We’re down to the last few days before the Supreme Court rules on marriage. In the mean time, the National Organization for Marriage is asking all of the GOP presidential candidates to sign an anti-equality pledge. Let’s take a look at just how crazy this pledge gets.
There are a couple reasons NOM’s pledge is nuts. Look at what they’re asking all of the candidates to agree to. First, they want candidates to support a constitutional amendment to ban marriage nationwide. This will never happen. George Bush called for an amendment back in 2004 and that went nowhere. Since then, public support for marriage equality has gone from 35 percent to 55 percent — if they couldn’t get any momentum behind an amendment then, they’ll never get politicians to spend political capital on it now.
But they don’t stop there. NOM also wants candidates to “work to overturn any Supreme Court decision” in favor of the freedom to marry. That just isn’t how things work. Presidents don’t get to overturn Supreme Court decisions. NOM wants the president to only nominate judges who will uphold marriage bans, but at this point, legal consensus so strongly supports marriage equality that supporting marriage bans is a sign that person isn’t qualified to be a judge.
Third, they want the candidates to reverse all the recent new policies that recognize same-sex spouses. That would mean returning to the days of kicking spouses out of hospitals, denying health care, deporting bi-national couples, removing gay couples from the census, denying funeral leave when a spouse dies, separating family members in emergency shelters — this is how it used to be until just a few years ago. And sure, a president could take us back to that. But they’d look pretty monstrous.
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Fourth, NOM wants the candidates to weaken civil rights laws, creating loopholes to let companies and citizens to discriminate if they cite a religious justification. That could actually happen — and it already has in some states — so it’s a huge concern. And fifth, they want the Department of Justice to investigate harassment against people who oppose marriage equality. Sure, gays and lesbians are harassed every day, fired, kicked out of their homes and schools, separated from their families … but NOM gets a little criticism and suddenly they want a federal investigation.
If a candidate signs this crazy pledge, it means one of two things. Either they have no intention of keeping their word, or they know they have no chance of being elected so they might as well make promises they know they can’t keep. NOM issued a similar pledge in 2012, and most of the candidates signed it. We’ll see if the same thing happens this time. After all — NOM may not even exist by the time the election rolls around.
ingyaom
Talk about a last gasp. NOM is history this week. See ya.
Giancarlo85
Isn’t NOM nearing bankruptcy? The group might cease to exist in the near future.
AtticusBennett
There’s a part of me that feels very sad for these people. When they finally kick the bucket, they’ll be dealing with the reality (whether they openly face it or not) that their Life’s Work has amounted to NOTHING. Nothing they worked for made anyone’s life better. At all. They didn’t win, and they wasted their lives fighting against the inevitable. And when they’re dead and gone, they’ll be remembered only as footnotes in shameful history – folks who worked actively against the betterment of culture and our species, who are about as noble and worthy of admiration as those who fought to keep slavery and keep america Segregated. If they’re not forgotten, their names and works will only be mentioned with great shame and revulsion.
This is their legacy.
MarionPaige
It is amazing, this inclination to try to apply logic to a lynch mob. NOM is an anti-gay group, being against marriage equality is simply the current manifestation of a desire to use / abuse homosexuals. AND, we have gay marriage to thank for organized hate groups against gay people.
AFER (Rob Reiner) doesn’t appear to represent any of the litigants in these Supreme Court cases but that hasn’t stopped: ( 1 ) the flow of videos; and ( 2 ) AFER claiming credit for bringing marriage equality to the homosexuals.
hyhybt
I’m really going to miss Marriage News Watch.
Dakotahgeo
I smell the imminent demise of not only the TEA Party, the GOP, but also NOM! There will be sweet, delicious funerals for each. I MAY even send flowers… dandelions!
Dakotahgeo
@AtticusBennett: I so wish I could “Like” your comments at least ten times! So succinct and to the point!
Ladbrook
My sincere hope is that more than a few of the assholes who run NOM and other related groups have ugly public breakdowns this Thursday afternoon (assuming we win, which I think we will). I feel certain that the visuals on CNN will be just as damning as those from the 1950’s and 60’s showing white southerners screaming at dignified black students just trying to go to school. That will serve to ruin them forever in the history books.
THEN… I’m hoping for a series of juicy sex scandals that will further reveal just how sick and twisted these people are. Yes, I’m thinking a few Larry Craig style arrests to expose the closet cases, but I’m also hoping for some truly sick stuff… like maybe a straight pedo or two (like J Duggar) along with some out-of-wedlock bastards, a prostitution scandal, and maybe even some drug charges or sex orgies.
I do love a good scandal.
Giancarlo85
NOM is also operated by people who can’t handle a dollar. Much like the republican party. They are incompetent in both their finances, and their delivery of their hateful message. The hate machine is dying down. NOM is kicking and screaming much like George Wallace and Asa Carter did in the 1960s.
Mack
There is a way the next President can overturn the Supreme Court ruling. There will be at least one or maybe two Justices retiring in the next President’s term. Ginsburg will more than like retire. The next President could appoint an extreme right wing Justice and depending on the vote this week could over turn it. I personally think the vote will be 6-3 in favor of Same Sex Marriages. If it is then it might be harder for the next president to overturn it. If it comes out 5-4 then not so much.
That’s why it’s so important to get registered to vote and VOTE when the time comes.
GTT
NOM and like organizations are clinging to the idea that same sex marriage is like abortion – so that they can continue to fight it – like Rowe v. Wade.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
SSM has nothing in common with abortion. One is about love, commitment, equality under the law and intregration. The other is about aborting a fetus.
BlueDude
@Dakotahgeo: @AtticusBennett: And I love both of you! It does appear that the GOP Titanic is steaming at collision speed toward the iceberg named Karma. Let us pray.
Dakotahgeo
@BlueDude: @AtticusBennett: … AND THE ‘PUBLICANS IS BUSY REARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS WHILE KARMA SCRAPES THE HULL OF THE DOOMED SHIP OF FATE… TOO JUICY!
mcflyer54
The pledge isn’t worth the time it took to draft it. Sure some, possibly all, of the Republican candidates will sign it but it’s totally worthless and unenforceable. Every GOP candidate Nixon has promised anti-flag burning legislation, to put prayer back in schools, to end welfare, etc., etc., etc.. And, once in office they totally ignore their campaign pledges (before anyone jumps in here I acknowledge that the Dems make, and break, and equal number of campaign promises). This is nothing more than pandering to the base. I do believe however, that any candidate signing NOM’s pledge must be forced to own it throughout their entire campaign- they can never be allowed to walk it back, disavow, or rescind their support for every detail of the pledge.
Mike
Come on “Land of the Free” you’re lagging behind us Brits on the equality thing.
Realitycheck
Sorry Nom, the only demon in my life is in my pants!! Oops did I just say that?
Realitycheck
@Mack: I suspect you are not completely right, times are changing and the supreme court tends to reflect current thinking,
I really do not see a super conservative judge getting on the supreme court with so many moderate republicans, most likely this is what will happen, the supreme court will vote in favor of marriage equality, and 2-3 years from now people all over the USA will realize, “it was not a big deal”.
Realitycheck
@GTT: My favorite is when religious zealots
say “gay marriage equality will lead to people marring animals and objects”
Excuse me? When did that ever happen? Gay marriage has been legal in many states all over the world for years and that has not happened!!! No country ha legalized that !! LOL
SeeingAll
Mike : They don’t care about that. Gay Americans like to imagine the English are superior to them anyway. It’s Ireland now having same sex marriage that drives American gays into a fury (they preferred believing the Irish were inferior).
Giancarlo85
@SeeingAll: You need to troll elsewhere… and stop posting your bullshit everywhere
SeeingAll
@Giancarlo85: Thanks for your input.