NOM Exposed is a campaign-style operation that tracks and challenges the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage as it tries to influence elections and legislative campaigns across the country.
Mitt Romney once knew, voiced civil rights parallels; when did his path get ‘NOM’med?
August 06, 2012, by Jeremy Hooper
It's no secret that the National Organization For Marriage has been aggressive in its attempts to deny the parallels between the struggle for racial equality and the fight for LGBT rights. Not only has NOM voiced a plan to divide blacks and gays, but the organization's religious liasion, Willie Owens, is currently on a mini press tour of sorts in which he is saying all kinds of incendiary things that accuse gays of "hijacking" the Civil Rights Movement.
As part of the cyncical strategy, NOM has also made divisive ads that feature Martin Luther King's voice. This has all been going on for a number of years now—an attempt to cut the current civil rights struggle from the larger thread.
But of couse NOM's main interest in 2012 is getting Mitt Romney elected president. And of course we all know that Mitt Romney, circa 2012, is quite on-board with the NOM agenda, considering he signed on to the organization's truly chilling marriage pledge. In the interest of conservative kingmaking, the partisan organization and its party hopeful have formed quite the team.
But was Mitt, circa ten years ago, as eager to play NOM's divisive games? Well, let's take a look.
This is a press release from the Romney for Governor campaign of 2002:
Now, first I should note that the quote about his dad has since been retracted since no one can verify it. Though regardless of its veractity, Mitt Romney and his team (which includes overlap with his current team, most notably in the form of Eric Fehrnstom) felt that connecting the African-American struggle to the LGBT rights struggle was a boon. An asset. A truth.
So how does GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney justify signing on to the agenda of an organization that has decidedly pitted the fight for the expansion of equality for LGBT people against the larger civil rights picture? If he really did learn the lessons he says he learned in '64 and '72, then why were they so fresh on his mind in 2002 yet so absent only a decade later? What changed, other than the electoral map?