The New York Times published a blistering editorial today blasting the National Organization for Marriage after it was revealed last week that the group engages in nasty and divisive race-baiting:
The group uses its designation as a social welfare organization to avoid federal disclosure, but the memos dispel any notion that the claim has any legitimacy. National Organization for Marriage is a political group, through and through.
NOM’s memos disclosed a strategic goal of hobbling the Democratic Party by exploiting the marriage equality issue to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies.” The group also seeks to manipulate Latino voters (or, as the documents call them, “ethnic rebels”) by making marriage discrimination a “symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation” and a “key badge of Latino identity.” The Times calls NOM’s gutter tactics “appalling” and “racially and ethnically divisive.” They also smack down NOM’s persistent victimhood complex:
These are not the musings of a marginalized group. The day after the memos became public, National Organization for Marriage’s co-founder and chairman emeritus, Robert George, was appointed by John Boehner, the Republican House speaker, to a United States commission focused on addressing religious intolerance and extremism around the globe.
And finally, the editorial calls for Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich — all of whom have enthusiastically embraced NOM and pledged to aggressively pursue that group’s hateful and bigoted agenda from the White House — to distance themselves, “now that the group’s poisonous political approach is out in the open.” But the paper makes clear that it’s not holding out much hope of that happening. Sadly, neither am I.
