
and dismissing counterarguments with fascination.
"I
have gay people who are friends and family," he says. "We can disagree
on all sorts of things and still care about each other." And later, "Of
course, I have to take their arguments seriously. This issue is
important. Ideas have consequences."
He takes nothing
personally. He means nothing personal. He is never accusatory or
belittling. His arguments are based on his understandings of history,
not on messages from God that gays caused Hurricane Katrina.
In
short: The institution of marriage has always been between a man and a
woman. Yes, there have been homosexual relationships. But no society
that he knows of, in the history of the world, has ever condoned
same-sex marriage. "Do they always agree on the number of partners? Do
they always agree on the form of monogamy? No," Brown says, but they've
all agreed on the gender issue. It's what's best for families, he says.
It's the union that can biologically produce children, he says. It's all
about the way things have always been done. He chose his new church,
St. Catherine of Siena, because it still offers a Latin Mass. Other noted conservatives have been parishioners there; Antonin Scalia has worshiped at St. Catherine's.
"I
think it's irrational that up until 10 years ago, all of these
societies agreed with my position" on same-sex marriage, he says, and
now suddenly that position is bigotry. "The opposition is trying to
marginalize and suppress us," he says. "Usually, that happens with
positions that are actually minorities. But we're the majority."
Does
he ever think that what he sees as an abrupt historical shift is,
perhaps, progress? Does it hurt his feelings when people accuse him of
prejudice?
"I think," he says, "it's irrational."
When
Brown came from California a few months ago, the family moved into a
comfortable house in Great Falls, surrounded by trees. His children are
precocious and sweet; his wife is gracious and funny.
Sue
Brown had never really thought about same-sex marriage until she met
Brian. "Obviously, I always realized there were gay people," she says
one Friday morning, sitting in the still-sparsely furnished living room.
"But I didn't think about them wanting to get married." And once she
did: "Initially, I probably thought, well, what's the big deal if they
do? What does it have to do with me?"
When she and Brian
got engaged, she envisioned normal family life, both of them returning
from their jobs -- she was a high school English teacher -- and having
family dinner. Now, while he's crusading, she deals with home-schooling
the older children and caring for the younger. It hasn't been easy.
"Connecticut
was really hard," she says. In Connecticut, they lived on a street with
two sets of lesbian parents. One summer a mutual acquaintance threw a
neighborhood party. Brian wasn't invited at all, and Sue's invitation
came with a note: "We know what Brian does. If your views are not the
same, you can come to the party." Sue stayed home.
"I get how [gays and lesbians] feel," she says. "I get that."
She's
pictured what it might be like to be on the other side of this debate.
"I know many awesome women, and I've thought about what if I got
together with one of them" and tried to raise a family.
She
has thought through it. She supports her husband. "I can only go by my
own experience, and I believe there's a huge difference in gender." The
kids don't need Brian "walking in the door because he's another person.
They need him because he's a man."
They haven't made a
lot of friends here so far. He works endless hours and so does she. Sue
starts off by telling people that he's the director of a nonprofit
group. If they ask for more information, she tells them it's a nonprofit
dedicated to preserving marriage. And then, of course, they ask her
about his position on gay marriage. Whether he's for it or against it.
Brian has come into the room. He's late for a conference call and trying to get out the door.
"What time will you be home tonight?" Sue asks.
"Ahhhh . . . "
"Six."
"Well . . . "
"Six. Just say it and do it. Six."
He
doesn't quite agree, but he doesn't disagree, either. And then he's out
the door, going off to quietly crusade for the hearts and minds of
people who, like Brown, pride themselves on being rational, mainstream
and sane.
This guy is a wolf in
sheep's clothing. He cares not for the loving bond between two people
who love each other of the same-sex. He just wants us to remain second
class citizens, who, in this country, teach its children, make it
beautiful, pay a substantial tax penalty even though we live in same-sex
households every time we file our income taxes, preserve the nation's
treasures, fight its wars, design its monuments, feed its people, and
nurse its ill back to health.
We are, in fact, indentured servants to society, if you will, without the rights and privileges of marriage.
He
and his kind like the status quo just fine. As long as we are denied
marriage, we are forever subservant to the married class, the truly
privledged class in this country.
We have to fight with words, with actions, with Mega hairy muscle hugs!
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