Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Drawing fire from NOM

The group calling itself NOM -- the National Organization for Marriage (more accurately the National Organization for Some Marriages, but that's another blog) --has taken umbrage at the piece I posted about bigotry over on The Huffington Post. In the piece I responded to a reader who challenged my naming what Governor Chris Christie did in vetoing marriage equality as bigotry. Of course I think you should read the whole piece here ... but here's the short version:
I did not call Governor Christie "a bigot" ... I said he chose bigotry over equality. It may seem a fine linguistic point but there is an important distinction between critiquing one's behavior and attacking one's personhood. I do not believe that people are ontologically bigots or racists or homophobes or sexists, or ... (the list goes on.)

However, I know that bigotry and racism and homophobia and sexism exist -- and I believe they are on the list of things that keep us from living up to our high calling to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so I believe it is our responsibility to challenge the behavior when we encounter it in order to overcome it.
I thought that was pretty clear.

Evidently not clear enough for whoever wrote Episcopal Priest "Proud" to Call You and Chris Christie a Bigot over on the NOM Blog.

Seriously. Did they even read the piece they're critiquing? Or does it not matter that the blog title is literally untrue? In which case, I wonder, when did lying become a Traditional Value? Or is there some loophole I missed that makes the 9th Commandment optional if you're in the marriage discrimination business?

I've gotten a number of emails from folks suggesting if I'm drawing fire from NOM I'm doing something right and to all of you I'll just say thanks. As for NOM ... well, I'll just say I'm invoking The Gospel According to My Mom with nothing nice to say just won't say anything at all.

3 comments:

musculars said...

Oh well you know what they say about ducks.......

IT said...

The equality opponents are increasingly defined by their mendacity. Do you remember Cardinal Dolan claiming that several priests were going to be sued in NY because they refused to marry LGbT people? He knows that can't happen, because the NY law EXPLICITLY forbids it.

So you go ahead and call NOM out and wear their outrage as a badge. The tide is turning against them, and cornered animals can fight most viciously.

Christian Paolino said...

They're too busy expressing outrage about fictitious gay comic book characters (see what you started, Murphy Brown's baby?) and suggestive adds for Liquid Plumber. And those campaigns are going about as well as the one against J.C. Penney (Moms for Ellen is up to over 190,000 fans on Facebook)