The secret campaign of the National Organization for Marriage for creating hostility between African Americans and gays over marriage equality have
come to light in a lawsuit over campaign financing in Maine. The document, which dates to 2009, was circulated by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group at odds with NOM for years. It also shows that NOM targeted Latinos in its efforts as well as President Obama:
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constiu[t]encies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politiician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the cost of pushing gay marriage to its advocates and persauding the movement's allies that advocates are unacceptably overreaching on this issue. Consider pushing a marriage amendment in Washington D.C.; find attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally.”
HRC Campaign Media Director Kevin Nix said, "Nothing beats hearing from the horse’s mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is."
One section of the document explains how the group would buy ads and robocalls directed at African Americans. Included in the $1 million budget for that is $60,000 to pay black bloggers.
The main focus was to be a "$20 million strategy for victory" directed toward the 2010 midterm elections. But the document also described to the NOM board a $1 million plan of the American Principles Project to "expose Obama as a social radical." Among other things, APP wants a return to the gold standard and to protect innocence. It says the government "plays a central role in propagating" messages of violence and promiscuity that affect "our children through schools, textbooks, libraries, job programs, health initiatives, and other public policies."
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Much more detail can be found in Scott Wooledge's diary here.