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by OnTopMag.com

Memos released on Monday reveal that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) planned to "fan" a race war to impede the progress of gay marriage.

Gay advocate the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) posted four of NOM's internal strategic memos from 2009, which were unsealed in the course of NOM's ongoing legal challenge to Maine's campaign reporting laws.

In one memo, officials suggest developing "side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders" such as pornography, "protection of children" and religious liberty at the federal level.

"The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party."

"Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key …," the document states, a reference to exit polling in California that showed an overwhelming majority of African-Americans voted in favor of the state's gay marriage ban.

The strategy included finding "attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally," and "interrupting" the process of assimilation for Latinos to "the dominant Anglo culture" by "making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity – a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation."

Evan Wolfson, founder and CEO of Freedom to Marry, called the strategy "despicable."

"In its anti-gay crusade to block the freedom to marry, NOM has spent years working to drive wedges within communities across the nation, all the while claiming it does not 'hate' anyone, gay or non-gay," Wolfson said in an email to supporters. "Now exposure of NOM's own strategy memos confirms that NOM will stop at nothing to push its agenda, pitting American against American, minority against minority, family members against family members."

"These smoking-gun documents show how NOM has sought, in the most cynical ways imaginable, to bait the gay community in hopes of provoking a hurt response that would further divide, all in furtherance of the ugly and cruel anti-gay agenda."


Article provided in partnership with On Top Magazine

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