HRC Blog

Undercover at NOM’s Anti-LGBT Conference

August 28, 2012 by Dan Rafter, Online Campaigns Manager

Equality Matters staffer Carlos Maza went undercover at a NOM student conference earlier this summer – and got a front-row seat to the true depths of NOM’s anti-LGBT worldview and agenda. Maza was accepted as a participant in NOM’s Ruth Institute’s “It Takes a Family to Raise a Village” conference, which aims to pepper youth with anti-LGBT speakers and rhetoric.

Maza’s report offers an in-depth and alarming look at what goes on behind NOM’s closed doors. Among the troubling encounters:

A BYU professor who, during her presentation, said same-sex couples are “inherently unstable” because they ultimately grow bored with one another; and that same-sex relationships are “dysfunctional” and “irratic.”
NOM’s Thomas Peters: “When you see, for instance, an article about how awful, how horrible Professor Regnerus is with his exploitation and stereotyping of gay people, and then on the side is ad after sponsored ad for gay hookup sites, for pet grooming, and for, I mean, literally - this is sort of like the worldview of the people who are fighting us very seriously.”
Peters went on to say that the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in LGBT people: “And so, as a Catholic, the church doesn't believe in gay and lesbian people, per se, in the way they do. "Born that way," all this kind of stuff. What they believe is there are people born with deep-seated same-sex attraction.”
Another speaker told the students that homosexual relationships were worse than polygamist relationships.
At the NOM book fair, one book contained some shocking claims about LGBT people. Among them: increased ‘acceptance’ of homosexuality would lead to an increase in pedophilia; and that gays and lesbians are subjected to additional health risks as “payback” for a behavior that is “worthy of death.”

The report is a must-read. Check it out at: http://equalitymatters.org/blog/201208280001.