National Organization for Marriage to hold anti-gay rallies in NY on first day of marriage equality

Well, isn't this being a sore loser.

The anti-gay hate group, National Organization for Marriage, is organizing rallies in NY cities on the first day LGBT couples can get married in NY state.  Despite overwhelming evidence that NY supports marriage equality, NOM is still crying that they didn't get to deprive LGBT NY-ers of equal rights.

Sad, kids.  Just sad.

NOM's Maggie Gallagher Claims She's a Victim

Seriously folks, you can't make this up.

In a recent speech at the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank in Utah, Maggie Gallagher (of the anti-gay and ironically named National Organization for Marriage) claims she's a victim of "hatred" and that she never set out to attack the idea of marriage equality.

From Shewired.com: “I avoided the discussion of gay marriage as long as I possibly could,” Gallagher said, according to Salt Lake City’s Deseret News. When Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry, though, she feared it meant a change in the common understanding of marriage, and she created the National Organization for Marriage.

“By the very act of declaring that two men in a union are in a marriage we are announcing that marriage has nothing to do with bringing mothers and fathers and children together,” she told the dinner guests.

Somewhere lost in all that is the idea that hundreds of civil rights are attached to civil marriage licenses.  And there that are plenty of heterosexual married couples who don't have children.  Those marriages she doesn't seem to oppose.

She also said that opponents of same-sex marriage are unfairly characterized as intolerant: “You are like a bigot who is opposed to interracial marriage.”

Well, Maggie, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck....

NOM Strategist now supports marriage equality

Louis Marinelli, who served as a strategist for the National Organization for Marriage - which virulently opposes marriage equality, has had a striking change of heart and now makes a public statement that he has resigned from NOM and now SUPPORTS marriage equality.

Jeremy Hooper of Good As You broke this story earlier today.

Marinelli was the strategist and organizer for NOM's Summer Marriage Tour 2010 Bus.

Just some of what Marinelli tells Hooper: “The lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people (on the summer bus tour) for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing.”

"As a supporter of civil marriage equality, any statements I’ve made in the past about not recognizing homosexual relationships for one reason or another, of course it goes without saying that I no longer stand by these comments and I apologize for the insensitivity. Same-sex couples, whether they are married, in civil unions or domestic partnerships, ought to be recognized for what they are."

"Any support or endorsement of what Peter LaBarbera does I retract. I have been reading via Twitter and his website what this guy has to say, and it is clear that he is just a hateful man and I would be embarrassed and ashamed to be associated with him."

NOMexposed.org shows NOM's true side

From the excellent website NOMexposed.org: The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is a highly secretive organization believed to be largely funded by the Mormon and Catholic churches.

During the country’s greatest economic decline in decades, NOM has amassed huge resources to stop marriage equality, whether at the ballot box or in court. NOM publicly projects rationality and tolerance, yet keeps company with zealots and long-time LGBT antagonists.

I encourage anyone who is interested in seeing justice and equality for the LGBT community to visit this site. It shows how these hateful organizations cloak themselves in "sanctity" but are actually just another homophobic religious right group - one with deep pockets.