The National Organization for Marriage Practices a Kinder, Gentler Form of Gay Bashing

If you need anything to line your bird cage or cat box with this morning, might we suggest today's Washington Post, which features an article by Monica Hesse on the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), run with one of the sleaziest headlines traditional media has dared venture: "Opposing Gay Unions With Sanity and a Smile." The article is a profile of Brian Brown, the Executive Director of NOM, and literally holds Brown up as a hero for his crusade to take away the rights of gays and lesbians.

Who knew that NOM had hired the Washington Post to do their public relations for them.

Hesse characterizes Brown's rabid anti-LGBT work has "reasonable," part of mainstream America, and part of an overall campaign to change hearts and minds.  The reality?  Brown and NOM regularly call LGBT people a threat to children, think that same-sex marriage is intrinsically evil, and worry that LGBT people will bring the downfall of the family and western civilization.  This is the type of thinking that the Washington Post wants to hightlight in a four-page feature article?

Here are some of the more egregious lines offered up by Hesse in today's profile.

"[Brown] 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."

If you like that one, try this one on for size.

"[Brown] 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."

Someone should let Monica Hesse know that when people mock NOM, it has little to do with fear and more about not letting anti-LGBT people off the hook for their homophobic statements.  Sometimes it also has to do with the fact that NOM makes stupid mistakes, like their campy "Gathering Storm" ad that used paid actors instead of real, live believers, or their Web site 2M4M which failed to realize that when you type 2M4M in Google, you better be looking for a third sexual partner.

Instead, Hesse paints Brown as the type of activist that people should fear.  A Tom DeLay or Boss Tweed of the family values sect.  And by doing that, both Hesse and the Washington Post make homophobia and bigotry all that much more mainstream.

The final line of the article is so bad, and so unobjective, that one has to wonder how an editor let this thing slide through.

"And then [Brown'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."

Despite the praise heaped on NOM in this article, let's make on thing crystal clear: there is nothing rational or sane about taking away the rights of gays and lesbians.  There is nothing rational or sane about people who think that gay or lesbian couples are a threat to children.  There is nothing rational or sane about people who think that LGBT folks are intrinsically evil.

These people are anything but rational and sane.  They are homophobic, and while they may practice a kinder, gentler form of homophobia than Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps, homophobia is still homophobia.

For the Washington Post to give such a glowing profile of NOM and Brian Brown is, frankly, a disservice to journalism.

Degrees of hate may be subject do interpretation.  But suggesting that NOM doesn't hate on LGBT people, while they're out there openly calling for legislatures to write discrimination against LGBT people into constitutions, is repulsive.